Canadian-Traveler

September 7

The beautiful Summer...
Like most people I love the summer. Summer is what I live for. That's why I discovered the South. The South is an extension of summer. For me...at least. And that wasn't like that all my life. Oh no, when I was 25yrs. I thought of winter like fun, I wished that 20 inches of snow would fall over night, turning the country into a fairy-tale. I shoveled snow like it was money -- loving every bit of it. But that's over. Alberta's ice-cold winters scared the heck out of me. I still remember, it was the first winter out on the farm, the morning we woke I froze as soon as the warm bed cover was off my body. Looking at the themometer it showed +8C (46.4F) inside the house!! Outside it was -50C (-58F) And that was the reason why the dang furnace wouldn't come on. At -43C propane stops flowing. So we were dead in the water, or shall I say in the ice?

South Saskatchewan River

But we had wood burning stoves and that saved us over the next days,

Rusty train at Vanscoy, SK

No boy, gimme a nice summer and all is fine. Since we have been traveling south we have hardly seen or felt snow. Well, there was Salt Spring Island in march 2009, but it wasn't really much.

Summer is going in shorts and a light shirt, a wonderful breeze off the sea or across the prairie, summer is picnics and BBQ's, is being together with good friends, is hanging out on the beach, doing a lovely walk through a green forest, seeing summer campers driving along and having a ride in a convertible, seeing sailships and catchy motor yachts on the deep blue water; but also little children playing in the sand and biking along the road.  

Pit stop in Texas

I am completely in love with the summer.


But now it's gone. It is September and the first week of it is over as well. It is raining too and that just makes for a day inside. I always wanted to transfer thousands of pictures from my laptop to an external hard drive. So why don't I do that? Exactly!  So I walked over to the Motor Home and got the external drive. 1TB should do and it was still empty. It is the second one I bought. Not that the first one is full. Oh no -- it died - simply passed away as Bea tried to fire it up with a 19V power supply. That doesn't work very long if the device is laid out for 12V. 
Yep that's what happened. And a few weeks before that I fried the original 12V power supply as I plugged it in a 220V German power recepticle. So conclusion is we are slightly "overcharged" people. 

Rio Grande south of Big Bend National Park

Overcharged or simply crazy? Or is that the same -- in the end one never knows. Most of our families are saying (or at least thinking) that we are downright crazy. Spending weeks on end on the road just to be in a bone-dry desert environment for months and months. But like I said: I don't like winters. I would not mind if it would snow in the desert on Christmas Eve -- Tradition and upbringing in a northern latitude - you know. But next day I would want sunshine and sitting outside the rig enjoying my morning coffee at 8am. 

Mission san Jose, San Antonio,TX

But if we don't do it while we still can, we will never do it when we are past 80. Of course I can have a hope that I still drive a rig when being past 80 but one should not completely rely on it. I might need to take the short road, the one which goes about 2km down towards the U.S. border. Up on a hill there is the local nursing home. Yes, Campobello Island is the perfect place to grow old. At our last enquiry they had still 7 rooms available....:-))

Also a result of summer

Summer, summer, summer

And more summer...

Seems I am ramblin' along here, but aren't we bloggers supposed to write something meaningful, something we stand for. And that's me. Have a good one...and live your Dream.