October 4th, 2009:
Cold and gray, but it hasn’t rained for a couple of days. What a come-down after that beautiful weather last week! From well above normal temperatures to well below. We got a lot of rain in Saskatoon, but I understand it wasn’t too general. I heard reports of combines working in the Humboldt area towards the end of the week.
We had our last motor home outing of the year last weekend – we met Cathy and Freckles at Valley Regional Park near Rosthern on Friday and stayed until Sunday.
Friday and Saturday were beautiful, though chilly at night – no sitting around a campfire. We walked, visited, played cards, and drank wine. Freckles wiggled and shed all over the place. We even did a little scrubbing on the outside of the motor home, to get some bugs off before storing it for the winter. Sunday was cool with occasional rain, so we read, slept and played cards until time to head for home.
We didn’t see much fall colour anywhere we have been; even the underbrush is dull. The black poplars are just turning brown and shedding their leaves like mad. The odd ash tree is bright yellow, but it doesn’t look as if the leaves will last long.
A wonderful surprise – two very good friends from Greenwater were touring around the northern part of the province, and strictly by chance pulled in to the next campsite to us on Saturday. We had a great visit with them Saturday evening and again Sunday morning, and got caught up with all the latest from Greenwater.
They had been to the Crooked Bush and had been suitably impressed, though they did say it looked as if too many people are stepping off the boardwalk and damaging the site. They even saw some saplings that had been uprooted. It would be a shame to have it die out through people’s stupidity.
Next week, we are going to get the oil changed, wash the beast, have it winterized, and then kiss it goodbye until spring. That is, unless we get a real nice spell during October and decide on another jaunt. Lord, it’s hard to quit! We enjoyed our motor homing more this summer than any other year, though we didn’t get any really long trips in. In total, we put on about 6,200 kms, not much more than we did on one trip last year and the year before, but I suspect we spent more nights in it this year – a total of 54.
We just had a wonderful meal. We picked up three neighbours and went to Vanscoy for a Fall Supper. Vanscoy is a small town, but they served over three hundred sit-down meals and sent out about two hundred, to seniors and shut-ins. I hadn’t realized that the fall supper organizers would send meals out; it must be a real boon to seniors’ residences and such. With difficulty, I held myself down to one piece of pumpkin pie, then almost weakened when a pretty girl waved a piece of lemon pie under my nose. Lemon pie has no calories, right? Anyway, I resisted.
I called Laurie this evening; she says they are down to about two hundred acres of oats left to combine. Yields and quality have been good. What a relief to get this year’s crop under cover! – they can’t realistically expect too many more good drying days.
