Anyway, apparently they have cancelled Spring in Alberta in addition to the rest of the issues we are all facing. We are running at least 10 degrees C below normal, both day and night temperatures. What this means for us RV'ers that have no other home to move into is that we are constantly fighting the elements.
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| Large icicle hanging from the slide. |
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| Bunny tracks in the glistening snow. |
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| I shoveled out my fire pit one day only to watch the blowing snow bury it again two days later! |
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| Pretty patterns in the snow. That's one of my shrubs that looks like a lump in the background. |
One morning we awoke to no hot water. Nothing would come out of the taps. Great, a frozen water line. This shouldn't have come as a surprise as we had experienced overnight lows of -23C (-10F). I placed an electric heater in the basement and aimed the heat toward the plumbing pipes. It took a while but we had hot water running a bit later that day. Yay! The end of our issues, right? Nope.
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| Yes, it was -23 C (-10 F) one morning. A wind chill as well. |
A few days later it was time to dump our black and grey tanks. We had purposely held off until they were pretty full hoping the outside temperatures would increase. It finally got to the freezing mark so time to dump. I pulled on the remote valve handles and......nothing. Froze solid. I had been running the tank heaters for the last few days and had added RV antifreeze to all the tanks a few days earlier as well. Still, the handles wouldn't budge. I should have known better. Even with insulated under belly and tank heaters most trailers just can't handle those really cold temperatures for long. I hadn't put any skirting around the trailer, but the weather was supposed to be getting much warmer......at least that's what the weather guy kept saying. He lied!!
So now we are in trouble. The waste tanks are full and you really can't live in an RV without a place to put your waste water. Our 14 day quarantine was over so I jumped in the truck and headed to town to pick up some tarps and heaters from my sons. We nearly froze putting them up. Duct tape doesn't stick in the cold but we managed to seal off the underside around the tanks. I had a thermometer under the trailer and it was only a short time before the temperature was rising. I left the heater running all night and by later the next day the valves were free and waste water was flowing!! I was never so happy to watch poop running down a hose!! (sorry, no picture!!lol)
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| A temporary skirting measure to help keep the heat under the holding tanks. |
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| Not pretty but it worked. |
The tanks are now running freely, the water lines are warm, we're insulated reasonably well and we have plenty of propane. We're good......I hope. The weather liar is now changing his mind and there is general agreement between the weather sources that we'll be at least 10 degrees C below normal for the next two weeks. We likely won't be much above freezing during the day so Spring is definitely delayed. So are my outdoor projects.
I made a grocery run to the town of Lacombe yesterday. It's about 20 km (12 miles) east of us. It was the first time I had been into a grocery store since we got back to Canada. I wasn't sure just what to expect but was pleased with the behavior of shoppers. The store had placed one-way markers on the floor to help avoid meeting other shoppers in the aisles. Mostly everyone followed arrows. I saw a few times that shoppers would stop at the end of an aisle or just go the other way if the aisle had more than a couple of people in it. Only one time did I see small children with their mother and only a couple times where there were more than one person shopping together. The cashiers were excellent. If there were more than a couple of customers waiting to check out they opened another lane. All were protected by plexi-glass of course. Other than hand soap the shelves were reasonably well stocked. We won't starve.
I see quite a few folks wearing some sort of mask. I didn't have one. Our health experts are now advising that we should begin using one and recommend even a homemade one of cloth. It got me to thinking that I might be able to re-purpose some old underwear and cover my head with that. It might not be too effective at keeping my germs in place but it would certainly keep folks away from me!
I got a couple nice shots of the latest super moon yesterday. Apparently this one is called the 'pink moon'. I'm thinking please don't tell me the moon has some sort of virus! Actually it has nothing to do with the color but that it occurs in the spring where in some parts of the world it is timed with the blossoming of flowers. Obviously NOT in Alberta!
Hopefully it is spring where you are. I've been checking on most of you. Looks nice in Southern Ontario and BC, Mississippi, Texas, Arizona and Nevada. Even South Dakota. I checked in with my Cedar Creek buddies today. Their long-planned trip to Alaska is now off. Virgil is enjoying 80 F weather in Indiana and George is watching the RV'ers disappear in Quartzsite. Apparently the water well at LaPosa South is running low so folks are heading out to other areas.
Wherever you are, please be safe!
.......and that was Our View From Here!
