Get Together at Sylvia's House (8/2/2015)

Today's adventure was a family get-together at Marilyn's sister, Sylvia's, house.  We had a peaceful morning, all us ladies preparing our potluck items.  Joe wanted to drive in to Smith Falls, so I grabbed the computer and we spent an hour at McDonalds trying to catch up the blog.  The internet was so slow there, however, that I was only able to do one day, and then we packed up and headed on to Sylvia's where I used her wifi and got it caught up.  Now, I will be behind again as soon as I finish this one. 

The weather cooperated, and it was a good day, although a bit windy.  Some even got in the pool, but I thought it was a bit chilly for that.  Three of Marilyn's four sisters were here, along with her brother; her brother had brought her mother out from the nursing home; nieces and nephews and their kids; Collins' brother, and the six of us.  I didn't count but there were probably around 25-30.  And lots of food!

Marilyn's mother had fell 4 weeks ago and broken her arm, so she had it in a sling.

Sylvia set up a table for the guys to play cards, and eventually that included some of the women and kids.  They learned how to play "spoons."

After most of us had eaten, Sylvia and Sharon brought out a birthday cake in honor of Marilyn, whose birthday is not until November.  Since she is never home to celebrate that occasion with her family, today we celebrated.  And she was thrilled -- NOT!  She said she usually picks up on secrets like this, but this one caught her totally by surprise.

We gathered on the deck and brought her out of the kitchen for the honors.

Although she looked like she wanted to kill someone, she did pose for a picture with her brother Randy.


Then we got some family pictures.

Randy smeared some icing on her lip, which she took in good fun.


They all went inside so her mother could be in the pictures.

Shortly after all that, her mother was ready to be taken home, so I rode with Marilyn to Gananoque, a neighboring town 50-60 miles away, right on the St. Lawrence Seaway.  This drive took us through the village of Lyndhurst, Marilyn's old stomping grounds, and she pointed out places of interest along the way.  By the time we got back home, it was almost 10:00 p.m., and we were both pretty tired.  The rest of our group had come home and played cards again, and Ronnie had come back and joined them, so they had just broken up the card party not long before we arrived.  It rained during the night, so we are not sure what we are doing on Monday -- will probably be dictated somewhat by the weather.

Tacks Toys (8/1/2015)

Our little rainstorm last night generated a pretty rainbow, but the guys' car race got rained out, so all they got to watch were the qualifications.

Today's adventure was a private tour through George Tackaberry's private collection of "toys."  I don't even know what to call it.  It includes big trucks, little trucks, cars (mostly Cadillacs), tractors, snowmobiles, pedal cars and pedal tractors, matchbox size replicas of about everything that moves, memoribilia from all sorts of genres, and on and on.  He has 12 buildings full of his "collectibles" plus acres and acres of additional vehicles, especially trucks and heavy equipment. Most of his vehicles inside the buildings have been completely restored, and are in "like new" condition."

George is a personal friend of Collins and Marilyn from their growing-up days here in this area, and was best friends with Collins' younger brother, Gordie, who passed away 8 years ago.  He has, I think I heard, 52 gravel pits or quarries in Ontario, and over 200 employees, some of whom are relatives of Collins or Marilyn.  We drove through some of the outside "collection" which was mostly old trucks that have not been restored, dump trucks, rock crushers, and various other kinds of trucks.  Then we met up with George and began our tour.  He has 12 buildings, very large buildings, full of his "collection,"  called Tacks' Toys, and many of the vehicles are used throughout the year in truck shows, even as far away as Salt Lake City, and local parades, etc.  He is just a very ordinary guy, nice as he could be, and spent almost all day with our gang.

George Tackaberry is well known throughout the "truck world," both in Canada and in the U.S., and his collection of International Harvester is phenomenal.  There were 11 of us, in addition to us 6 travelers, Marilyn's sister Sylvia, and another sister Sharon and husband Mike, and a couple of their friends, made up our "gang."

His collection is somewhat organized by type, but many of the buildings contained more than one type, e.g., there were Cadillacs in the same building as semi trucks.  We started out in the tractor area, but again, not all of these pictures are from one building:

He had several different cars, including one of President Reagan's cars, and one the Queen rode in when she was here in Canada.

Trucks were throughout, most of them shiny as brand new, although he also had some "originals" with original miles of less than 200.  Some of these trucks have only been on the road to transport from the lot to here, and at least one was "one of one" made.

Lots of heavy equipment and many, many firetrucks, ambulances, brinks-type trucks and even a SWAT team truck.

He even had one truck used by NASA to haul boosters for the space shuttle.

And he had toys-- pedal cars and pedal tractors. All very nicely displayed along the walls. And lots of cabinets with matchbox cars and trucks, and miniatures that were larger than matchbox.  He had over 200 snowmobiles, but I don't think Joe took a picture of those. 

George even fed us lunch.  When we had driven down to his "lake cottage," where his significant other had gone, he had her arrange for pizzas, which she brought out to one of his buildings a little later.  So we all shared a nice lunch, and a little break.

Collins had brought a gift for him, a sign that had hung about his grandfather's construction company, which he presented to George.

On to another building.  In this one, he had the Flintstones "car," and a "statue" of old Fred himself.

We skipped a couple of buildings and finished our tour about 2:00, but Joe and Collins hung around for another hour or so.  Then they drove into the town of Brockville, for Joe's soda.  That town is right on the St. Lawrence Seaway, and they got to see a sister ship to the one we watched go through the locks in Sault Ste. Marie.  Joe thought it was the same ship, but this one had "IRMA" on the front, and the one we saw in the locks had "ASA" on it (we had to go back to our pictures to check out those details).

After we fixed dinner, another rainstorm blew through, this time with some pea-sized hail.  But once that stopped, we played cards in the garage that Collins had set up for us.  With Collins' and Ronnie's assistance and supervision, Joe cleaned off the table and put on a tablecloth, and we were set to go.  Collins' brother Ronnie had stopped by, so he joined us in "99."  This time we played for keeps, so our big winners were Dave, Ronnie and Collins.  The rest of us went away 90 cents broker.

Catching Up with the Brundiges (7/30-31/2015)

We are definitely on the move now.  Thursday morning we were ready by 8:45, but we had to wait on the Johnsons so it was about 9:00 when we got on the road.  (Inside joke -- everyone is ALWAYS waiting on the Froeschkes, so this morning was monumental when we were ready to go before they were, although they were ready by 9:00, our standard departure target time.)  It was a pretty uneventful day and we put in a fairly long day.  we drove 271 miles today, were off the road about 3:30, and set up by 4:00, in Pakenham, Ontario.  The only wildlife I saw was something that I thought was a "red wolf," but Collins told me it was probably a red fox, even though it was longer and taller than any fox I had ever seen before.  It was wolf-size, but red-fox in color.  No one else saw it, so I guess I'll go with red fox until I can get a second opinion that agrees with me.  David thought he saw an eagle, but no one else saw that either -- Joe just saw David run off the road when he was watching the eagle!  Ahh, life on the road. 

We kept trying to watch for fuel at a decent price, with a parking lot we could both get into.  We finally found gas in the town of Deep River for $1.139/ltr.  According to my questionable calculations, I think that was about $3.31/gallon, but I have to have Marilyn give me a lesson in converting liters and gallons, and Canadian dollars to U.S. dollars.   She uses the 20cents/dollar exchange ratio, which would make it closer to $3.449.  So maybe somewhere in between those two numbers. 

We also grabbed lunch here at a Burger King -- the highway through town was all torn up in road construction so getting in any place was difficult.  And the ice machine was broken, so Joe's first soda of the day was without ice  -- not so good.  I thought we were just in the part of the country where they no longer served ice with their drinks, but Joe said later that he was told the ice machine was broken, so hopefully that is not a permanent situation.  Parked next to us here at the Burger King was the smallest camper we have ever seen!

We found campsites outside the town of Pakenham, at a cute little campground called River Bend, right on   Ontario's Mississippi River.We were cautioned here to obey the speed limit of 10 mph (probably was 10 km) because of kids and ducks.  And sure enough, there were both.

After we got set up, Joe, Mazie and I drove back into town where we had seen a produce stand.  We bought some fresh corn, cucumbers, and Mazie also bought some beets.  We checked out a bakery/gift shop too, then went back to camp and I fixed our fresh corn for dinner -- yummy!  After dinner, Joe got out our fishing poles and we drove down to the river to throw our lines in the water.  We didn't go up to the office to buy worms so we had to use artificial bait, but it was fun just sitting on the dock casting our lines.

Joe, the great fisherman, decided to switch baits and he found two rubber worms in the tackle box, so he put one of those on.  After a few casts out into the river, he decided to just let the line drop right in front of the dock.  So he opened the bail and the line starting dropping into the water.  It kept going ... and going ... and going ... and going.  He said he must have found the deepest hole in the river.  I said, "maybe you have a fish!"  He said, "Oh!"  He flipped the bail and pulled back on the pole, and sure enough there was a fish on the other end.  But he didn't set the hook hard enough, so he wasn't able to bring it even to the top of the water.  The big one that got away!

Shortly after that, I tried a similar approach, and I actually did hook a little fish and got it to the top of the water, but then it fell off.  I think it was a yellow perch.  But at least we got to see it.  I messed around with my line right in front of the dock, and Joe thought my new technique of holding my pole was worth a picture.

We didn't have any more luck, but Joe soaked his feet in the river right amongst the lily pads.
It was very scenic, and as the sun set, the trees were reflected in the water.

This campground was nice and grassy, and there was a "yarn-bombed" tree at the entrance that certainly caught our eye.  Very cute.

This morning as we were getting ready to leave, some soldiers came running through the campground down to the river where canoes awaited them -- part of their fitness training.  We were told they had run 20 km with 40 lbs on their backs, were going to canoe 20 km, then there was some more running, and crossing the river. 

The dump station here was a little complicated, because of rules about how far from the river the dump station could be (500 ft. I think he said), we couldn't just pull up to it.  It was backwards to what we usually have, but we got dumped and on the road by 9:15.  We had seen a sign in town yesterday about pancakes 12 km down the road, so that was our breakfast plan.  But as I was talking to the campground owner while Joe was dumping our tanks, he said the pancake house was only open during maple syrup season, so we were out of luck there.  He told me of another place, so we stopped in Carlton's Place for breakfast.  We had to wait a couple minutes to get seated and Joe started talking "fishing" to some other customers.  We sat down, and the next thing I heard Joe, back at the front door, say "what did you do with my people."  So the waitress then showed him over to our table.  Can't take him anywhere!

We finished our very good breakfast, then headed on to our rendevoux with Collins and Marilyn. We went through one town, Franktown, boasting of being the "lilac capital of Ontario."  Wrong season for me, though, so of course there were none blooming.


We are camped at Collins' sister-in-law's house, back by the shop. We only drove 48 miles today, and were here about 11:30. After we got situated here, Collins and Marilyn took us on a sightseeing tour of the places around here, mostly where Collins grew up.  We went into Smith Falls and watched the locks, checked out some other locks, stopped by the cemetery and saw Collins and Marilyn's gravestones (a little morbid),  and stopped by Marilyn's sister's house to say hi. Then Joe and Collins went over to another nearby village to watch a car race on a dirt track, the World of Outlaws.  It was a nice day, but we did have a little shower about 7:00 p.m. 

Crossing into Canada again (7/29/2015)

Today is a travel day again. And apparently I just deleted today's pictures in my downloading process, so this should be a short blog.  We were on the road about 9:35, dumped, fueled and at the border by 10:00, and across the border by 10:05 (after paying $12), and through Customs by 10:10.  After all our efforts to come across legal (or whatever the right word is), the only questions we were asked were:  where are we going, and do we have any firearms.  I should have offered the Customs guard one of my 10 hard-boiled eggs!

But as we came across the bridge, one of the big freighters was going through the locks, so I'm sorry I didn't get those pictures posted.  I don't know if it was one of the 1,000-feet longs ones, but it looked pretty substantial to me.

Our one stop today was at the Canadian Bushplane Heritage Centre, which was right on the river bank and we could see it from our campground last night.  They had a nice selection of planes, varying sizes, and some of the planes we could walk into.  They also showed two awesome movies with special effects.  The second movie was about fighting forest fires with these planes, it was 3-D, and it was really interesting and educational.  With our Arizona forest fire history, we all found it to be very enlightening.

We left there about noon and drove until 4:00, to Sudbury, Ontario, 198 miles.  We fueled in the U.S. right before we crossed the bridge for $2.789.  We have seen gas prices here in Sudbury for $1.219 per liter, so we think that figures out to be $4.60 per gallon in Canadian dollars, which we think converts to about $3.22 U.S. dollars, maybe.  Not sure about that, though.  We will fuel tomorrow, but we probably won't have any more of a clue what we are paying until the credit card bill comes in.

We had trouble again with the voltage at the RV park.  So many of these parks in this part of the country are old, the wiring is old, and apparently doesn't carry enough voltage to run our A/C.  We moved to a different site, and it is a little better, but not great.  Fortunately, we had a little rain storm blow through which cooled everything off, so I think we will get by tonight without running the A/C.

Since we didn't want to use the convection oven or heat up the RVwith the stove, we drove into Sudbury to look the town over and find some dinner.  We ended up at a fancy pizza place, which was pretty good, but a little expensive, and many things on the menu were foreign to us hicks.  But we had dinner, bought some eggs, and got back to camp for the night (so I could delete my photos!).  We are making forward progress now, though.  Should be meet back up with the Brundiges on Friday if all goes well.