Day 6

Yesterday was a driving day, I drove and I drove and I drove, but at least I am here in the Vancouver Area!

It is funny that when you look at things and say “wow, I have a few days to spend here” it seems like a lot . . . a while ago.

Yet, when you are here, trying to spend time with family that you haven’t seen in a few years, that time seems incredibly short.

I will spend this vacation as I have already planned, it . . . one day at a time, trying to slow down, visit with people and see where things go from there.

I will be heading to the Island (Vancouver Island) on Monday where I plan to spend even more time with family over there.

Then it will be a race of a weekend where I spread the drive back over two days, arriving in Calgary a week from this Sunday.

Today though, I will be spending time with my brother and his family. Well, I gotta run!

As always: Keep your head up, your attitude positive, and keep moving forward!

Vacation: Day 5

So here we are in lovely Nelson B.C. with the whole day to do nothing but explore and get to know the town. 

The first thing that struck me about the town, other than the lovely scenery that surrounds the town is the buildings

This town has in fact made a conscious effort to care for and preserve their local history. They have successfully preserved and restored their heritage buildings.

There are a number of buildings throughout the downtown and old town areas that are from the early twentieth century, and a few earlier. T

hey have been fixed up and brought back to their original glory, well done, Nelson! Here are a few examples:

  

We did go to the local museum and check out the history of the town which seemed to be established as a mining/smelting/hydro electric town. 

In fact this town seems to have a knack of reinventing itself whenever adversity hits, so it is hard to say exactly what Nelson is, other than a survivor that finds a way to thrive, no matter what.

After exploring downtown we went down to the waterfront. Oddly enough this was not all that easy to do, despite the fact that the town is built on a lake!

Most of the waterfront is taken up by industry, so the one park on the water (Waterfront Park) is lovely, but you need to consult a map to do so.

  

Yes, that last one is a selfie of me and mom at the park. (Dig the beard? I’m growing it longer not bushy).

We also saw that electric street car go by and decided to go on a ride. The price was three bucks for me and two bucks for mom.

  

Apparently the street car ran downtown for fifty years until sometime in the fifties when it was stopped and the tracks torn up. 

Sometime after that they decided to relocate it downtown and make it a tourist attraction along the waterfront. It is worth the ride, if you are in town.

The only trick is to look for the tiny ‘bus shelters’ along the waterfront as it does not have an actual station for you to go to.

One curious thing was that despite the fact that a number of boats were moored to a string of buoys along the waterfront, just off shore. 

One sad thing I discovered was that one of them appeared to sink while still moored. Here is the top of it just poking out of the waterfront.
   

In the evening we did visit with the couple that mother wanted to visit who are doing mission work here in Nelson. 

It was great to visit with people so energetic to give back to the community and the world at large.  

We are off today but before we go, I just wanted to post a pic to show you exactly what our campsite was here in Nelson and what I had to back the trailer up through.

    

Today is a travel day, as we are heading all the way down to Vancouver on the coast, so I can spend a few days visiting family. I gotta run!

As always: Keep your head up your attitude positive and keep moving forward!

Vacation Catch-Up!

Well, where to begin! It has been a busy few days so I will go quickly to let you know what has been going on over these past few days. 

Day1

After work I raced over to the airport and parked in the “Overheight” parking lot. I got there a bit early so I decided to just bite the bullet and wait. 

So there I was writing, sipping coffee and just waiting for mother’s flight to come in. At the appointed time I packed up and headed to the right spot to await for arrivals. 

And I waited, and waited and waited, and started to get early. Then I got a text from my mother, letting me know that she was about fifty feet to my left waiting at the baggage carousel. Apparently she took an elevator and bypassed the door that I was waiting at. 

After that we drove to my Western Home and did a bit of shopping for last minute supplies where I ran Jenny for a few hours as we relaxed.

Day 2

The next morning I took her to IKEA for the cheap breakfast (just for the experience). I also made sure to buy some “Child-Proof Locks.” 

Why? They are great at keeping cabinet doors closed. This is key for someone who tows and bounces their home down the road all the time. I bought two different types, and these types work best. 

   

We waited around, waiting for a text message from a friend of mothers to contact her so as to allow us to finalize plans to meet up. We waited until around one O’clock before heading out of town, finally leaving on our trip. 

We meandered through a couple small towns, and I made sure to stop and allow my mother to soak in the charm and beauty that is the small prairie town. 

We ended up spending the night at a mission base, that my mother has a contact at. She had wanted to help out there but never was able to get a chance to work there. 

So, as I setup the house, making sure to plug Wanda in, mother had a long-anticipated chat as to why. In the end it was just one of those things that things never quite worked out, no great conspiracy there.

Day 3

This day we got up and drove down to Waterton Lakes. We stopped in a couple small towns on the way including Pincher Creek where we toured the “Kootenai Brown Pioneer Village.”

It was a lovely collection of old buildings from the area and is well worth the ten dollar admission fee. If you are in the area, I encourage you to take a moment to take a walk around. 

We then carried on to the park itself and our first stop at Waterton Lakes was the “Prince of Wales Hotel.” 

   

The hotel itself is quite beautiful and historic, as it was built in 1927 but this is where the story gets cute. It was built by an American Company as its only stop on their rail tourism tour. 

To make things more odd, the male staff all run around in Kilts and/or wearing neckties made with the official royal family tartan. I was not able to get an answer if the hotel has permission to wear the official royal family tartan.

The next interesting thing is the fact that the hotel itself (as far as I understand) has no official connection to the royal family. 

The prevailing rumour hotel was named “The Prince of Wales Hotel” because the real Prince of Wales was apparently in the region and they hoped that naming the hotel in his honour, that he would visit . . . he didn’t.

That evening we setup camp at the campsite.

   

We then went for a walk and toured the area and enjoyed the scenery. We even went on a walk to tour the small town that is the town of Waterton.

  

Day 4

This day was a day of driving and travelling. We packed up late and leisurely made our way out of Waterton, not long before the mandatory checkout time of eleven O’clock.

After a bit of brunch and gas fill-up in Pincher Creek we were off. We stopped for a bit of a walk around at Frank Slide. Then again we carried on to Cranbrook for a late lunch. 

After that it was back on the road. We then went back onto the road and we drove on to Nelson and to the campground here. 

I had to back the trailer in down a snaking course where I had to disconnect and then park elsewhere. There was no room for the truck in front of Wanda. It should prove interesting for us when it comes to hitch up and leave tomorrow morning.

Day 5

Today we will explore the town of Nelson and let mother talk to some people that are setting up a mission base here. She is interesting in helping them with there work.

I will blog tomorrow, (and each day of this vacation)

As always: Keep your head up, your attitude positive, and keep moving forward!

Thanks Boss!

Okay, so today is payday and tomorrow (after work) I start my vacation. Since it is a two week vacation, I have the nice thing of coming back to another paycheque waiting for me (yay). 

Due to the way that my pay periods work here, for the next two paycheques I will have half of it with actual hours on it and half of it straight out of my vacation pay. 

Since I can’t make any commission when I am not here (dammit) this means that I am expecting the next two paycheques to be less than usual. 

Again, this is okay, I have flexibility in my budget (these days), so I will be okay. 

What boss did for this paycheque was to top it up with a bit extra from my vacation pay fund. I apparently have quite a bit of vacation pay accumulated, but I haven’t touched it.

Why? Because spending two weeks sitting in a Walmart parking lot is not my idea of fun. Since this phase of my life is about spending as little as possible, so that I can get my hinny debt free, going on long, extravagant driving vacations or paying for an extended stay in a campground is off the table.

I will go on my vacation, starting tomorrow afternoon, have fun, see old friends and family and then come back to reality. 

What this little top up means is that the amount of time that it will take to bring my Mid-Term Savings back up to its minimum acceptable levels will be shorter than expected. 

After that comes paying off my IOU ($1500.00) to my Long-Term Savings Account. After that comes paying off my Low Interest Credit Card. Once all that is done, then I can top up my Mid-Term Savings Account. 

Trust me, I have a plan and I am working that plan. If I can do this, you can do this too. Make a plan, work a plan, stick to a plan, and then succeed!

As always: Keep your head up, your attitude positive, and keep moving forward!

Wanda Watch

So, I was running some numbers the other day on my Wanda Loan . . . I do that now and again. I came up with an encouraging answer. 

I was guesstimating exactly, if my current savings plan holds up, when I would be able to pay off the Wanda Loan all in one go. 

The answer that came back was that next August at the earliest. This means that I would have paid off Wanda five months earlier than Trea’s loan. 

How is this? Well, with each payment, the loan drops just a little bit. Fast forward twenty months from when I calculated this schedule the last time and you have that encouraging number.

The exact month may vary, depending on a few things, but somewhere in the fall of next year I will pay Wanda off, all in one go! Early!

This should serve me well to motivate me when next winter finally rolls around. I will not think about winter now, as my vacation starts in a few days. 

What this means is that for the next two days I have my evening filled with last minute details to see to. 

Tonight is laundry night, because I don’t want to go out on vacation hauling around a large load of dirty laundry.

Tomorrow is payday, so that means that tomorrow night is my running around evening finishing off with bill paying, and of course grocery shopping.

This is not me bragging again, but demonstrating a nifty way to motivate yourself:  Look for good news and something happy to report about your life. 

I know that planning and predicting something a year out is foolish. It is way too far away for me to definitively plan, as any number of a thousand things could happen. 

Still, it is encouraging to actually see the end of one of the two remaining loans that I currently have, the larger one at that. 

So, if you are down and feeling mired in negativity, pause look around in your life and make sure to notice something positive in your life. 

I know that you will notice more than a few, if you just look.

As always: Keep your head up, your attitude positive, and keep moving forward.

Don’t Book Late

One word of advice from the category of “Don’t do what I did” . . . there seems to be a lot of those, but I digress is that don’t wait too late to book a site. 

Particularly when there is a large world-famous event happening in your town during the time that you want to book a campsite . . . as in the Calgary Stampede. 

What this means for me and my vacation is that while I was able to book campsites in BC and on the coast (yay), I have not and will not be successful in booking one for the two nights that I am still in Calgary. 

For little old me, this is an average weekend, however, since my mother is coming with me on this trip, I had wanted to give her a bit more comfort than I am used to. 

So, the lesson today is if you are planning go to on one of these trips, book ahead.

Hmm . . . mental note to self, look into booking campsites for the Island . . . 

As always, Keep your head up, your attitude positive, and keep moving forward!

Vacation Countdown

So, this last weekend, our long weekend up here in the land of Hosers, I didn’t go to a campground, as I usually do for the long weekends. 

This is because this upcoming weekend I am going on my vacation to the coast. My vacation officially starts after work on Friday and I hit the ground running, as I pick my mother up from the airport.  

The itinerary is fairly active, at least where I will be and when, as to exactly what I will do on what days, that is still up in the air. That is just the way I prefer my vacation, a little bit spontaneous. 

This is my way with reserving my sites (I hope) I can be assured of a set place to stay, yet still be flexible as to what we do and when. 

As I have said before, I am heading down to visit with family and friends in the Greater Vancouver Area and then over to Vancouver Island to see what I can see there. 

So, this week is the last of my prep-time for a vacation that has seemed to be so far into the future, yet at the same time, snuck up on me. 

I am excited and looking forward to trying to find the hidden gems of the places that I seem to know all too well already. 

As always: Keep your head up, your attitude positive, and keep moving forward!