This is a shot of the apartment building where Jo's Brother lives which is run by an old friend of his. Rick is able to supplement his rent by helping with the really beautiful landscaping and painting of the apartments as they become vacant.

The house was once a magnificent single home dating from the 1860's and is literally walking distance to all of the main street of Barrie ... really convenient. And it is about a mile from Bill Martin's residence ... also extremely convenient.



Our KOA is about 8 miles northeast of Barrie on the expressway so it isn't that far either. Actually we are finding more convenience here than in Meaford where we had to go the 15 miles or so to the neighboring town of Owen Sound quite often.

Below I am doing one of the many RV fixups that the nice concrete pad makes soooo much easier than the mud of previous parks. Here I'm replacing the sensors in the water tanks to make them read more accurately.

The weather has been quite hot and windy and the tent is keeping the sun off my back while I saw a hole in a panel to gain access to the tanks. The blue thing is the water softener which I've removed also to gain access.

And dinner with Bill at a new place for us called Caddy's Steakhouse about 100 yards from the retirement residence. We all had wonderful schnitzle. Bill and I had the chicken schnitzle with a really loaded baked potato and roasted veggies and Jo had veal with garlic spuds ... all excellent in an extremely quiet setting with great service and perfect food ... we'll be back!

Comfortably settled into Barrie Ontario.

Just one picture today as I am still working with the connections here. This one is being done on the local KOA wi-fi so we'll see.

We've been busy re-connecting with Jo's dad and brother and doing some catch-up maintenance on the bus and our location here is great. This park where we have stayed several time before is wonderful and it is soooo nice to have a concrete pad to live on ... let's see ... stuff like washing and waxing the bus and steam cleaning the carpets ... much harder when living in dirt and mud.

More about our life in Barrie to follow; actually the weather now is great with the high today around 68 and the night at 49. I think it will slowly get a bit warmer as the week goes on ... we have a BBQ Friday night at the park for all the new guests and then on Saturday we host the family for our own BBQ.

Back in ol Canada, eh!

On the 2nd we crossed the border at Port Huron, again with only a couple of questions, and we ran over to Barrie, north of Toronto, about a 230 mile trip. For the last 39 years we have taken an immediate left after leaving Port Huron and done route 21 up around the Bruce peninsula to get to Meaford; but this time seemed strange to stay on the four lane and proceed through Toronto and then north to Barrie.

Also no pictures right now as I am working the change from our wonderful ATT Hotspot thing to our old Bell Canada air card which so far is pretty slow but I'm working on it.

A little recap here on the latest trek. Since leaving Bryan on the 14th of March we went 6500 miles to get here, whew, time to rest for a bit. Fuel hasn't been as high as we thought: our last fill-up near Flint Michigan was at $3.81 a gallon and even though we won't fill for a while the average price here for diesel is about $1.19 a liter or $4.52 per US gallon. We also got an average of 8.4 miles per gallon for the entire 6500 miles. OK math time: that's 774 gallons at an average of $4.15 or so = $3200 or so just for those of you interested in this way of life, eh; plus an average of $28 per night for the stays ....

Right now we are settling into the Barrie KOA and fixing and cleaning all those things that were ignored over the last thousands of miles. Also it's great to back near Jo's dad, brother, and niece. It is sad to not be in Meaford ever again, but really exciting to see even more of this area around Barrie. Pictures to follow of course ...

As we were travelling on Memorial Day we weren't able to slow down much to think and honor all those of you who have served and will continue to serve. Our thanks to all the active duty and veterans who represent the finest military personnel in the world!!!

Our mission in this part of the continent since we bought the sofa in Washington so many miles ago was to get to Dubuque to pick it up. We arrived on the night of the 27th at the Flexsteel Factory and as offered they had a RV plug and a place for us for the night. Not the fanciest park we have been at but level and quiet ... and no campfires.

That evening we destroyed the old sofa and prepared the location for the new one.

The old one being dispatched to the dumpster. I don't think we have had such a poorly designed piece of furniture with so many bad aspects. Any item in our small space must perform as advertised and this one was bad in a hundred ways ... bye bye.

After the factory stop then it was back on the trek to the east and we stopped in Illinois at the Hickory Hollow RV park in Utica which was very good. The two machines just beyond the Flying Scotsman probably add up to over $2,000,000 combined ... yup.

Then on to Elkhart where again we found nothing worth looking at and stayed at the same poor Elkhart Campground. We went there once before thinking we would peruse all kinds of neat RV stuff and again we came away empty handed ... weird place as the mecca of RVers ... probably not again.

And that gets us up to today where we are at the Port Huron KOA where we have stayed before. Tomorrow we hit the Blue Water Bridge over to Sarnia Canada and off to Barrie Ontario our home for about the next four months.

We continued our eastward trek on the 26th stopping in a short 40 miles at the famous or infamous Wall Drug.

With its acres of eclectic stuff on the walls and in the many different shops all hooked together.

And of course a jackalope or three.

And a break with one of the permanent residents ... the doughnut I'm stuffing in my face was very good by the way!

Coming to rest that night in Salem South Dakota at the Camp America Campground. Probably another old KOA but nice pull-throughs and really great hosts. We were having a moth invasion ever since Rapid City and the swallows waited patiently outside the bus for every one grabbed and pitched out the door. We probably had over 50 of the things total ...

The next night we needed to stop after about 250 miles and were near Austin Minnesota so decided upon the Jellystone Beaver Trails park.

OK y'all know we are not "campers" we use the RV to wander North America and eat and drink. A Jellystone park on Memorial weekend consists of the largest concentrations of humans, fires, beer, kids, pets .... and mud you can imagine.

On the 23rd of May we headed east again and set our sights on Rapid City Dakota. We picked Rapid City because of the Mount Rushmore memorial and the fact that Ellsworth AFB is just to the east of town.

The Famcamp on base was excellent and almost as good as the one on Whidbey Island. It was all landscaped and with concrete pads. Because of the weather I didn't get a picture of the place but it was really great.

Speaking of the weather for the three days in Rapid City it was 50 and rain and fog for the high. As we went to the Rushmore area the weather deteriorated more and it actually started to snow near the park ... here's the view sort of toward the monument ... I think the president's faces are there somewhere ...





To make up for the weather we went downtown and found a really neat place to have lunch. The Firehouse Pub was actually a fire station and has been re-tasked quite nicely.

Out of the bad weather we settled down to a super lunch. Jo had a wonderful baked four cheese and pasta dish and I had bangers and mash with kraut ... both excellent!

And I couldn't resist the fire mannequin with his rather interesting hose apparatus to his right ... only in the firehouse pub, eh.

And while sitting waiting for the food to arrive I couldn't resist  the beer coaster which I hope you can read ... aah the ale.