Meeting Point

June 3, 2009
Calgary, AB

On Monday, we made the short trip east from Banff to the home of John and Kristine Fraser, just on the west side of Calgary, not far off TC-1. We "met" initially online on the Monaco Coach Yahoo Groups, and met "live" at some of the rallies over the years and Quartzsite in 2007. Since the Bahnsons (Rod and Jean) and Reas (Bob and Marlene) were already planning to meet there to start the trip north, we asked if we could "tag along".

We had a great visit. John and Kristine have a wonderful property, and the dogs were able to get their exercise. On Monday night, the ladies made a Costco run, so Geri picked up a whole beef tenderloin that was turned into Filet Mignon pretty quickly. Potatoes were baked and mushrooms sauteed, pasta salad and veggies were whipped up, and the Jello with fresh strawberries for dessert was just what we needed to "fill in the cracks".

On Tuesday while most people went off for touristy things, I spent the day fussing with the furnace. It started showing a "low coolant" fault intermittently last week. The nice thing about temporary problems is that they have a way of becoming permanent. The nice thing about this one is that there's an easy bypass for the float switch in the tank when it fails. I added the right jumper wire to the control board and the fault cleared. Before you do that, you need to make sure you actually don't have low coolant in the boiler, of course (we didn't) - and that's when the trouble really started. The boiler uses a standard automotive radiator cap, and after I checked the tank level it wouldn't seal. It's hard to get to, buried in one of the bays, and tough to get leverage to push and turn the cap at the same time. I finally got it off, and John was kind enough to take me to the local auto parts store for a replacement. 2 minutes later, all fixed. Day shot, but all fixed.

Merlin was a bit protective (OK, he was a downright pain in the you-know-where) with their Rottie, Elvis. Elvis was very patient, and within a day or so, he and Elvis were getting along - as long as there weren't any humans he needed to protect.


Tuesday night, we carpooled to a local Chinese restaurant where we had the "special dinner for eight", which meant enough food (only one substitution, please) for about 12 people. Everything was tasty and there were still two "people bags" to go home.

Today, we're heading to a small town called Drumheller, about two hours east of Calgary. I know, we're supposed to be heading north, but this place has some touristy stuff that was calling. More later...