Sorry all, I've been meaning to blog for the last couple of days now but we've been a bit busy... So here's the week that was... Wednesday 27.03.13: It was a beautiful day, made even better by the purchase of our first motorhome (see last blog post if you missed the excitement). Toby is just awesome. There is a lounge along the back, kitchen (sink/stove/oven/fridge), bathroom (shower/toilet/sink), dining table, over-cab bed & lots of storage. He's the perfect size for both of us & we're ecstatic with our purchase, can't wait to pick him up :) We had both been starting to get a bit frustrated by not being able to find the kind of RV that we wanted, so when we got home today we were both super excited & hyped up! I think we were able to relax a bit too, now we're going to be able to hit the road like we wanted to & don't have to come up with a backup plan for when we check out of the unit. Thursday 28.03.13: We were waiting till we had a motorhome before we bought anything for it, so today is shopping day. First stop was to the bank to withdraw cash to pay for Toby. Then we spent the day cruising the shops downtown. We mainly wanted to get all of our bed linen, towels etc so we could wash them at the unit & have them ready to go. The main problem with shopping downtown is the lack of decent department stores - I miss our Kmart & Target so bad right now. There are a couple of stores that stock designer brands at "everyday prices", but I'm not interested in paying $99 for Calvin Klein sheets even though they retail for $200. We're unemployed, I need cheap haha! Over the last few weeks we had found another department store in Gastown - Army & Navy, so we headed over there & were able to grab all of our linen & bed sheet set etc reasonably cheap. We also checked out a dollar store that we stumbled across - Dollarama. Now I'm a big fan of crazy clarks at home, but these stores are even better, literally nothing in the store is over $3. Of course some of it is ****, but there's also a lot of useful stuff that we'll need to stock up on. We grabbed some takeout for dinner & headed home to watch the Canucks game on telly - another win yeah :) Friday 29.03.13 - Good Friday: Today was pretty uneventful. We stayed in all day & did all of our 'housekeeping' stuff and washed & dried all of our bed sheets, doona, towels, tea towels etc. We sat down & made a bit of a list of things we'll need to buy once we pick up Toby & get going. Lastly we made a reservation at Capilano River RV Park. It's only across the river in North Vancouver, but we wanted to have a bit of a test run before we hit the road. This way if something goes wrong we're still in town to fix it, or close to shops if we've forgotten to buy anything we need, rather than 1000 miles away. Saturday 30.03.13 - Easter Saturday: Happy birthday miss Makenna :) xx Woohoo D-Day - time to pick up Toby. We caught the skytrain out to Delta one last time - it's probably the best public transport system I've used - clean, straightforward & very easy to follow. When we got out there Ed & his wife Avril had gone through their camping gear & set aside things for us if we wanted them. I'm talking plates, bowls, cups, drawers full of cutlery, containers, kettle, thermos, pots, pans, cleaning products, gas bbq, foam mattress toppers etc. They threw in so much stuff for us, it was amazing & we're so grateful. We couldn't have asked for nicer, more genuine people to buy from, they really are fantastic. They literally saved us buying so much & we can't thank them enough :) So we had one last run through on how everything works & then it was time to hit the road. Benny did an awesome job driving us over while I played navigator. It was like Christmas morning on the drive home - we both just kept grinning at each other going "how cool is this!" Lol, big kids we are! :) We had a minor glitch with the brakes locking up on the way home so we pulled over for a bit. Ben gave Ed a quick call just to see if it had ever happened to him before & bless him, he was going to jump in the car & come find us to see if he could help. So we did some googling while Ed spoke to a mechanic friend who came to the conclusion that it was probably because Toby hadn't been driven for a while. We got the brakes freed up and continued home without any drama but I think we'll still book Toby in for a quick service before we hit the road, just to check on everything. Once we got back to the unit, Toby was too high to fit in the basement car park, so we had to park him in the lot next door. On one hand we were lucky to have a parking lot next door but we were both not too keen on leaving him out overnight in downtown... So we parked him up then skyped both our families again and spent the afternoon packing and cleaning the apartment. Sunday 31.03.13 - Easter Sunday: We both had a pretty sleepless night hoping that Toby wouldn't get broken into/towed/vandalised in the lot & thankfully when we got up he was still there in all his glory! All that freaking out for nothing! So today's Easter Sunday & wouldn't you know it, the Easter Bunny found us all the way over here - how lucky is that! Talk about a gorgeous day, today is fantastic and warm, we both brought out our thongs for the first time since arriving. My feet are in heaven haha! We started the day with brekky at Maccas & found they have a maximum seating time limit haha (see pic), so odd. Then it was back home to check out of the unit, pack up Toby & hit the road........ to Walmart!!!! I don't really understand the "people of walmart" emails after being there, I thought it must be a bit of a feral store to have all those people shopping there, but it's pretty much like our Kmart at home - stocks a bit of everything & pretty cheaply too, I quite liked it. We didn't see anyone worthy of those emails which was disappointing to say the least - maybe we were at a classy one? Being Easter Sunday not much else was open so we did all of our shopping in Walmart to get Toby set up & ended up spending a few hours there. Oh and bonus, there is a Maccas inside Walmart so we had to give that a go - I know, I know, we had Maccas twice in one day!!! It was late afternoon by the time we checked into the Capilano River RV Park and got set up. Everything was pretty straightforward to get Toby hooked up with power, water, gas etc so we spent the afternoon settling in. It was so lovely & warm I even stripped off my light jacket & was getting round in a singlet for a while... Maybe we are acclimatising faster than we thought?! The only thing that got us was putting up the privacy cover that blocks the windscreen so people can't see inside the motorhome. Inside the cab is a curtain rail so I had assumed (without seeing the cover) that the cover attached to this - I was wrong. When I pulled out the cover there was nothing to attach it to the curtain rail with. So we're searching for clips to hook it onto and trying to fit it to the inside of the windscreen instead with no luck, flipping it round & upside down, trying it this way & that... We're both looking at it thinking "it just doesn't fit, I can't see how it's meant to fit?". Eventually it dawned on me that maybe it is meant for the outside of the windscreen - bingo. It hooks over both doors outside and is held on with magnets & the windscreen wipers - so bloody easy once you know how, we couldn't stop laughing once we figured it out ha! I'm sure we gave anyone watching a giggle too but hey it's a learning curve right :) We started unpacking our shopping and found the "2 pack of beach towels" we bought is actually one humongous towel haha. When I re-read the packet it does say "towel for 2" but I misread it at the shops & thought we were getting a towel each - you know, "towels for 2, a 2 pack of towels etc"... Plus I've never seen a "towel for 2" before so I didn't even think of that. It's so huge, it's like a blanket - it cracks me up picturing us going for a swim then sharing a massive towel when we get out of the water hahaha. Our first cooked meal as RV-ers was super gourmet haha - beer & 2min noodles with chopped up kabana. We are cheap & easy but having loads of fun! So we went to bed with stuff everywhere & not yet put away, but feeling as happy as pigs in mud :) Monday 01.04.13 - Easter Monday: Ohh we both had the BEST sleep last night. Its weird, I thought the bed would be the same as the one in the unit (which I think was a double as we were practically on top of each other all night), but it's waay bigger. What a pleasant surprise, there's so much room up there. Plus it's comfortable. I was expecting to wake up a bit stiff & sore like when you sleep on a camp bed, but wow it's great. Also I don't know if I mentioned but at the unit there were constantly police/fire/ambulance sirens going off as we were right downtown so last night it was soooo quiet, I could even hear the river running next door :) Another bonus is we've woken up to another gorgeous warm day like yesterday - I'm wearing my thongs again! Across the river from the RV park is the Park Royal shopping centre, so since we don't have any food yet we headed over there to White Spot Restaurant for brekky, it was quite yum. After brekky we did some groceries and headed back home. We spent the afternoon putting away our shopping & unpacking our stuff, deciding where everything is going to go. Benny bought a fish-eye lens for his iPhone so expect a lot of 'wide angle' pics to come :) Tuesday 02.04.13: We both had another awesome sleep last night. I think we've finally relaxed now that we have Toby - our 'plan' has fallen into place so to speak & we have nothing to stress about :) Setting up yesterday we found that we still needed some baskets etc for storage. We had seen a dollar store on our way here from Walmart so we decided to go for a walk & find it. It turned out to be another Dollarama so we were able to get a few things from there. Once we were done we continued on to Walmart to get the rest of the items on our list. There was actually another dollar store in the centre - Dollar Giant & this one was even more of a bargain - nothing over $1.25 store wide! Yup! So we got all of our supplies & walked back home - turned out to be roughly a 7km trip, we're sure doing a lot of walking so far! We were home by mid-afternoon & spent the rest of the day putting everything else away & settling in. It was quite cold & overcast today so spaghetti bolognaise for dinner was the perfect way to cap off the day. Yummo :) Wednesday 03.04.13: Benny's camera broke last week & he'd found a camera repair store in Kitsilano to look at it, so that was our first port of call today. We caught the bus to downtown then switched buses to get over to Kits, dropped the camera off & came back to downtown. We headed back to Army & Navy dept store to do some shopping - I wanted to get some trackie-daks & they were cheap here. After roaming around we headed to a food court for some lunch (Chinese yum yum). As we left, we noticed a crowd gathered around a barricade at the entrance to the Pan Pacific Hotel & heaps of security guards & police, so we wandered on over for a look. We stood there for a while assuming someone famous was coming or going but we couldn't work out who. As we looked around the crowd, the majority of them seemed to be Indian. Turned out that the "Times of India Film Awards" were on & a lot of the stars were staying there. As we were stickybeaking the crowd started screaming, yelling & snapping photos as a couple walked around the corner.... Clearly a famous Indian actor but we had no idea who so we called it quits. We caught the Seabus (like the Brissy citycat) across to North Vancouver then the bus back home - we've got this public transport bizzo down pat. Once home it was time to do our chores - emptying the black (septic) and grey water tanks - which wasn't as bad as I'd imagined - and doing some washing. We had bangers & mash for dinner & once again the sausages weren't quite like home. These ones were better than the last lot, but still not quite right. I'm not sure they eat a lot of sausages over here as they've been really hard to find - I haven't seen them at the meat section of a supermarket, just at a few butchers. Lingo: Root beer: Sarsaparilla: Duvet: Doona Comforter: Blanket/quilt Sham: decorative pillow (known in our house as the one you DON'T sleep on lol) Koozie: Stubby cooler: Dry-camping or boondocking: Self-sufficient camping (no power hookups etc) The other thing that's a bit different here is milk. You go to the supermarket & you'll see 3.25%, 2%, 1%, skim or half & half... Confused much? I was. I've figured out that: Skim is the lowest fat version = roughly 0.1% fat Then you have partly skimmed = can be either 1% or 2% Full cream = 3.25% fat Half & half = half milk & half cream Cream = used in coffee, it's usually a cream a bit thicker than milk but thinner than our 'thickened' cream back home... But just to confuse things some people call milk 'cream' when making coffee.... Keeping up? :) Sorry for the overload of Toby pics, like I said we're a bit obsessed :) Till next time, Loz Xxxxx