June 29 Where are we?

We are “dry camping” at the end of Lynnfield Road, 25 KM outside of St. Stephen. Geographical co-ordinates of 45deg 4′ 41″ N ; 67deg 3′ 51″ W.   If somebody were to set up a roller coaster from here to town, it would be quite the thrill ride. Some of the hills nearly make your stomach drop out when you clear the crest!

Google Maps “Live” version of the map.  Opens in  new page.

We are at the road end of a 300-meter driveway, that is more like an obstacle course, with deep potholes and huge puddles. This leads to the hunting cabin where the kidzz live. This is not the location where they are building their home, but the price is right for them right now till their place is livable. That is in Canoose, about 20 km by road, probably 5-7 km as the crow flies, on the next ridge over. Our new place is also about 20 km away by road, and maybe 15 km as the crow flies, on the next ridge in the other direction.

“Dry Camping” can be fun for a weekend, even fun for a week or so, but it is getting kind of “old”, making us look forward even more to our new place in July. When we first arrived, our trailer batteries ran out of power after 3 days of careful use. NEW golf cart batteries costing $400 and a couple of skinned knuckles for the pair, no less! But I guess that’s what they were designed for. A weekend or so. In the summer, when you don’t much use the furnace, they can last longer. The solar panel is old and gives them at best a trickle charge. So we drove to Fredericton and bought a generator at Home Depot. $1,000 for one that can pull up to 5700 watts steady and can put put up to 7500 surge watts. We use it a couple of hours a day, to run appliances as needed, and charge up our “toys”. Phones we can charge in the car. But you can’t really justify going for a drive just to charge up the old iPhone..

On hot days, we’ve even run the air conditioner in the trailer. Ahhh, now that’s roughing it! Not for long, just to cool it off a bit, because that really makes the generator use fuel quickly.

I have to haul water to the trailer on an almost daily basis, down the bumpy driveway in a wagon, 4 20-liter bottles at a time and pour them into the trailer’s fresh water tank. Grey water can be drained on site, it isn’t much of a hazard and doesn’t smell too bad either. We don’t use harsh chemicals. The highlight of my week is taking away the “black water” in a “tidy tank”, 25 gallons at a time and dumping it at a campground dumping site some 20 km from here. Right now, with my truck still in the body shop, I have to enlist Mitch and Christina’s help for this job.

Now the fridge situation is a whole different ball of wax. When we first bought this trailer, we discovered that the RV fridge was leaking ammonia. WHOOWHEE! What a stink! A replacement would cost about $1600, and even replacement coils cost $800! So I removed it and we bought a little bar fridge for $199.00 at London Drugs on sale. It stays kinda cool with the intermittent electricity. Can’t keep easily perishable stuff in it for long though. We’ve even given up on the plug-in cooler box too because it can drain the batteries on the trailer or even in the truck over night. It’s embarrassing you have to ask for a boost because you left the cooler in the truck to keep supper cold. As long as we were driving, it was great, we had frozen water. Mike’s Hard lemonade and beer turned into slushies! That was fun.

So now we buy supper for one day, or at most two days at a time. There is NO Cell service where we are, and we aren’t set up for internet either. Consequently, we HAVE to go into town annnyway to get our Internet fix every day -except weekends- at the public library. The nice ladies there are going to miss our smiling faces when we don’t come down every day any more. They were among the first people we met when we arrived here in town.

The kidzz have a landline with unlimited Canada-wide long distance. This is okay for now and then, and for emergencies, but we don’t want to abuse this either.

Now about an essential service (for us anyway) — Internet Access. In New Brunswick, the Provincial Government has decided to subsidize high speed internet access to all areas, especially rural. A company called Xplorenet is making this possible. They are setting up towers in a sort of grid pattern to allow for “fixed wireless” access. In areas where this is not done yet, they have set up satellite dish access. This has the disadvantage of having a distinct time lag. Weather conditions at either your location or at the base station can also affect the clarity of the signal,. so we’ve been told. We have already ordered the Fixed Wireless for our new place. Apparently, a new tower was set up on St. David Ridge just recently, “just in time” for our arrival! Th customer end of the system consists of a beige coloured box that contains the wireless antenna and a modem. It is mounted on the outside of the house and points toward the tower. Cable runs into the house and we hook up a wireless router to it, and Presto! We have High Speed Internet at home again! Can’t wait! I even brought our 0ld wireless G router along, but I want to get a Wireless N longer range router actually, so  we can mess online  around away from the house too.

All in good time.

UPDATE HOT OFF THE PRESSES

The home site is almost ready!  The well drillers are on site today.  The setup for the septic system will be done tomorrow, then the house pad can be finished.  Friday I am going to Quebec to get my truck back from the body shop, then Saturday we are moving the trailer over to our place!  When the house gets delivered, all we have to do is back the trailer out of the way for a short while till it is set into place, and we will be done!