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Scout died, peacefully, in her sleep, this morning at 6am.  My trips will be every different going forward.

Programmed the GPS for ‘no highways’, which made the drive from NOTL to Milton very different from my usual trip along the QEW.  Went through a bunch of lovely downtowns, hugged the shoreline, and right around lunchtime ended up at the Burlington Canal Lift Bridge.  There was a big ship coming through, so the bridge was up, we were stopped in traffic on Eastport Drive, I was hungry and needed the washroom, and just like in a screwball comedy, I was able to put the truck in Park, get out of the driver’s seat, assemble a good lunch in the kitchenette, and sit back down to have a nice meal while watching the ship sail through.  I am so a traveller!

Got to IKEA, picked up a bunch more gadgets, appliances, and kitchenware, and headed home. 

A successful maiden voyage, albeit one fraught with challenges (my toe still hurts).

Found a winery I’d never seen/heard of before.  This is not a good thing; I do not need more ways to drink wine.  But Lundy Lane Winery is beautiful.  I pulled in an hour before closing: had a wine tasting, a bite to eat, and bought a couple of bottles – all overlooking stunning landscaping, a fountain, and a duck pond.

The next day was more of the same – lunch at the wonderful Ravine Winery Restaurant (smoked mushrooms on toast), then off to Marynissen winery.  Backed in like a pro (hah!), met a staff member who had done a lot of RVing who was full of good info, and sat in the sun sipping wine beside the vines, while Scout was fawned over by staff and shoppers alike. We each got our own flight – see below.

Lovin’ this Harvest Hosting!

My blog posts from Scotland were fairly ‘clean’ – apart from a story about the NHS (UK’s OHIP) requesting a stool sample from me, or an occasional scatological joke – but here in the RV, I am much closer to all the basics of life: heating, plumbing, fuel, car maintenance, and waste.  And as this blog is primarily a record for me to look back on, I do intend to include things others may not wish to read, but which are part of my overall journey.  Skip ’em if you prefer not read about waste. All kinds of waste.

This campsite is an electricity/water only site – there is a dumping station about 20 metres up the lane, which you use as you’re leaving the campground.  I had already missed emptying both the grey (sink & shower) and black (toilet) tanks at Heidi’s due to a stupid 3’ hose, so I had no choice here; it had to be done.  The dumping station was right in front of many of my neighbours, but my rig would be blocking their view, and if I left at a decent hour, maybe no one would see.

So off I went.  I’m just going to share one piece of TMI: the black tank was pure liquid.  For reasons we need not elaborate on, there was no solid waste in the tank (so that was a blessing).  Got everything else taken down and put away.  Pulled out of the site, pulled up to the dump station, got out, and got started. 

First problem: I am too weak to easily remove the tank cap, or to screw on the hose coupler (clearly hand-, wrist-, and arm-strengthening exercises are on the table for the remainder of this year), but with gloves, I managed.  Now that the hose was screwed in at the RV end, I extended it to the drain, which was a simple metal hole in the bottom of a shallow wok-shaped cement basin, about 1 metre in diameter.  I eased open the grey water valve first for a minute (if there’s been a loose connection somewhere, you want to find out with soapy water, not . . . you know), then closed it (you want to end the whole process with grey water flushing out the last of the black water), and opened the black water valve (you want to open it fully and fast, to really flush the waste out).  Well.  Because the hole at the dumping station is just that, a hole with no fitting to secure the hose to, and because the tank was quite full, the waste (oh, who am I kidding here, just say it: the urine) came whooshing out causing the end of the hose to jump up out of the hole in the ground and start splashing pee everywhere in the basin.  I got a hold of it (think: grabbing a running hose that’s swirling around on the lawn), and managed to direct it back down into the hole.  The entire basin was soaked, as was the sewer hose itself, as were my gloved hands (wearing protective gloves hadn’t really helped, as the force had been such that the inside of my gloves got soaked).  But it finished draining properly, so I closed the black, opened the grey (MUCH more slowly this time) and emptied the second tank.  I then rinsed everything down, returned the hose to its bin in the storage area, closed up the cabinets, washed my hands seventeen times, did my final road check, and was on my way.  All I can say is Thank Heavens it was urine only.

Edit:  Got to my next stop and realised that in my gross-out at the dumping station, I’d forgotten to return the cap to the tanks and had been dribbling whatever remaining pee and soapy water there was all the way along Highway 7.  Oops.

My first Harvest Host stop – a brewery in southwestern Ontario.  Set in amongst farm fields, a big barn serving boutique beers, Pelee Island wines, The Pop Shoppe (!) soft drinks, and a chip wagon outside serving real British fish & chips. 

Dogs were everywhere, people were friendly, the wine and chips were delicious, and the weather was great.  There was another trailer at the other end of the parking lot also dry camping, and the brewery closed at the wonderfully early hour of 9:00pm.  A lovely evening.

Until . . . until the place closed, everyone had gone home, it was just the couple in the trailer and me left, and . . . the barn’s security alarm went off.  It rang, and rang, and rang. I wasn’t sure what to do, but as a single woman travelling solo, I was not getting out of my motorhome to investigate.  Surely the alarm was connected to something remote, and a staff member would come and address.  Which, presumably, they did, as it stopped after about 8 – 10 minutes of clamour. After that excitement, a very peaceful night’s sleep.

Anyone who has followed this blog will know that the hardest, the most stressful part of my first year (at least) in the UK was driving.  The Scots don’t believe in straight lines, or wide lanes, so I white-knuckled my way through the Highlands, through the cities, and through the dark in my little Vauxhall Corsa.

Well yesterday I realised I’ve just exchanged one driving hell for another.  The roads here are straight, they are wide, and the speed limits are lower.  So that’s good. But a Class C RV rattles, and the engine strains, and the lines of sight are far less than that of a car, so that can be stressful. But yesterday, as I was heading to Miss Mayhew’s funeral near Windsor, the winds picked up.  Well, fick. 

My RV is a big, flat box.  And the 401 is a big, wide highway, with vast fields on either side.  So holding it steady as the winds pick up is a lot of work.  You feel the wind hitting the right side of the motorhome, pushing it, so you’re pulling slightly right, to keep in your lane.  Then suddenly the wind dies down for just a second, so the force you’ve been using to stay in place pulls you hard toward the shoulder. OMFG.  I could not believe I was right back where I’d been four years ago, white-knuckle driving as I prayed to a god I don’t believe in (there are no atheists in foxholes, or on treacherous car trips, it seems).

So, I made the decision: I hadn’t seen Miss Mayhew in decades, I don’t know who I might have known at the funeral if anyone, and I knew none of her family – this was silly.  Change of plan: get off the highway and back-road it to my next stop in Blenheim.  Whew. Easy-peasy.

(But I am still dreading future high-wind drives.)

I was supposed to head out this morning, going to the Sarnia area to visit a friend, then stay at a lovely farm near Petrolia, then the next day off to Miss Mayhew’s celebration of life.  But my toes (right foot, of course) are in a bad way at the moment, so I’m staying one more night here at Wildwood, and I’ve cancelled with the Harvest Host farm (they were very understanding and wished me a speedy recovery).

Harvest Hosts is a remarkable camping service all across North America.  You join up for an annual fee (~$90CAD), and have access to thousands of farms, distilleries, wineries, apiaries, museums and so on who have offered their property to campers who wish to stay one night in their area. 

Usually these parking spaces don’t have electricity or water (a few might for a fee), and they’re sorta free.  The idea is, you pull in late afternoon to say, a winery.  You park off to one side.  You go into their shop and are expected to spend about $30 for the privilege of using their property for free (seems fair).  They close up shop at 5:00, customers all leave, then staff all leave, and you’re left in a quiet spot where you can relax and enjoy your surroundings.

I have booked several of these on my maiden voyage (one in particular is worthy of its own post – later on that one).

I liked most of my teachers at high school.  There were probably three who have stuck in my head all these years and truly influenced me later in life; and one in particular: Joanne Mayhew.  She taught classics and Latin and it’s thanks to her that I am able to wander knowledgably around museums of antiquity, can figure out words I haven’t necessarily seen before from their Latin roots, write succinct emails and memos, and most importantly, know what the sentence Caecilius est pater means (IYKYK).

I saw her for the first time in years about 6 months ago, and yesterday, I found out she died.  Her Celebration of Life is being held near Windsor and remarkably, my itinerary takes me to within 20 minutes of the service that very day, so I’m planning on attending – the universe clearly meant for me to be there.

Salve.

You’d think the biggest entertainment at a campground would be going to the beach, or sitting around a campfire, or meeting new people, but you would be wrong.

The best entertainment at a campground is watching all the other campers arrive and park their RV or trailer on their campsite.  Bonus if that camper is a newbie.

The second I pulled up to my original too-small campsite at Wildwood, the guy situated directly across from me came out of his trailer, sat down in a lawn chair with a beer, and watched my first and futile attempts at backing into a site.

You learn a lot about people from how they cope with this exercise.  Years ago LL & I pulled into The Pinery on Lake Huron (Western alum will know it well), and after 15 minutes of to-ing and fro-ing, and turning and straightening, we manoeuvred a 29’ RV into place.  There was never a raised voice, never any tightened vocal cords, only considered and quietly-delivered comments like, ‘wait a minute Elaine, I want to think about this’, or, ‘LL – do you think we’re level?’ – a truly respectful process, considering we’d never does this before.  In fact, another camper came up after and said, ‘well done – you two did a great job.’ As we’d done a crap job at parking, we could only assume she meant we’d done a great job working together.

My sister & I didn’t do quite as well here at Wildwood this morning, but that was no one’s fault – she hadn’t expected to be roped into helping me get settled (that’ll teach her about the dangers of arriving on time), and I hadn’t told her where I wanted to be positioned.  But we got there in the end.  My only complaint?  I was calling to her (calling to her, mind) to be heard over the engine as we were manoeuvring, but she later told her family I ‘yelled at her’.  I wasn’t yelling, I was calling.  But in all honesty, I was glad to have her there for my first kick at the can.

Now that I’m settled in, it’s my turn to watch others as the campground fills up for the weekend.

Aside: I still remember one particular evening camping in Prince Edward County.  My friends and I were all set-up with RV all hooked up, awning out, lawn chairs placed, Weber grill on table, dogs on leashes, the whole shebang – which had taken the three of us at least an hour to accomplish, when in pulled up a Dodge Ram hauling a looong travel trailer.  He swung up to his site, backed in in one single, smooth, quick motion, stopped perfectly, unhitched his truck, hooked up the trailer, levelled it, opened the awning, placed an area rug, lawn chairs, and bbq, moved the picnic table, and drove away, all in under 15 minutes – it was like watching a well-choreographed ballet.  It seems it’s a service – he provides the rig and the set-up, and the campers just drive up an hour later to a perfectly arranged campsite.  Magnificent.  Hoping I’ll hit that level of expertise some day.