Hey all, Hope you're having a great day :) Here's our week that was: Wednesday 15.05.13: Welcome to the world Thea Aurora Williams. Congratulations to Kimmy, Dan, Ava & Madz - we wish we could be there to meet your beautiful girl - she's divine xxxxxx First port of call this morning was up to the office to see if Rhonda was able to get onto her RV repairer John for us. When we got there Rhonda was out so we met her husband Ian and he was a real character too, so nice. He was full of stories about their travels around Oz, life on the Island and plenty of travel tips & places and sights we should check out. He gave John a call who said to come on over & he'd take a look at Toby for us. We actually ended up chatting to Ian for about an hour & a half, so it wasn't until 11.30am that we even left Westwood Lake and headed over to West Coast Motor Sports. It's a smaller family run business and John was kind enough to see us straight away which was so good of him. "Oh you're the Aussies from Ian & Rhonda's? Yeah sure, come on, lets go take a look". It turned out that the ball valve at the back of the toilet had broken & also the seal between the floor and toilet fixture was perishing & needed replacing. Apparently they're both pretty common problems in older motorhomes and no drama for him to fix - apart from it being a tight squeeze to work in the bathroom lol. As for the fridge - well who knows.... John plugged Toby into power, reset the GFI and the fridge element was heating up as it should be & everything seemed to be working fine. Murphys law huh. He said its possible we had gotten some "unclean" power or a power spike at one of the parks which then caused our power outage at Elk Falls. We hadn't tried using the fridge on electric since then as we thought it was b*****ed, but turns out if we had plugged into power & reset the GFI ourselves it would've been fine! Lesson learned! :) So it was working perfectly at the shop but John said if we have any dramas to just give him a call. He was so helpful and we really appreciated him seeing us on such short notice. All up we were only there for about an hour & a half and now we're all good to go again! Awesome! :) We had some lunch and headed over to check into Living Forest for the next 2 nights. This coming weekend is a long weekend and everyone's been raving about it for weeks. I'm not sure if they get many over here because all we've been hearing about is THE long weekend and how busy it's going to get everywhere - apparently most provincial parks will be completely full this weekend. So after hearing everyone rave about it for so long and having the park rangers tell us that their parks will be full, you'd think we would have booked in somewhere for the long weekend right? I mean we've had plenty of notice... Nope not us haha. We've known it was coming for ages, but all of a sudden it's THIS weekend and we're still just cruising along & winging it. So we decided to go back to Living Forest today because a) it's nearby, b) we know its a decent campground and c) it has wifi so we can do some research on where to stay this weekend. We spoke to the lady on reception when we checked in who told us that Living Forest is fully booked out over the weekend and they have around 300 sites.... Busy, busy, busy... Thursday 16.05.13: Well it rained all last night but when we got up it's dry and only a bit overcast so far which is good. We were sitting here having brekky and looked up to see a cruise liner (Norwegian Jewel) coming into port - I guess cruise season has started now. Pretty cool to be able to watch them come into the harbour from our campsite. Another plus is the fridge is still working and has cooled right down since we plugged it in yesterday :) Today was laundry & cleaning day - got to rig up my laundry bike again haha. We washed the new jersey sheets and re-made the bed, can't wait to get into comfy sheets tonight. The downside was the mattress topper we bought is the wrong size so I couldn't put it on. Such a bummer. I really didn't think the bed was big enough to be a queen size so we bought a twin (double) and it's too small. Lesson learned, always do your research, don't just guess when you're already in the shop ha. We did some research on where to stay this weekend and found that most private campgrounds & motels nearby are booked out & all reservable sites at provincial parks are full. A few provincial parks have some "first come, first served" (FCFS) sites that can't be reserved online and are allotted to whoever rocks up at the park first. We can't really find anything else so I think we may give these a go. We've got a list of nearby parks which have FCFS sites so we'll check them out tomorrow & fingers crossed we can find somewhere to stay. Otherwise we could be Walmarting it haha...... Friday 17.05.13: First stop today was to Target to swap the mattress topper over for the right size. Thankfully they had the queen size there in stock so as we get back into Toby Ben says "Oh great, now you'll be able to put this on the bed today". I just looked at him... "Ah I don't think so! It's such a pain to make the bed up there and I only just did it yesterday"... Let me talk you through it. Firstly, you throw the fitted sheet up onto your mattress, try to spread it out as far as you can reach (remember you're standing on the ladder leaning onto the bed), climb up onto the bed on top of the sheet and tuck the first corner in. You may find it difficult to lift the corners of the mattress with your body weight on top but trust me it can be done. Also remember that you're bent over double & crawling on your hands and knees because at most you have about half a metre height clearance. Repeat for the remaining three corners and that's the fitted sheet done. Climb down to get the flat sheet and repeat. Same goes for the doona. Ha, you see why I'm not in a rush to repeat the process so soon, even if it is to add a comfy mattress topper. Ahh I long for the day when I can stand beside my bed to make it, I swear I'll do it every day, it'll be a piece of cake haha. So then we stopped in at Walmart to grab our groceries and Canadian Tire to buy an inverter. We've talked about getting an inverter for ages so now we'll be able to charge our devices off the coach battery while we're camped without power. Mostly we were worried about charging our phone - just in case something happened we didn't want to be caught without a phone to call for help. As for accommodation, we decided to try Englishman River Falls Provincial Park first as they had the most amount of FCFS sites available (said 47 available online), so we are hoping with that many still available we should be able to get one. It's about 40km north from Nanaimo so we didn't arrive till around midday, and thankfully there were heaps of FCFS sites still available. All of the reserved sites are taken for the long weekend - the list of today's arrivals on the check-in board was huge lol. We had plenty to choose from so we found a site, self-registered for 4 nights and settled in. From May 1st we've entered the 'high' season over here so most private parks have now upped their prices & started charging their summer rates. Not at the good old provincial parks though, it's still only $21/night here. Cheap rent hey! :) It started raining again not long after we arrived and there's not much to do in the rain so Ben set up the new inverter and charged his phone - it works a treat so he's happy. I think we're both a bit relieved that we have a home for the long weekend ha. Poor Toby looks like he's been rally driving though, all covered in mud from the parks' dirt turned mud roads on the way in. We'll have to give him another bath when we leave here on Tuesday... Saturday 18.05.13: Happy Birthday to both Nan & Ava - 2 beautiful souls who share their special day :) xxx It rained all night last night so when I woke up early this morning and it was still raining I decided to just stay in bed. No-one really enjoys rainy days when you're camping and cooped up inside so I figured I may as well have a sleep-in ha. How luxurious! Ben kept himself amused and when I got up it was still raining. Great weather for the long weekend hey! Yesterday when we arrived there were still a lot of FCFS sites available, but quite a few parties arrived after us and the park's filling up now. We heard the ranger say to someone this afternoon that he only had 6 sites still available - the park has 105 sites in total. There are quite a few people here in tents so that must be loads of fun in the rain, poor b*****s :( We spent the day either inside or sitting under the awning doing a whole lot of not much!! At least the rain eased off to intermittent drizzle later in the afternoon and we were still able to have our campfire that night. Ben's not good at doing nothing when we're camped in the bush so usually spends a lot of time on his phone. Tonight it went flat & I bet him he couldn't stand to go the whole day without it tomorrow - that's a big deal for him. Challenge accepted haha! Sunday 19.05.13: The sun's out today!!!! It's amazing how something as simple as the sun shining and it not raining can make our day. It's the simple things huh! :) This morning we had a real camping brekky - "toad in a hole" - so yum! Down the road from the campground is its' namesake Englishman River Falls so today we went for a walk to check them out. The falls were beautiful and the first ones I've seen that flow over and down a tight space between 2 cliff faces - see the pics you'll understand what I mean. Very cool. Then the trail takes you downstream to where the falls pool in gorgeous shimmery clear/green swimming holes. The water was freezing cold but wow did it look inviting. We both wanted to dive in - it was only knowing how cold it would be that stopped us haha. When we got back home we went for a walk around the park and a lot of people have left already even though tomorrow is a holiday - the park's only half full now. Camped beside us are a couple of french ladies - when we sit at our campfire we pretty much face their site and can hear them chattering away. Its been many years since french lessons at school, but I still love the french accent and hearing people speak the language, it's so fascinating. I could listen to them all day, hope they don't think I'm a stalker haha. PS: Benny still hasn't charged his phone and even reckons he can go another day without it... We'll see :) Monday 20.05.13: Happy Victoria Day! (Canadian public holiday in honour of Queen Victoria's birthday). Today was overcast, cold and dreary so we stayed in all day trip planning and reading. I got up this morning to find Benny couldn't hold out another day and had charged his phone up while I was sleeping haha! After this the coach battery was going a bit flat so we turned Tobes on to idle for 10mins and that got it pretty well charged back up again - good to know. Mostly anyone who was left here have cleared out of the park today - it's so quiet now it's almost a bit eerie. There would be maybe 5 campsites taken now, we're pretty much on our own again. The ranger was going around closing off sections of the park with no-one in them again - they will reopen again leading up to their busy summer times. It was so cold this afternoon so we got the campfire going early around 4pm just for some warmth. Typically we just got it roaring and then the rain started lol... We tried to hold out for a while but were fighting a losing battle so called it a night. Can't beat mother nature eh! Tuesday 21.05.13: We packed up early this morning and hit the road to Victoria. It's only about 160kms south but we always do a bit of sightseeing on the way and end up driving all over the place so an early start is good. We checked out Chemainus which is a city famous for its murals. Nearly all of the buildings in the town have murals on them painted by (some famous) artists. It's a very cool little town but I couldn't get any decent photos - between the movement while driving and the pouring rain, most pics were blurry ha. Then we came through Duncan, known as 'city of totems' but we didn't see a single totem pole!? Maybe we didn't go the touristy way through town? I'm not sure.... Most of the trip was pretty miserable due to the rain the whole way down but once we got into Victoria it eased back into just being overcast. We stopped by West Bay Marine Village and were able to get a site for 5 nights without a reservation. As summer gets closer and places get busier we'll have to start booking sites but for now we've been lucky and able to pull in & get a site where we want! :) West Bay is a pretty basic park - it pretty much looks like a parking lot, no trees separating sites or anything so it's not private at all. Your neighbours are literally just right there! But we chose it because it's the closest RV park to downtown - 35min walk along the boardwalk or a 5-10min bus ride. We wanted to be able to check out Victoria and this was simply the best park for that. It's also located at a marina so it's a bit windy but we have a decent view, and once again can watch the cruise ships come in and go out... I haven't had any new lingo for you for ages so I went hunting for some this week. Not very exciting but here's one: Soft serve ice cream = soft ice cream Hope everyone at home is doing well. We miss you all and would love to hear from you when you have time :) Xxxxxxx