enchantless

Our property is no longer enchanted, at least where ticks are involved :-(

With shorter and warmer winters the ticks have been slowly moving into the area - at Kirsten's, just an hour away, the ticks are thick and it's not a surprise to pick one off a dog even though they have tick protection. Here at home though… I've seen one in all our years of living here… until a few days ago… Carm got in from cutting the grass with a little bugger just latching onto his leg. I got it off him right away so no chance to spread Lyme (we hope), but I've got it saved in a bag just in case.

And now we are fully in tick land… we arrived at the Ti Rally just before 1pm yesterday after an uneventful drive. Even the 401 was okay with hardly any traffic. I stretched the preparations out over a week so there was no stressful last push, in fact, even the last minute fridge stuff was loaded on Wednesday so it was an easy morning with just the tires to check before we hitched up. Oh sure, there were little odds and sods, but there was enough time to relax with coffee and have a good breakfast.

The dogs were excited and a bit energetic on their leashes for the first walk around the lake loop, the second time out was better, this morning was great, and this afternoon in the heat was even better. However we didn't pass any other dogs this morning - that is our challenge with Lupa! She did stand around with another dog yesterday without making a fuss so I take that as a win! Neither dog has had any training or even leash work since last summer at Kirsten's and I don't feel that walking down their road is much of a challenge - there are rarely other dogs.

Of course it's great to be here after pretty much missing two years! The crowd has thinned noticably and there are only 2 titaniums so far - there used to be close to 40! Most people have traded in - some for class-B’s (easier for travelling), some for giant new trailers, and some for smaller more mobile units. The last year titaniums were built was 2010 (which is when ours was built) so they have pretty much aged out. Ours is still in pretty good shape but we do have some delamination (a leak in the wall) and it needs a really good cleaning. I hope it will be our villetta for many years yet!

We took a chance this morning and left the dogs locked in the bedroom while we ventured out for some retail therapy! Carm scored a nice summer shirt and another golf shirt. Oh, and some badly needed sandals. I got a totally unneeded bathing suit! Well, not totally unneeded 😉 I'll wear it on our November DR vacation! We might have to make one more trip to the outlet centre to check out the Laura store :-)

Last night everyone went to Raxx for ribs - I stayed behind as I wasn't sure about leaving the dogs just yet. Tonight I joined everyone at Raxx (again!) for their banger steak special! It seems to me that they have an excellent wing night on another night…. who knows, maybe all the food I packed will stay uneaten!

Awesome!

“getting here in one piece!”

“spending time in the villetta”

“visiting with everyone”

“a beautiful morning walk”

“giant flock of Canada Geese with dozens of little babies”