Last summer 3 American friends and I discovered that Quebec has a wine region – who knew?  (Well, I suppose most Quebeckers knew. Duh.)  Tonight is our first night boondocking (dry camping) at a winery.  The owner of Vignoble Clos Ste-Croix is a very nice man, but gives lousy directions.  I ended up with the RV in a very small gravel parking lot – that was a 17-point turn to get out of there.  Eventually, we ended up parked in a grove of trees with vines all around – lovely.  Except.

Except, the ground wasn’t level, and my rig doesn’t come with levellers.  And LL (seasoned RVer) isn’t used to that, and RV fridges don’t work well if they aren’t level.  Splendid.  And then . . . . .

One slide-out got stuck.  Nooooo!!!!!!  This is not good.  We kept bringing it in, and trying again, and eventually, it worked.  (But will we be able to get it back in when we leave?)  And then . . . .

None of the electrics worked.  We turned on the generator, which sounded like it was running, but no power to charge our electronics, no lights, and worst of all, no AC.  It was at least 26°.  This can’t be happening.  We texted the service department of Heidi’s but no reply. 

We opened every window (including the door!), LL moved her bed down to the dining table, I slept horizontally across my bed against the window, and we had the worst night’s sleep imaginable.

Sigh.

It was so much fun showing off the rig to LL; she spent two years in a Class A travelling across North America, so she really appreciates the motorhome in ways completely different to those who have never RV’ed.

Getting through Toronto was not as stressful as I’d anticipated, although I’ve decided to fork out the extra money and take the 407 any time I’m crossing T.O. Afternoon stop in Kingston turned into a clothes-shopping marathon (oops).  But lunch at Chez Piggy was lovely.

Settling in at the Mallorytown KOA went fairly smoothly, although it looks like I will need a new water pressure regulator to stop the constant drip as we hook-up.

So much has been going on this month: club events, losing Scout, yard work, a lot of technology issues for the club, clearing up now that the contractor is gone; I just haven’t had a chance to pack.  And I had planned on taking some driving lessons from a truck-driver friend, but another friend asked to borrow the RV to put in their driveway to use as a shower room during their renovations.  So I’m maybe not as prepared for this trip as I should be.  But, my office is starting to fill up with ‘stuff’ for the trip, and it’s not like I’m heading to a remote foreign land; what I forget, I can buy (Canadian Tire & Home Hardware in every other town).

I did tell LL to go easy on the groceries beforehand – she has been to Chambly, QC, but she hasn’t been to the IGA in Chambly, and until you have been to the IGA in Chambly, you haven’t really shopped. 

She was also quite tickled when she mentioned that she thought she was overpacking, and I told her not to worry – she was getting her own closet!  (God, I have so much storage space in this thing.)

We’re booked. Starting in Kingston, then Quebec’s wine region (Brome-Missisquoi), Quebec City, then loop along the coast all the way around the peninsula to Percé Rock, back along the St Lawrence, eastern Ontario, and home.  That is a lot for 15 days.  Several KOAs, several Harvest Hosts, a National Parc, and a few private campgrounds.

Home for two weeks, then off again!  This time LL & I are hitting the Gaspé Peninsula.  We’re working with a tight two-week window – we both have commitments in mid-June and mid-July – and I’m not sure two weeks is enough time. 

I’ve started booking campsites and discovered a brand new issue, one I hadn’t anticipated when starting all of this: because of Trump, Canadians aren’t travelling to the States, and reservations in southern Quebec (and elsewhere for all I know) are filling up.  Splendid.

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.