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Walked the dog very, very slowly around the park.  Took lots of painkillers.  My sister came and took me out for a day in Stratford & St Mary’s, which, due to my limp, I really didn’t get to appreciate. 

Part of my whole plan with this blog was to offer some travel comments about the places I visit in Canada, but yesterday my only real thoughts were: ‘thank God my sister found a parking spot right in front of the little shops,’ and: ‘why is this grocery store laid out such that I have to walk so far for 3 items’, and: ‘yes, The Flour Mill in St Mary’s looks cute, but I want to go home and put my foot up.’  Not exactly the material of Samuel Pepys or Bill Bryson.

Here’s what I’ve experienced in the last 36 hours:

• Cracked my forehead (minor goose egg)
• Am covered in bruises (everything seems to be sharp corners and all so close together)
• Cracked the back of my head HARD on the corner of the open fridge door (major goose egg)
• Aforementioned debris on highway (my poor nerves)
• Discovered horizontal open bottle of white wine in fridge, almost whole bottle had drained into the crisper drawer (So I have Pinot Grigio-marinated vegetables, and no wine)
• Aforementioned two broken toes (and no wine to act as painkiller)
• Scout threw up (inside)
• Scout has diarrhoea (outside)
• Sliced the tip of my finger with a knife (I don’t want to talk about it)

Really wondering if this life is for me . . .

After a couple of small hiccups: too tiny campsite but the one next door was free; construction at the campground; seriously leaky spigot; only one other trailer in this section of the conservation area (that felt a tad creepy) . . . I got parked, showed off my rig to my sister, then off to dinner for a lovely Greek meal in London (Mystic Grill – deelish).  Back ‘home’ settled in for the night. 

And then it happened – at three in the morning, the dog wanted out for what I had assumed was a call of nature but turned out to be just an interest in nature (twit) – we returned to the RV, and I got her up and lying in her spot on the bed.  I hadn’t turned the interior lights on, so I misjudged a step and smashed (and quite possible broke) two toes on my right foot. Well, crap.  The pain was awful, the inconvenience is worse.

Didn’t sleep for the remainder of the night.

I had great plans (as previously mentioned) for my travel day.  I was to leave the campground early, head south on the 400, stop off at IKEA Vaughan, stop at my house to pick up more stuff for the remainder of the trip, make it to the next campground by 2:00, with my sister arriving at 3:00 to take me out for dinner. 

Hah.

Started with emptying the grey (sink & shower) and black (toilet) tanks.  The RV manufacturer includes a sewer hose in the sale, but everyone (including the staff at Heidi’s) agrees that they’re crap (pardon the pun) and everyone says to buy a Rhino sewer hose – they’re the best.  So I did – I picked up the last one at Canadian Tire.  Got out to start the process, only to realise that I’d bought a 3’ hose – I hadn’t read the packaging in the store.  Three feet?  Honestly?  The rig’s sewer outlet is 2 ½ feet above the ground.  I spent close to an hour trying to find a work-around with the two hoses I had, and finally gave up.  Will travel with full tank of . . . whatever . . . and will buy new hose at Cdn Tire near home, and return the mini-hose.  Stupid mini-hose.

Now running late, so we headed out – IKEA was a pipe dream at this point – just get home and get going. 

RVs are loud.  And you’re never quite sure if the noise is a mechanical issue, or an unlocked door, or a pot rattling in the cupboard – but you just persevere.  Was finally starting to get more comfortable, tooling down the 400 and just nearing the GTA, when a dump truck a couple of hundred metres in front of me lost part of its load, in my lane.  I slowed down, with cars & trucks whizzing by me on either side, and with nowhere else to go, ploughed through the debris, praying it was all cardboard and Styrofoam.  Made it unscathed, didn’t heard any major grinding from the undercarriage, but my heart can’t take this.

Got the new sewer hose, loaded more stuff from my house, and headed off to Wildwood Conservation Area.  What a day that had been, and it wasn’t over yet.

I sent the Heidi’s RV Service Department my 700+ questions (well, okay, 11 questions), and headed out to practice driving and to start my shopping in Orillia.  We hit Canadian Tire, Dollarama, Walmart, and Zehr’s, plus two RV supply stores.  Got a lot of the list done, and at the two RV stores, when they heard this was my 2^nd day RVing, they both gave me a discount on my purchases!

Got back and decided I’d had enough of packaged food and boiling my tea water in the microwave (it NEVER tastes that same when you do that), and braved the stove and the water heater for dinner. 

Then, bless her, Tina from the Service Department called.  And didn’t mock me.  At least not to my face. After trying to answer my questions over the phone, she offered to come over to the rig and give me some one-on-one time.  Well, (a) she is very knowledgeable, and (b) she is a hoot.  She answered all my questions, climbed in and out of the rig to show me things, and never once made me feel stupid.  When she left I felt 100% better – thank you so much Tina!  (Anyone thinking of buying an RV, go to Heidi’s first, and remember, post-sale service is often more important than the purchase itself.)

Still in the dark with much of this, but by now it was dinnertime.  Lunch had been a tin of tuna with vegetables & dressing, eaten right out of the can, and dinner was a survivalist, freeze-dried, just-add-water-to-bag spaghetti dinner.  Feeling very Bear Gryllis.

More settling in, walking the dog, then off to bed.  At 1:00 am, I woke absolutely freezing, because I hadn’t figured out the furnace (the whole furnace vs heat pump, gas vs electricity question is still a mystery) before going to bed.  So piled towels, throw rugs, and my coat on top of the duvet and went back to sleep.  Started up the furnace first thing the next morning, and the RV was warm in no time.

Was Day One a success?  Hard to say. 

Okay, so now what?  The site I was parked at didn’t have many neighbours, so at least no one was settling down in their lawn chair with a beer to watch the newbie screw everything up (that is the number one pastime of RVers – watching someone back their rig into a spot for the first time).  I muddled through, and was doing fine until I walked around the rig with my head down and cracked my forehead on the extended mirror.  Big goose-egg.

But inside, I really didn’t know what was what so I sat down with 22 user manuals that came with the rig.  And read them.  Two problems: in many cases, because the user manual came with the appliance/tool/system, the manual didn’t actually identify what type of item it was referencing.  For example, there was a Yamaha booklet.  But a Yamaha what?  Entertainment system? Battery charger? Furnace ignition?  Still don’t know.  I know they told me I could ask all the questions I wanted via text, but I thought I should at least try to figure things out with the manuals.  I sorted and labelled them in 4 separate pouches: Appliances, Car & Entertainment, Things I Don’t Understand, and Extra Bits.  (The last pile being extra wires attached to user manuals, French- or Spanish-only booklets, etc…)

Well.  Hunh.  Quite the morning.  The drive up here was great. Signed some papers, then set off for a tour of my rig from the service team at Heidi’s.  Very nice lady named Michelle did our walk through, which turned out not to be quite what I’d expected. I think she was what you might call an RV generalist: travelling & living in her RV several months of the year.  But not necessarily an expert on my Sunseeker.  Any of the more technical questions I asked, she had to go to a mechanic working nearby to answer.  So she seemed to focus more on: ‘here’s where you switch your water heater from electric to gas’; ‘here’s the switch for the awning’; etc . . . And yes, I did need to know all that (slide outs in particular have their own set of rules), but I also needed to know: when do I switch from electric to gas?; when I leave the dog alone in the rig in a parking lot while I go shopping, how does the generator impact the A/C?; where is my solar monitor and how do I interpret it? (And those are just the tip of the iceberg.) To be fair to Michelle, it may not have helped that my chauffeur would interject occasionally, or that I usually need new concepts explained at least twice (I’m fairly intelligent, just not always intuitive).

So I bid farewell to my friend, said thank you to Michelle, drove off the lot, checked in at the park next door, drove to my site, and parked. 

And realised I haven’t a fecking clue how half of this stuff works.

Sigh.

It’s time!  I have a friend driving me up to Heidi’s with my two-day’s worth of supplies; we leave at 9:30. I really appreciate her doing this, although I sense it’s really because she is as excited as I am to see the RV.  I have packed:

• 2 pots, 1 pan, 2 plates, 1 bowl, 1 set of picnic cutlery, 2 glasses, and two mugs
• Basic kitchen supplies & cleaning supplies
• Tea, S&P, sugar, ramen, 1 serving of survivalist freeze-dried spaghetti (a gift)
• 1 sheet, 1 pillow, 1 duvet, 1 set of towels
• Everything I bought at IKEA, small set of tools, an old lawn chair
• Scout’s overnight bag (yes, my dog has an overnight bag; she’s not a ruffian, you know)
• My overnight suitcase

I brought the last item out only minutes before we were to leave – Scout already suspects something is up, and the sight of suitcases makes her sad.

I worked out a whole plan for my first week, one that would allow me to test out a whole bunch of different things on my first trip.  I’m intentionally going solo on this one, so I can focus on learning the basics.  So the itinerary is as follows:

Two days at Heidi’s campground near Barrie.  I’m only packing the bare minimum for these two days, as I will (a) be practicing my driving by going to the local Canadian Tire, Home Hardware, Dollarama, and Metro to load up on supplies; and (b) stopping off at my house on day three to pack bulkier items that I can do without on days one and two.

On the way south from Barrie to my place I will stop off at IKEA Vaughan to do some more shopping – I am a bit nervous about that, but I’m hoping that on a mid-week morning, and by parking in a spot on the perimeter of the lot, it shouldn’t be too bad.

Then two days at a conservation area just outside St Mary’s, to show off my rig to my sister’s family.

Then four days of boondocking in southwestern Ontario (more on that to come).

Then one night at the campground just outside town, 15 minutes from my house, for reasons which will become clear in time.

It’s a plan.