Camping in a Parking Lot...
/… is better with Friends!
June 3 - 5, 2021
After a number of false starts, we were finally able to travel to Can Am RV in London, Ontario to have some work done on Holly. Our first appointment was in early May and we had coordinated the appointment to camp at the Pinery - a Provincial Park we’d never been to - with my sister and brother-in-law. From the Pinery, we were going to meet up with two other families at Sandbanks to celebrate their new Airstreams! So much fun! Until our province announced a stay at home order and the advisory was to not travel for non-essential reasons. We rescheduled our appointment for May 31st, but the stay at home order was still in effect, so we changed our date one more time and were finally able to make the trip at the beginning of June. The upside of this delay was that we were able to make our appointment for the same days that our friends were headed to London to pick up their new (to them) Airstream!
As usual, we aimed to leave earlier than we actually left. Partly because Chris had to take care of a few things at work and partly because… procrastination. With Holly sitting in our driveway for more than 6 weeks, you’d think everything would have been ready weeks earlier, but I’m a girl who likes (needs?) a deadline to get her moving!
Our friends left about 30 minutes before us (but they weren’t pulling a trailer). We met up with them at a gas station/Tim Hortons a few hours later, where they were on their way out after stopping for a bite to eat and we were on our way in. After over a year of limited social interaction, running into them at the gas station (hours away from home, when they live two blocks from us!) and seeing them in real life, left us all a little giddy. Or maybe that was just the anticipation of picking up their new Airstream and all of us being able to hang out for a few days in a parking lot.
The drive was pretty uneventful. We took highway 7 and then hooked up with the 407 toll highway all the way to Burlington. It costs a little more to take the 407, but it’s definitely worth it! There’s far less traffic and no slow downs like you get on the 401. We did go a little out of our way to stop by and see my younger sister and her family for a quick porch visit in Burlington, as they’re planning a move back to Calgary later in the summer.
Our friends went direct to Can Am RV and arrived in time to get a quick orientation on their new Airstream before all of the staff went home. We ordered Swiss Chalet for dinner and arrived at Can Am while our friends were out picking up the dinner order. It was perfect timing because it gave us a few minutes to set Holly up and then to leave a bottle of Champagne at their door. We all enjoyed a toast and some delicious bubbly when they returned!
We sat out for a while, enjoying some normalcy of visiting with friends. The bugs started to make an appearance when the sun was disappearing, so we got our our new Thermacell to try… and it worked! It took a few minutes to start up, but once it did we weren’t bothered by bugs at all!
Despite buying a new mattress during the off season, sleep didn’t come easily. Holly was backed up to the front of the shop, right where there’s a floodlight that shines into our bedroom! We should have plugged in and run the A/C, but we don’t normally use the A/C and hadn’t considered this as an option until it was quite late. We left the window open and fan on, so slept with the bright light coming in our window. Silly us.
Holly on her way to the garage for a new solar panel!
Morning came early and we were up in plenty enough time to walk Daisy, make some coffee and breakfast, unhitch and get organized, before they came to take Holly to the service bays to install her solar panel and take care of a few things that we needed fixed.
Along with our new solar panel, we were having issues with black soot coming from the hot water tank, so they took a look at that. They also recommended that we have the seals on our windows redone.
Chris took meetings from the car, while I sat outside, checked out the shop, used their wifi and chatted with our friends, when they weren’t occupied. It was a pretty relaxing morning for me. Chris finished his meetings and we went off to Springbank Park, the home of Storybook Gardens (when we passed by, I realized it was the same place I’d been to when I was just a toddler!). Daisy got a long walk and we picked up lunch on our way back. Our sandwiches from The Village Pantry were so good!
Daisy and sue at Storybook gardens (which wasn’t open)
Daisy chasing rocks by the water - her favourite thing to do!
The technicians finished working on Holly just after we ate our lunch and brought her back for us to use. Chris continued working and I puttered around enjoying the sunshine. Later in the afternoon when our friends were doing their outdoor orientation, they let me listen in and I learned a few new things! They went into the showroom to go through the hitching part of the orientation and to also sort out why their A/C wasn’t working correctly. It turns out there was a bird’s nest up there! Andy (Can Am’s owner) ended up on top of their Airstream cleaning out the bird’s nest (much to our amazement!). I suppose when you’re the owner, no task is too small! The best part was that you could tell that he truly loved being up there to remove the nest (don’t worry, no baby birds were hurt in this process!).
With orientation complete, our friends took their new towing combo for a spin and we picked up pizza from Pasto’s Grill at the Best Western just down the road. It was delicious! The whole experience felt pretty glorious. The four of us sat outside chatting, have a cold drink and eating our dinner under a gorgeous blue sky with a warm sun. It was quite perfect, after another winter of isolation and stay at home orders.
There were three other couples staying the night at Can Am with us:
A young couple who were very new to Canada and were buying their Airstream to live in. We actually met them briefly when on our first night. They were staying at Can Am for a few weeks while they waited for campgrounds to open up. They had a fun energy and decided to hitch up and go for a drive in the evening after all of the Can Am staff had gone home. We quickly realized that Chris and I were the most experienced with hitching (yikes!) and helped them out a bit when they had an issue.
Another couple who was getting closer to retirement and was buying their Airstream to get out more often. We chatted with them quite a bit and gave them the pizza recommendation for dinner (which they did!).
A third retired couple, who we didn’t really see much of, since they were staying on the other side of the fence, were trading up to a 30 ft Airstream after many years in smaller ones. I think this was their third Airstream!
After dinner, we took Daisy for a short walk up the highway to see the sunset and managed to get some pretty photos of the view. It felt so relaxing and calm. Again, we were able to sit out in the parking lot with our drinks and snacks, watching the sunset for a while longer until we were all pretty exhausted and called it a day.
Sleep was still a bit elusive as the temperature was quite warm and we didn’t start out with the A/C on (although this time we were plugged in to the 30 amp plug). I woke up in the middle of the night to put it on and there’s nothing like trying to remember how to properly turn on the A/C until when you’re half asleep and haven’t used it since your first season! Although it’s loud, it did manage to cool us down and the “white noise” was helpful for sleeping:)
Enjoying breakfast and coffee while watching the comings and goings in the Can am rv parking lot!
With a long drive ahead of us, we had planned to try to leave mid-morning, but there were still a few wrinkles to iron out and Can Am is a BUSY place on a Saturday morning! We wanted to be sure that our hitch was still set up optimally, so we waited to see Andy. Eventually, both he and Kirk came by, made a very small adjustment and gave us the all-ok.
When we picked up our Airstream a few years ago, we never had the opportunity to meet Andy or Kirk as one of their daughters was getting married that weekend. While we met Andy at the RV Show in Ottawa in early 2020, we had never met Kirk. It was great to finally meet them!
We eventually managed to set off just before noon, feeling good about getting everything done that we needed.
We were travelled back to Ottawa with our friends, so we opted to take the 407 toll highway as it’s quite a bit less busy than the 401. We stopped to fill up both our gas tanks and our coffee cups at an Enroute with a Starbucks before the exit to the 407. The drive was smooth, sunny and extremely uneventful and we were able to continue all the way to Napanee, where we stopped at the Flying J to dump our tanks and grab some dinner from the Denny’s there.
At the dump station
Parking lot dinner!
After a few more hours on the road, we arrived home just before 8 pm, backed into our driveway and unhitched, all before it was fully dark. Thank goodness for the extra daylight at this time of the year!
A few days after our return, we had one of those OOPS moments that nobody wants to have with their Airstream. For three seasons, we’ve parked our Holly in the same spot in our driveway and we’ve placed our basketball net in front of her, so that it was still accessible for the teens to play with and so that we could still park our car on the other side of the driveway. We did this again on our return from Can Am, but it was the beginning of the season and while the net SEEMED stable at the time, in hindsight, we should have placed something more on the base to better weigh it down. At lunch time later in the week a huge gust of wind came up and blew the basketball net onto our Holly (insert crying mamma here!). So, now she has, what one might call, a good teenage “pimple” on her forehead. I guess we’ll be back to Can Am in the fall to get her fixed! Since the net wasn’t actually being used very much, it went up on kijiji and we sold it the next week!
So sad!
Ottawa - Burlington - London - Ottawa
Towing: 1232 km
Driving: 24 km
Battery: Plugged in at Can Am RV most of the time
Fresh Water Tank: We used our fresh water tank and never felt it was going to run out, but even if it did, we would have been able to top up at Can Am.
Combined Grey/Black Water Tank: A little more than half full. We dumped at the Flying J so that we could also flush our tank and because our friends wanted to learn how to dump (and what better way to learn than to dump with friends?!).
