The Edge [of all] Journeys

I have probably overused this word picture, but a vocabularic laziness compels me to to search no further than the characterization of our time in Colorado as a whirlwind. And it is coming to an abrupt close – sooner than we originally anticipated – as Father YHWH has laid it on our hearts to head east to Pennsylvania within a particular timing. Actually, in many ways the return east is long overdue and we have missed our friends and family in Messiah there tremendously. It’s hard to believe that it has basically been 2 years since we were last there. So much has changed. It will be difficult in ways and a joy in so many others. There is grief mingled with triumph. Unanswerable questions mixed hope. We have not been back since dear friends lost their young adult son just over a year ago, and since other dear friends have been struggling with cancer in the family. It is sobering. Humbling. In many ways I feel inadequate for whatever awaits, but I cling to the hope that Abba YHWH will somehow be able to communicate some small portion of His vast love through us.

We are also eager to visit and reconnect with a few dear friends along the way in the process… time will be so short, so the visits will be regrettably brief, but it will be wonderful to see some faces that it has literally been years since last we met.

And now for the scribal tasks at hand, I suppose it is important to set down at least some of the highlights from our amazing and incredibly full time near Denver, CO for the record.

Actually, there are a few things I’d first like to remember about the trip down from Manitoba to Colorado. I’m sure some of the memories already grow dull, but it was at once glorious and trying to be back on the road. We had an amazing time with our family in Messiah in southern Manitoba before finally leaving Canada. We swam in the river, enjoyed amazing Shabbat fellowship, and Bennah had his first mikveh. Once we hit the road there were other things like the familiar wal-mart sleep overs and brutal hot weather inspiring failed attempts to recharge the AC in the truck eating into travel cash that was already extremely (as in harrowingly) tight. The campground we found the night before we reached Denver with the swimming pool and diving board and the fun we had there. Not knowing where we would stay once we reached Denver and by all appearances the options were non-existent, but on arrival day finding an opening at the first campground close enough to the city to be worth stopping at. Having no money left, but little projects coming in and paying out just in time for us to cover gas or groceries or campground fees by YHWH’s provision.

We arrived in early July, just in time for Kenn’s bachelor weekend which was the goal of pushing so hard on the drive down in the first place. We arrived on Jul 5th (Thurs) and that same night I headed up to the mountains near Breckenridge with Kenn and two of his closest buddies. I had been having an internal debate about whether to head up so soon or go up the next night to settle a little more with my family first. But I was soon very thankful and blessed to have that extra time with those three awesome guys. Father gave us some amazing conversations and experiences before the others headed up. Overall it was an amazing weekend that I quasi-documented in imagery here (this is in Kenn’s Photo Album on Facebook, but I’ll eventually get those and more uploaded to my smugmug account too).

After that everything is a blur:

• Building a new company (still in process) – Never Settle
• Working freelance projects to keep the bills paid
• Catching up with friends and family
• Hot afternoon swims in a local river
  
• An amazing new friendship that sprung out of getting our truck worked on at a particular shop after some biking and flat tire adventures with Bennah
• Hopping around multiple campgrounds and discovering Clear Creek RV Park in Golden, CO that became our easy favorite in the entire area… they don’t take reservations, are always full, and have a 14-day max stay at a time, so there’s a system and and a few tricks to getting in and returning – but so worth it (even with the minor inconvenience of early morning registrations and spending a couple days on an electric only site waiting for a full-hookup site to open up).
• Tubing down the creek
• Late night photo and video adventures
  

  Panorama of Golden, Denver, and surrounding areas

• Replacing the right rear leaf springs on the trailer the day we were supposed to leave the Clear Creek RV campground after our 14 day max
  

  Replacing the rear leafs

• Having class year grade graduation
  

  School Year Class / Grade Graduations

• Exploring some Colorado mining areas
  

  Old Mineshaft

• Of course, Kenn and Megan’s wedding – which was one of the huge reasons for our time here this summer, with the bonus of celebrating our 12th anniversary overnight in Loveland, CO after the wedding festivities which were amazing. It was a unique and beautiful privilege I had to officiate the wedding and observe all the preparation, excitement, and ceremony from that vantage point. What a powerful picture and reminder of our coming bridegroom, Messiah, and King and the Wedding Feast that is to come. I enjoyed the celebration aspects all the more having walked through the “birthing” of the ceremony with the incredible couple. It was a joy to participate and also a relief when it was over – rejoicing in the reflection of Kenn & Megan’s hearts and personalities manifested in the public expression  of their covenants to YHWH their Creator and commitments to each other in their beautiful vows.
• And all the other photographic moments:

I have to tell you about the last place we stayed at. I booked it for a couple nights because it was near Orlando and it had great rates (two things I thought might be mutually exclusive when I first started looking around). I booked it over the phone, site unseen, from a little picnic area where we had stopped for a break on Key Largo as we worked our way back to the mainland. When we pulled into this place the next day I was reminded that, well, you never really know what you’re going to get I guess.

It was the kind of place that makes you want to grab your video camera and start shooting a documentary because there are a million insane stories among the inhabitants along with dramatically mundane and rundown visuals, and it’s all ripe for the picking… while at the same time your brain is screaming “you shouldn’t be here, you shouldn’t be here at all, you especially shouldn’t be here with your five children and pregnant wife.”

It wasn’t really anything obvious or overt. And it wasn’t the poverty factor alone. We found ourselves landing behind a tiny 8-room motel in a little campground run by the same folks where most of the sites had turned in to the permanent residences of people getting by in 20-30 year old campers. And it wasn’t really the people either… sort of… they were extremely nice actually. But they were almost too nice. Something was off, but I was resisting that gut impulse, because I kept feeling compassion for their condition and couldn’t help but wonder how I and my family must appear to them. I was also too aware of my own subconscious prejudices and unintentional elitism. And after all, maybe we were there for a purpose. The last thing I wanted to think was that we were too good to stay there… but…

At the beginning I sincerely did not feel like it was even a safe place for our children to play, but Renee was totally comfortable with everything. By the end of our stay those impressions had reversed between the two of us somewhat, but there was never any fear or worry – just an internal struggle between prudence and empathy; wisdom and charity.

It didn’t help that our sewer connection was a horizontal length of 3″ pvc running along the surface of the ground, connecting all the sites in our row – each site with its own tap in – and most of those quasi-permanent. I knew exactly what was going to happen when I opened the cover on the tap at our site to tie my own hose in, but I had no choice – one of the reasons we were there was to dump our tanks and get in a shower or two and I wasn’t going to leave with 500 lbs of waste water in my tanks. I gritted my teeth, unscrewed the cap, and watched helplessly as a couple quarts of liquefied (and quite fresh) sewage backed up and spilled on the ground under our trailer. I won’t enhance your nightmares with additional details of the procedure, but I am convinced that I was experiencing something that was quite illegal.

There was an inventor living there who had made some crazy things from old junk that would never get him anywhere, but were naturally fascinating to children – like a wagon that had been rigged with 2 sizes of bicycle wheels dragster-style with a large office chair bolted on for a seat. There was a guy working on a van next to us with an air compressor and an armada of good tools. There was a lady growing cantaloupe beside her trailer, and – even though it just looked like a bunch of weeds – she was very touchy about kids getting near it. She said she was also growing pineapple. I can’t say that I’ve ever seen pineapple grow before, but it looked like she had just buried one in the ground so that the cluster of leaves were just sticking up out of the dirt. Across the way, there was a camper that looked like it would fall down if you shut the door a little too hard, but it had a direct tv dish bolted to the side. Our other neighbor had 5-6 cats that he fed by pouring a long line of dry cat food out along the cracked concrete pad of the site between us that had some sort of burned out, crumbling brick and re-bar chimney behind it. Oh, and he showed the kids his giant python that he brought out from his completely camo-painted trailer.

I could not make this stuff up. See what I mean? Instant documentary. Camp for a week and get more stories and footage than you could ever cram into a 3 hour feature.

Unfortunately, that is not why we were there. We were really on our way to Georgia and normally would have just Wal-Mart hopped until our final destination. But we had stopped near Orlando to accomplish three major things, the first of which required electricity, running water, and sewer (to buy some time).

1. Knock out a major milestone in one of my work projects
2. Get some laundry done
3. Make an important business connection

#1 turned out to be impossible, but #2 and #3 were smashing successes.

I can’t explain why we were so eager and relieved to leave in any tangible, physical, evidence-based manner. The people were extremely friendly. The inventor gave Reayah a bike (which we had to end up leaving because… well, we were extremely appreciative, but it needed  way more fixing than riding). The pineapple lady gave Reayah a bunch of bracelets and necklaces (we didn’t end up keeping those either because they felt extremely weird spiritually… hard to explain unless you already know what I mean). And they all gave free advice: use duct tape on the sewer tap, keep trying the different washers / dryers until you find ones that work, check out the wildlife refuge down the road.

Despite the weirdness that I was writing off as merely a challenge to my own environmental conditioning, I was seriously considering checking on what their monthly rate would have been like. My logic at the time was that it would be warmer there overall than trying to go further north (even Georgia is still colder than it’s supposed to be right now), basic utilities were covered, it would cost more to keep travelling and then stopping for a month, the campground we had in mind in Georgia was turning out to be a bit more expensive than we initially thought or planned, I had a new business buddy in the area (Orlando) and some stuff could happen there, etc. As I hacked away on some code into the wee hours of the morning I had hopes and prayers in my head that we’d get some clear direction.

At 2am Renee woke up and started talking about the vivid dream she was just having. In her dream she was having a conversation with YHWH – asking Him whether we should stay or go, and He was telling her that we had to get out of their right away because He was going to wipe that place out with a tornado. We got up early and never had a more efficient and orderly time of breaking camp and getting the trailer ready to travel again. We weren’t taking Renee’s dream literally, but we were taking it as our answer, and there was already enough motivation once we had a clear plan.

I never asked about the monthly rates. I didn’t even ever open the valve on our black (sewer) tank, because I knew what would happen. As badly as I wanted to get on the road without that extra weight, it wasn’t worth the consequences under the likelihood that there wasn’t anywhere for the tank’s contents to go. Sure enough, there was a lot of gray (dish and sink) water backed up and stuck in our hose as it was, and that ended up having to go somewhere.

As we were pulling out, the truck started making a bad sound. Here we were, checking out an hour early (which never happens – we’re usually out just in time) and then I had to start wondering if the truck is going to fail me and strand us there. Got the trailer out of the site and started slowly down the road, but the truck was still protesting. It wasn’t the extra weight – we’ve pulled extra before – something sounded wrong. Pulled over behind an industrial building and started hitting diesel forums and trying to figure out what and how bad it might be. I was looking at all the info and starting to make a plan in my head about how to go about checking some things, but I got the distinct impression in my heart that we should just leave and trust. Renee reminded me that we should pray about it and so we did. Putting my analytical side on the shelf, we drove away and it was completely fine – the sound was totally gone!

Several hours later we pulled into paradise. Not by appearance. Not by amenities. Not by a stretch of the imagination – but by the standards of weary travelers who have been on the road for a month and a half, through 8 states, over 3200 miles, a dozen Wal-Marts, a handful of campgrounds, not longer than a few nights in any one place (except for the 2 weeks with our friends), trying to move major work projects forward through all of that, and more than ready to have a fraction of stability.

We are parked. We have a lake view. Actually, we’re only 50 feet from the lake and can fish for free without a license since it’s private. I even set up the slide-out jacks and our out-door carpet. We have electric, water, AND sewer (with a proper pipe and everything). We have free WiFi (which is a big deal because with all the work we have we were otherwise going to bust the 5GB limit on our mobile provider this month). There is laundry 50 feet away. Bennah was catching lizards again today. There is a rec house with puzzles and games for bad weather. Jaiden and Zach made a volcano with some water and a giant climbable dirt pile. The “neighbors” are mostly older, but very sweet. Reayah has a new best friend – the campground owner’s daughter. Necessity shopping is 30 minutes away. It is beautiful (though still a little chilly) here. Joy is taking it all in stride. Business is really looking up. Spring is close. And we have dropped anchor for at least a month.

Two months or so ago I was out driving around near Denver with my 4 year old boy Zach. He was having a rare turn up in the front seat, and looking out through the windshield towards the mountains he suddenly piped up with an epiphany: “Dad!!! I know how to get to the end of nowhere!” he exclaimed rather passionately.

How else can a father reply? “Oh yeah?” I said – not at all sardonically. “How’s that?”

To which Zach confidently replied, “You just keep driving that way and don’t stop!” while pointing straight ahead out the window.

Well, today I made good on my promise to take him to the end of nowhere some time. We spent the afternoon on the furthest SE point of the United States to which one can drive – the southern end of Hwy 1 – the edge of Key West, FL. We have literally driven the entire length of Florida now, entering about a month ago on the far western tip of the panhandle and driving first east and then south along the coast, and then cutting over through alligator alley along the Everglades, and then down Hwy 1 across all the keys. WOW.

What a beautiful place. 75 degrees F today and we played in the ocean in February. Crazy. I’d love to stay longer but it is Expensive with a capital E. Here are some shots from the day (keep reading below the gallery to get caught up on the rest of everything).

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Our next plan is to head up for Georgia where it’s still not all that cold, but away from the majority of migratory retirees which improves the campground rates; hunker down for maybe a month and knock out a ton of work that is looming. Which reminds me I still need to hit some of the highlights from the last month in my typical, inadequate bullet fashion. Here are the primary memories:

• Gabe and Heather’s wonderful southern hospitality and opening their home and land and lives to us for a couple weeks
• The kids playing endlessly together with nary an issue that needed adult mediation; from building robots out of a busted, rusted out 8-track player they found in the woods, to planning their treehouse, to whacking golf balls all over the yard, to jumping on the trampoline and playing in the dirt… it was country bliss like I grew up in
• Early morning hunting adventures
• Bennah’s first lesson on a real rifle
• Tinkering in the studio, recording the band’s first recording, writing a song on Gabe’s old guitar over the course of 2 weeks in the short 2-3 minute segments of time that I was in there each night to monitor my children during their pre-bedtime potty rituals
• Getting overloaded on baby girl cuteness in one place
• Shifting gears in the work arena when our project with La Vie Labs and Clairte did not work out like we had planned and hoped; and focusing all my energies on a new, exciting project
• Golfing in a cow pasture with Gabe and our two oldest boys (the “hole” was an old rusted out washing machine in the corner of the field)
• (And for those who have not noticed my not-so subtle title change on the blog yet) FINDING OUT WE ARE GOING TO HAVE A BABY #6 probably some time in October. Blessings upon blessings (and a bit freaked out at first) but children are a gift from YHWH and He has filled our quiver to be sure.

And that was just northern FL. Then we headed south and landed in Bradenton for a couple days and were extremely well cared for by dear (new) friends – parents of friends that we had grown very close to in Colorado. In fact, if you love garlic, they grow a whole bunch up in Ohio every year and it is absolutely incomparable to what you can buy in the store: Charlie’s Gourmet Garlic! You can watch the video that I edited a while back to get an idea of what Charlie and his farm are like – it’s the 2nd one down on this page: http://doctorbeautiful.com/blog/?page_id=48 So, while we were with them, they gave us and helped us pickle about 2.5 quarts of garlic! In about 3 more weeks the heat will be gone, but all the yummy healthy goodness will be intact. Thanks again Charlie!!!

They also hang out in FL for a few months in the winter so we were parked in Bradenton near their home down there. The tricky thing was that it was just a parking lot designed for RV visitors, and fine for sleeping, but with no electric, water, or sewer not well suited for working or living very long. With some critical work that came up we had to relocate. Ironically, one of the absolute nicest campgrounds in the overall area was also the cheapest (although it wasn’t all that cheap). So, we headed back up north about 30 miles and ended up managing to stretch it out for a week at the Fort De Soto Park Campground. That’s where the last five photos from the previous post were taken. 5 of those days we had a beach-front site. Fabulous. During that time:

• I worked my tail off and got a lot accomplished on a new work project
• The kids got sandy and wet pretty much every day
• We had to fend off the raccoons
• We met two other amazing families who live in that area and are close friends of close friends. They also opened their home and lives to us and we had a wonderful time getting to know them and their children, hitting the hot tub, feasting and fellowshipping together. It never felt like we had only just met.
• We explored Fort De Soto and the beaches there; and I managed to get a few pictures in… still way under quota right now.

And I’m probably forgetting something else important, but then we headed down here on a mission to get to the End of Nowhere. And so here we are. Tomorrow we head north once again.

We’ve arrived in Florida! Now, this isn’t the Orlando and Disney World part of Florida. This is wild boy country Florida. Where wild boars, rattlesnakes, coyotes, alligators and fire ants are all part of daily life. First day here and the kids are exhausted but happy after a very full day of playing golf, running, climbing, digging holes, swinging, petting a new horse and much more! We are parked for a couple weeks at an old friend’ s property. He and his lovely wife have three marvelous children who share the same excitement of life and hunger for adventure. Their home is in the country. The nearest town is just over 1,000 people. There is lots of room to run around and endless things to explore. We’re looking forward to many adventures and just time to chill and catch up.

Our trip here was easy and restful. The kids were amazing travelers and didn’t complain about wanting a break to run around. We took 8 days and drove through 5 states to get here (New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Missippi, and Alabama). Our first day traveling was 11 hours altogether! The consecutive days were 7 and 8 hours in the truck. The kids were pretty much content to hang out in the truck. We did school, watched movies and enjoyed the ever changing views and discoveries out our windows.

Most of the drive through Texas was acres and acres of cotton fields, wind turbines and oil rigs. I have never seen so many wind turbines in one place in my life. Hundreds of them. The cotton fields turned into a great school lesson. We pulled over and Andrew got out and grabbed a big handful of cotton from the side of the road that had blown around during the harvest. The kids each got a piece to play with while they watched some really awesome cotton harvesting videos on YouTube! I love the internet! After we saw how they made cotton bales, we started to see real cotton bales covered with tarps, waiting to be loaded on trucks. The kids were pretty amazed and I was very satisfied with a productive homeschool day.

On day 3 (Saturday), we stopped in San Antonio for three nights. We met up with an old friend there who showed us the famous Alamo, and other sites in San Antonio. The next day Andrew and I worked most of day while the kids played and enjoyed the campground and the break from traveling. We left the campground tuesday morning (day 6) and then met up in Louisiana with some good friends of ours who are nomads like us. After spending a night camping side by side in a Walmart parking lot, we went to visit an alligator house together and all the kids had a chance to hold baby alligators. Later on that day, we stopped for gas and saw a live tiger exhibit set up by the gas station!

We stopped for the night on day 7 at a campground in Marianna, Fl to clean out our tanks and get cleaned up ourselves. We arrived the next day around 3:30 pm with plenty of time to play and visit.

It’s Shabbat now and we are resting! It’s supposed to rain all day tomorrow so it might be a nice down day after all the excitement today.

YHWH is finding favor with us at this campground. He has given us a neat relationship with the owner even though we didn’t really do anything special to seek it out. The family that runs the gas station / campground here is really nice and helpful. With my background in computers I was in a position today to help the owner get his wifi broadcasting from the coffee shop into the campground again (he had an antenna / repeater / booster that was unplugged for the winter and I made sure it was all connected correctly and verified the signal for him).

He’s interested in expanding the range throughout the whole campground, so I went around with my pocket pc surveying the current signal strength per site. After I had a picture of how the layout and foliage affected the coverage I walked around with him and made recommendations as to how many repeaters he might need and what existing structures / poles / etc might make ideal locations for them to cover the rest of the campground.

I was happy to help! And the immediate benefit for us is that WE ARE NOW FULLY CONNECTED RIGHT AT OUR SITE!!!

Actually, this is a huge deal, because I’ve been battling the Autonet Mobile connection for days. Their support team has been excellent, but what we’ve discovered together is that Canada is a problematic no-man’s land of wireless data service when it comes to roaming. We’ll see what the final outcome is, but for now I will be diplomatic and protect most of the guilty with some anonymity. Basically it works like this: Autonet advertises data coverage for the U.S. and Canada because the carrier / provider they use advertises coverage in the U.S. and Canada. Essentially, Autonet themselves are a customer to this carrier on behalf of their own customers. Their carrier in turn has roaming provision agreements in place with Canadian carriers to (in theory) provide data and voice service to their customers. Confusing?

Well, the Canadian companies, it turns out – and I’m thinking of one in particular – seem to be (at the very least) somewhat unconcerned about the data connections of the customers who are on their network via a roaming agreement. In fact, looking at the logs and observing continuous ping behavior, it seems like their network is actually terminating data connections at a fixed interval. This has been the source of our woes.

Autonet is still working with me to get a solution – and they’ve been fantastic. Ultimately, I’m hopeful, however – I’m keenly aware that the reality is this: I’m the customer of a customer of a customer of a service. When you boil it all down, that’s the true picture, and there are a lot of moving gears in the overall scheme of that arrangement. It would only take one uncooperative gear at any level to translate into my service not working reliably.

Also, I’d take issue with the statement on Autonet Mobile’s FAQ that says: “Autonet Mobile is the Internet Service Provider…” I guess this is true from a certain vantage point, but traditional broadband ISP’s generally have their own infrastructure and Autonet does not. To the marketing team’s credit however, the web site has already been updated to correct their ignorance in advertising. The original page pulled from Google cache as of May 7th (which sold me on the service) states: “…to give you the broadband speed and expansive coverage in both the US and Canada.” The cached page also includes a link to a coverage map that clearly shows the US and Canada. The new page, by contrast, states: “to give you broadband speed and expansive coverage over the entire United States,” and includes a link to the coverage map of their service provider.

This might all sound like I’m trying to slam Autonet Mobile. Well, I was quite disappointed that they didn’t deliver the reliable service in Canada that was advertised, since that was one of the biggest requirements I had as I was shopping for service – knowing we’ll be spending a lot of time up here. However, their support has been superb, and I’m still hopeful that they will work something out on behalf of the customers who need connectivity throughout North America. I really hope that they don’t decide to give up on Canada and take a minimize-the-losses approach. The ridiculous state of affairs when it comes to cross-border data sharing and service really needs to be kicked into the 21st century. Maybe Autonet will take the mantle and be one of the pioneering catalysts.

But, for the meantime YHWH has looked out for us anyway – we now have a solid connection through the wifi at the Campground all the way inside the trailer – and for that we are very thankful!!! Thank you YHWH! Thank you Welcomestop! No more packing everything up to go spend a few hours at the coffee shop; no more leaving the laptop at friends overnight to get some bulk uploading done; no more sneaking in email checks and uploads when we’re with family for dinner… and, truth be told, the upstream data rate over wireless here (even with only 2 bars) is actually FASTER than either location that I tried in the city hardwired to a cable connection. Ah… it’s the little things in life.

Ok, back to the work I should have been getting done instead of this little praise/rant before Sabbath sets in.

I hope this post makes it through – the wireless service here outside the city has turned out spotty to say the least and our connections (internet and mobile voice) are very unreliable.

Such a bizarre weather time-warp … just over a week ago we were enjoying 80-90 F weather in Pennsylvania only to get up here (yes, I know it’s Canada but it’s the middle of May for crying out loud) and have some snow. Ok, nothing you could actually play in, but it’s the principle of the thing. Not that I mind really… anything to have more of a challenge. It’s good for us. Puts hair on our chests.

Today was full.

Breakfast and coffee. Registered at the office for a week here (initially, though we’re going to go campground exploring around the city to see if there are better options). Explored the facilities.

Tromped through some of that insane Manitoba gumbo mud with the kids for an hour… you can’t possibly know what I mean unless you’ve had the experience yourself – your shoes end up twice the size and 3-4 times heavier than when you start out. So then there was The Scraping and Soaking of Boots at the end of that, which took the rest of the morning.

Mounted a fruit net holder thing to replace a light fixture we were never going to use and a green bowl that took up too much counter space.

Started working on the kids laptop to get it all set-up and ready for them, which took 8 times longer than it should have since I can’t seem to keep a solid connection going… and that’s still not done.

I did get a couple emails off, although I should have been helping Renee with kid-wrangling-for-dinner at the time.

Tried to switch our cell phones over to the Canada side of Verizon, and finally found the access code I needed ( *228 ) but no success… I think we need to be closer to the city for it to work.

Emergency freezer thaw and spray down wash / wipe / dry and repack due to the fishiness that crept in during those couple days after we unplugged from AC power before the LP mode on the fridge was fixed and our stinking frozen Haddock defrosted enough to stink everything up.

Renee got the kids through school. Did the laundry (5 trips back and forth by the end of the day). Finally got her shower. (I’m still contemplating mine). Made lunch and supper.

I checked in with our finances. Made sure we weren’t forgetting any bills in all the ruckus.

Had another shootout with the Black Tank… there were a couple days when we didn’t have a lot of water to flush down the crapper, so today was more of a preemptive strike than anything else. Nothing as dramatic as the first campaign. But it did require a bit more stretching of ye ol ingenuity.

First impressions of Welcomestop Campground west of Winnipeg where #1 intersects the Assiniboine river: neat place fairly scenic albeit with a bit of a run-down feeling (perhaps due to the flooding and pre-spring barrenness); utilities all fine; thankfully no GFI on the 30 amp otherwise I’d have been trying to track down a new converter all day; muddy (only because kids will go where the mud is); laundry is low-tech but decent and nicely close to our site; store is adequate for emergency purchases; showers are coin-fed so we’ll probably never use them; staff is very nice and helpful… BUT the location seems to be perfectly situated to thwart a constant wireless connection either to the city infrastructure OR the rural infrastructure; they do have free wifi up at the “coffee shop” (a partitioned area in the gas station store); so we’re going to figure out over the next few days how much of a show-stopper this is for us as a reliable connection is obviously important to just about everything we need to do; overall the kids love it here; it will be even more fun when it warms up enough to have a fire outside and put the carpet out and the awning down, etc.

After supper we all went outside for a good hearty run  around the campground (mostly to force as much of the rest of the energy out of the kids as we could). Felt grand. There were snow flurries. The trailer felt too hot when we got back inside… well, to me and the boys anyway. Renee says it felt just right (but she doesn’t know that I turned the thermostat down before she came back from her extended walk with Jaiden).

And then SHABBAT. Sabbath. Rest. Ceasing. What a blessing.