Thursday, April 13, 2017

Ready to head into Canada tomorrow for an appointment....


Our Location: Frost Ridge Campground, Le Roy, NY

A very cool night, bordering on down right cold but it's warming up quickly this morning. We started life this morning right around the freezing mark, I'm sure it was below just before dawn but I didn't get up and look at the temps but it was one degree above the freezing  mark when I did look after the sun came up. It was already up to 44F/6.6C around 9:30 am when I went outside to set up the propane heater. The high today is forecast to be about 55F/12.7C, however there is the ever present wind to contend with as well. Without the wind it would be wonderful!!

Dad called this morning around 7 am interrupting my reading but that's okay. ~laugh~ Always nice to chat with Dad. He was curious about our appointment tomorrow and it being Good Friday he thought it wouldn't be going ahead. I assured him I was pretty certain it would but that I'd check just in case. It seems everyone is off up on the Island for the 'long' weekend, which led to the call. Much appreciated is the concern!!

A short time later I heard Riley moving around and decided it was time to get up as well. We discussed Poppa's phone call, and what we needed to do today as well as dinner plans. I immediately sat down with my computer and began planning things for next week as it seems like we'll still be here for at least some of it.

View from the top row standing on the west side looking east

I placed a call to St. Joseph's Hospital Diagnostic Imaging Unit in Hamilton, Ontario to confirm Riley's appointment for tomorrow Friday, April 14, 2017. They confirmed the office is open for business tomorrow as usual. One down, many more to go. ~laugh~ 

I next called to cancel my eye appointment for next Thursday, Riley needs to have an appointment in the fall this year as well so either we'll find a new eye doctor up north and do this during the summer, or we'll rebook for the fall in Hamilton, we'll decide that later. 

Next I called the Dentist, to see about rescheduling our Wednesday appointments to the following week. MaryAnne didn't have anything available but we left it with her and hopefully she'll work her magic to get us moved around. I have changed appointments when ever asked due to someone needing to change theirs for whatever reason, and so I'm sure MaryAnne will do her best to help us out. The office staff is one of the reasons we truly like going to our dentist, we love Dr. Larry as well but since he's sold his practice to Dr. Laura it's not quite the same but it's still the staff that makes all the difference. Dr. Larry works part time and so we may get lucky and see him on our visit. 

Same location looking directly east

From there I worked on a rental car for us for today-tomorrow and Monday-Tuesday next week. Enterprise comes to pick you up and drop you off if you rent a car from them which works out fine for me. I'd rather not leave the Dogsled in a lot where it can get banged up although that may be the case on Monday as I'm not sure I can have the car back by quitting time of 6 pm. My appointment is for 2:45 pm but that's cutting it close with having a border to cross in there. So either I pay for an extra day or I drop it off and drive myself home which means I need to leave the Dogsled. They have no customer parking in Batavia and I'll have to leave the Dog on the street over night. However I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. 

A number of calls came back to me that there were no cars available at that location, I tried 2 others with the same result, and the last one said they couldn't come pick me up either and they had no where to leave my truck but she would go thru her returns to see if they had a car.  I started looking around for something different like at the Rochester Airport where I could leave the Dogsled in fenced parking at least. Just as I was settling into my work the phone rang, the girl had made an error, they will indeed pick me up at 4 pm today, they guarantee me a car as well. Next week's appointment will be fine as most of their vehicles will be returned after the weekend. The parking issue for that rental is still there but I"ll worry about it later. 

I went out about 9:30 am to hook up the propane heater and found the air to be nice, not warm enough to sit outside but it might be this afternoon if the wind dies down. If I even had someway to block the wind it would be nice but as you know a house on wheels is pretty open underneath. ~laugh~ Just the right height for a great wind to blow up your pant leg and cause you to shiver uncontrollably. ~laugh~ 

Office/lodge are housed in this building, we're parked to the left of it in the first spot.

Didn't take long for the place to warm up enough to shut off the propane heater, less than an hour in fact. Of course the electric is also going but it's just not able to keep up. I think there are too many doorways and both bathroom are tucked around walls so that they don't ever truly warm up greatly until August. The heater claims to heat up 600- 800 sq feet but I don't think it lives up to it's claim since we are less than 300 sq feet. They probably mean ONE room where as we  have few rooms. Oh well, we manage. 

Bright sunny day today, the grass is greening up as well. I might head out for a stroll in a bit just to kind of get out and move around. A pick up at 4 pm with Enterprise means I'll be back sometime around 5:30 pm I think. Tomorrow we want to be out of here around 6:15 am to make it for Riley's 9:30 am appointment in downtown Hamilton. It's about an hour to the border which will put us there around 7:15 am, even at a half hour to cross that's 7:45 am, an hour to Hamilton will around 9 am with a half hour to park and get inside. I doubt it will take us 30 minutes to cross but who knows. After that coming back won't matter we can be back anytime before 3 pm. We have a couple of things to do while in Hamilton including picking up two prescriptions for me and stopping at the storage locker. 

A quick email to Laura at Southern Chevrolet netted me the information that the paper work was approved on April 7th and has been sitting waiting for printing and mailing since then. They are closed tomorrow and probably Monday due to Easter so I have no idea what to expect next week.

Looking across Conlon Road from the park

Riley is staying home while I go with the Enterprise folks. She's informed me that she's not a child. ~laugh~ True is I was hoping she would stay home and have some time to herself. We get along well but some days it's nice to just have our own space for a while.

We took a bit of a stroll around the campground but it's too wet and too cold to go far. About 6 or 7 minutes and we were done. ~laugh~ We're such wusses when it comes to cold.

Enterprise called me at 4 pm to say the fella would be a half hour late which was fine with me. A white van pulled in about 4:20 pm and Pete the driver  was friendly and knowledgeable about the area, answering lots of my questions and telling me about the small city of Batavia.

See the buds on one of the gnarly trees in the park?

Arriving at Enterprise in Batavia I waited in line for Steven to handle my paperwork and show me the car. I left within 20 minutes of arriving at the office. A Chevy Sonic is what we're driving tomorrow, black, four door and I had him check the trunk just in case someone left luggage in there and I didn't want to find out at the border. Now there is wine in the trunk. ~laugh~ MINE, I put it there but at least the trunk holds something. I needed to move my cushion from the Dogsled to the rental as I have a hard time seeing over the dash, the seat is so LOW, I swear my ass was dragging on the ground and my knees were up around my ears. Now you know that's quite a feat for me, so you can imagine how LOW the damn seat is.

Reading until about 6:30 pm I finally realized I needed to start dinner. We had sausage patties on toasted English Muffins, steamed veggies (green beans, mushrooms, carrots, butter beans, corn, asparagus) and mashed potatoes with dill. Cooked inside of course, and even though it was good, it just wasn't as good as if we cook on the BBQ. We're both looking forward to getting somewhere out of the wind so we can BBQ again.

Finished up dinner with some peaches and even though they are canned, they are good. Of course I love peaches and so I would think they were great anyway. ~laugh~ Finished the dishes and cleaned up before my phone rang, it was Dad calling to see how things were going here. I explained everything I know about the next week and hopefully that helps to ease his stress level. I personally am not going to worry about it, it'll happen when it happens and I've done all I can do except wait.

Sign at the entrance of the park

After that we both showered so we're ready for the morning to just do our morning necessaries and hit the road. I've got our passports, Canadian money, keys to the storage unit, address of appointment, e-reader and everything else I can think of that we need. We're as ready as we're ever going to be. ~laugh~

After that we headed off in our own direction, Riley to do whatever she does and me to pen my thoughts in this blog. I hope you've enjoyed your visit, thanks for stopping by, feel free to leave a comment. Until next time...be safe, take care....



No comments:

Post a Comment