Sunday, October 6 to Wednesday, October 16, 2013 (North Saanich, BC and Travel to Fort Langley, BC)

Well, not an awful lot to report...while we waited for the part for our 5th wheel slider to be delivered to Fraserway RV.  It finally arrived late afternoon on Friday, October 11 but, of course, it was the start of the Thanksgiving long weekend.  So with Monday (October 14) being a stat holiday, work wouldn't be done until Tuesday.

As usual, the week just flew by! Sunday we drove into Sidney and went for a walk along the waterfront.  It was an absolutely gorgeous day!  The Sidney waterfront is beautiful...

This is the Washington State Ferry that goes through the San Juan Island between Anacortes and Sidney...


 
The fishing pier that the town built...


Mt. Baker is visible all the way from Washington State...

 The Marina...

The fish market...



Monday we drove into Victoria to do a bunch of errands. We dropped the laptop off at Mother Computer's to have some maintenance done on it...stopped to pick up some replacement rivets for the ATV's, visited Steve's dad and stopped in to see the folks at Steve's old office.

Tuesday I had a nice long dental appointment...first a cleaning and then four small fillings...always pleasant, especially when he had to give me more freezing after he had started drilling...twice!

Wednesday, Steve went to the dentist for a cleaning and I went into Victoria to meet up with my "old" work buddies.  I had tried to get together with them all when I was here a couple of weeks ago but both Lynn and Delcie were away travelling...at least Gwen and I had enjoyed a nice lunch together.  Today, we were all able to get together and had a great time catching up.
Left to right...Lynn, Delcie, me and Gwen...

Thursday we did a little housecleaning in preparation for Angie and Conner's homecoming.  They arrived in Vancouver from Scotland last night and Rob went over to pick them up.  They were on the 1:00 ferry, arriving home just before 3:00.  Here's my boy...the picture is a little blurry because he was jumping so much...just so happy to be back in his jumper!


Saturday we met with fellow RVer's, Ray and Anne of  Love Your RV, for lunch at the Prairie Inn . They spent the summer at Oceanside RV Resort....the same park we lived at for 4 months when we first moved into our 5th wheel, before retiring.  Steve has been following their blog so thought since we were so close that it would be nice to meet them in person.


Monday morning we decided to get out for some exercise before getting ready to go to Steve's sister's place for Thanksgiving Dinner.  There is a really great trail system in the neighbourhood...







Monday afternoon we all stopped to see Steve's Dad on our way to dinner at Nadine and Mike's. We had a nice visit with him...such a proud Great-Grandpa!

Four generations....


We had a wonderful visit with family at Thanksgiving Dinner. Nadine and Mike put on quite a spread...turkey with all the trimmings!  Delicious!

This is a special family friend, Sylvia, along with her son, John and his wife, Veora...with Conner.  Would you believe Sylvia is 96 years young?

Tuesday morning, we met our good friends Rob and Nancy for breakfast...and had a wonderful visit.  It was almost noon by the time we left the restaurant!  The rest of the day was spent gathering all of our belongings and getting ready for our departure tomorrow.  Yes, our fifth-wheel is going to be ready for us...finally!

Here is Conner having his dinner....he is just too darned cute!  Such a happy little guy!

Rob cooked up a moose roast for dinner...delicious!

Mom holding Conner...all cuddly after his bath...

Before bed...and because we are leaving in the morning, mom and dad dressed Conner up in his Halloween costume...too cute!

Wednesday morning we were up early.  We are catching the 9:00 ferry back to the mainland which means we should leave the house shortly after 8:00.  Steve loaded our suitcases into the truck and after big hugs we said goodbye to Rob, Angie and Conner.  I'm already looking forward to seeing them in a couple of months when we fly back for Christmas.

That's the ferry we will be taking.  It's just arriving from the Vancouver...

A beautiful day for a ferry ride (or as Steve likes to tell me...he's taking me on a cruise...)

We passed another ferry heading to the island...

Going through Active Pass (Gulf Islands)...

A look at the outside deck...not many people sitting out here today, a bit too chilly...

We arrived at Fraserway RV in Abbotsford just before noon.  Our fifth-wheel was waiting for us...all sliders were still in, a very good sign!

I'll let Steve recap the slider issue...in the spring of 2011 and 2012 when returning to pick up our rig after being in storage for a few weeks we found the bedroom slider was out about 16". Hmmm...has somebody been operating their remote controller on their slides and it moved ours? Then this last spring while returning north to Canada Steve noticed that the bedroom slider had crept out a couple of inches while driving...Yikes! It now required us to stop every 1 1/2 hours to put the slider back in. We decided that on our way north we would return to Guaranty RV in Junction City, OR...they had done some maintenance for us after the RV-Dreams Fall Rally last year. They diagnosed a faulty hydraulic pump and of course didn't stock it so we decided to have it fixed when we returned to Canada. Prior to leaving on our Alaska trip we took it to Fraserway RV in Abbottsford. When I made the appointment I told them that I already had a diagnoses of a faulty pump. I was told that if they didn't do their own diagnoses that I would be responsible for the cost if that wasn't the problem. (We have an Extended Warranty for this) They also made the same diagnoses and, of course, didn't stock the pump. We were given a delivery of 4-6 weeks! That meant that we would have to cancel our trip to Alaska so we had them Air X it at our cost $453.00! When we returned to pick it up after the repairs we found that the slider had crept out about an inch...Geeeez! We were told that at this point there was nothing else that they could do so go on your trip to Alaska and they would deal with it when we returned. In the meantime Steve emailed Lippert the manufacturer of the system for their input and was it possible that the new pump was faulty. They said that that was unlikely and sent the following info for testing... Hydraulic Cylinder Test  During our trip north, we were having to stop every hour to put the slider in.

After many hours and 18 different pressure tests Fraserway RV diagnosed a faulty hydraulic ram in the large slide. Delivery again was 4-6 weeks! Steve explained to the girl in the service dept. that we paid $453.00 Air X for a hydraulic pump that your techs diagnosed as the fault and it made no difference, so in all fairness they should pick up Air X on this part. If we have to wait another 4-6 weeks that will put us into the possibility of dangerous snowy conditions heading south. She checked with the service manager and he said no to my request as they had too many hours into this job that wasn't covered by the extended warranty. Okay...no more "Mr. Nice Guy"...I'm going to the top. I placed a call to the general manager, however he was at an RV Show so his assistant said she would have the service manager call me. Anyway to make my long story short the part was expedited via ground within the week and our bill was $0.00. When we dropped the trailer off at Fraserway September 19 we expected two weeks to get the slider issue taken care of...it took four, so hopefully that is the end of our slider creep problem.

It was close to 2:00 when we pulled into our site (C-3) at Fort Camping, Brae Island Regional Park, Fort Langley...our "home away from home" spot.  Then the work began!  Steve unpacked the truck and I started on the inside.  Since the fridge was empty, I gave it a good scrubbing before turning it back on.  After unpacking the suitcases and getting our home all set up, we relaxed in the late afternoon sunshine with a beer...ahhhh....it's good to be home!












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