Friday Chores and Old Paint Cans

The rain finally let up yesterday and it turned out to be a pretty nice day – we even got a bit of sunshine.  November, here on Vancouver Island, can be a very wet and stormy month with lots of high winds.  We’ve had the rainstorms alright, but no high winds to speak of – at least not here in the Cowichan Valley.  I hope that continues because with the high winds, trees get knocked over and hit power lines causing outages.   

Paulette leaving a garage sale in Palm Springs with some valuable treasures

Paulette had a few things to take care of in Duncan, yesterday morning, including getting a tooth capped.  This was the final step in the process so it was just a matter of making sure everything fit and then cementing the cap in place.  I’m sure glad that after we retired, our dental plan coverage's continued as orthodontic work can get very expensive.  I guess that’s why so many RV’ers go to Mexico for dental work now.

As if the first load wasn’t enough, Paulette had to go back for more!

While Paulette was out, I got busy inside with my weekly vacuuming job.  Have I told you before how much I hate vacuuming?  Just in case I haven’t – “I hate vacuuming”!  I shouldn’t complain, I guess, because we have a built-in Beam vacuum system, so all I have to do is plug the hose in a few different locations in the house and it’s all done in less than 30 minutes.  It actually takes me longer to think about getting going, than it does to actually do it!

One of the views from our 5’er, of the San Jacinto Mtns., from our site at the Sands RV Park

Paulette arrived back home just after 1:00pm, so that gave me enough time to do another job that I had been putting off for a few days – taking all the paint cans and other garbage to the dump and recycling station.  We cleaned out the paint closet last Monday and loaded up a bunch of garbage bags and cardboard boxes with empty paint cans, nearly empty paint cans and other assorted junk that we would never, ever use again.  Friday was the first day we’ve had with no rain this week, so I couldn’t come up with any reason to delay any further!

We took a day trip to a very nice little town in California - Temecula

I found out when I got to the Waste Transfer Station, that there was no charge for disposing of empty or partially full cans of paint.  The staff directed me to a big bin and told me to just dump them all in it.  Looking in the bin, I thought that if somehow you could maybe squash all those cans and have the different colors drip out onto a canvas, some dummies might think it’s “art” and worth a fortune!  Come to think of it, someone’s already beat me to that idea as I’ve seen some of those paintings hanging on art gallery walls!

Another day trip found us at the San Juan Capistrano Mission and “The Bells”

By the time I got finished with the paint cans and made my way home, it was just after 3:00pm and time to call it a day.  I put the fireplace on, got my Sony eBook and read until it was time for dinner.  Paulette made clam chowder and it was very, very good!  We just watched TV last night and took it easy.

Have a great Saturday, and thanks again for visiting!

New Tires For Our Fifth Wheel – One More Step

Yesterday, we took one more giant step in getting ready for our trip south, right after Christmas, by getting new tires on our Citation 5th wheel.  As I mentioned yesterday, the tread wasn’t bad on the existing tires, but they were just about eight years old, so it was definitely time for new ones.  Better safe than sorry – especially with something as important as tires.

The guys used 4 jacks like these 2 to hoist both sides up at once and change tires

The last time I had the 5’er hooked up to the truck was way back in August, on our way home from Erin’s wedding in Alberta.  As luck would have it, the rain was coming down yesterday morning when I had to hook-up to take the rig into the tire shop.  I used my trusty checklist and everything went smoothly just as it was supposed to.  It felt kind of good to be driving down the highway pulling the 5’er again – I was kind of wishing we were heading to the ferry and all set to head south.  But, it won’t be long now – just 6 more weeks!

Busy, busy, busy, all 3 guys are working on my installing my new tires

Driving to the tire store, I was trying to figure out just how they were going to do this.  Would I have to unhook the 5’er from my truck?  Would they do one side at a time?  What about my hitch, would it be o.k.?  As usual, the pros did it a lot faster, and easier, than anything I had thought of.  Two guys just took 4 big jacks, and in just a few minutes, raised the whole 5’er off the ground enough to get all the wheels off.  I didn’t have to unhook or anything - pretty slick!

I bought our new tires at Kal-Tire which is Canada’s largest independent tire dealer.  They are a very similar type store to Les Schwab Tires in the western U.S.  My old tires were Goodyear Wrangler LT 235/85R16 and were on the rig when we bought it 4 years ago. 

After discussing options with the store manager the other day, and one of the actual tire installers, I opted to buy Wild Country Radial XRT II Light Truck All Season Radials at a cost of $155 each installed.  They were the same size(LT 235/85R16) as my old ones.  These are not the most expensive tires Kal-Tire sells for sure, but they seemed to me to be the best all-around price performance value.  Checking on the Internet, these tires seem to have a good reputation for both reliability and durability.

Just about done, tightening up the lug nuts on the last set of new tires

I thought, for some reason, this was going to be a fairly long process – but it was very fast and I was out of there in under an hour.  Tire shops have always fascinated me.  They had 3 guys working on my tires – one guy was taking the old tires off the rims, another guy was mounting the new ones while the last guy was doing the balancing.  I really like watching the efficiency of workers who really know what they’re doing.

The inside of the Kal-Tire store in Duncan, B.C. – some nice rims!

I drove away from Kal-Tire very happy with the service, the advice and the cost of our tires.  Quite frankly, I had expected I might have to pay a lot more.  They also told me to drop back in before we headed down south to have the wheels re-torqued just to make sure everything was perfectly o.k.  I got a kick out of the tire installer who just “rolled his eyes” when the manager said this.

Right back where I started from in just a little more than an hour and a half!

I also managed to get some more practice in at backing up as I had to park the 5’er in our driveway when I got home.  That job seems to be getting easier all the time as I think I’m finally getting used to using the side-mirrors.  I only had to pull forward one time this morning before finally got the rig parked. 

The rest of the day I just took it easy as Paulette was down in Victoria to go for a walk and coffee with her sister, Arlene.  Have a great Friday, and thanks again for visiting!

If You’re Ever in Sedona, AZ

If you’re ever in Sedona, AZ, and are looking for a great RV Park to stay at for a couple of days, or even 1 night, I can strongly recommend the Rancho Sedona RV Park. Located right in the heart of town, alongside Oak Creek, Rancho Sedona is fully shaded with beautiful Sycamore and Cottonwood trees.

Sycamore and Cottonwood trees provide nice shady spots to park 

The park is right across the street from Tlaquepaque (pronounced Tla-keh-pah-keh), Sedona Arizona's Arts & Crafts Village, with their many galleries, restaurants and other interesting shops and attractions.  We stayed in the ‘loop section’ of the park during our 4 nights there, and if I remember correctly, we paid $38 a night with our Good Sam discount.  That’s a little more than we like to pay, but given the perfect location in Sedona and the fact that the park is clean and quiet, we gladly made an exception.

Our site at Rancho Sedona – one of only two left to pick from

There are other RV Parks on the outskirts of Sedona including a few in Camp Verde, but Rancho Sedona is the only one right in town.  It is ideally located for no matter which direction you want to go to explore all the beautiful sights in and around the Sedona area. 

A heron rook in one of the trees inside Rancho Sedona RV Park

The park offers full-hookups, cable TV and WiFi that worked just great during our stay there.  This is a popular park so reservations are really a must most times of the year.  I phoned them a week or so ahead of time and was lucky enough to get 1 of only 2 sites remaining for the time we wanted.  The pull-thru’s were all gone, but the back-in site we had was one of the easiest places to back-in I’ve ever had.  The roads were wide with lots of maneuvering room.

And, of course, nothing beats the spectacular red rocks and beauty of Sedona

Our current plans for next spring don’t call for us to be traveling through Sedona, AZ, but if we do, we’ll be sure to make the Rancho Sedona RV Park one of our destination parks for sure.

In the meantime, I’m still here in Cowichan Bay and will be hooking up the fifth-wheel shortly for a quick trip.  No, we’re not going camping or anything like that – I wish!  Instead, I’m just taking the rig up the road a bit to our local Kal-Tire store to have 4 new tires put on plus a new spare.  The tires we have now look o.k., there’s still lots of tread left, but they are just over 7 years old and the sidewalls are getting pretty hard.  Time to get new ones before we have any trouble and do a lot more damage than just the cost of new tires!

Have a great Thursday, and thanks again for visiting!