Saturday, April 11th

A busy day for us.  Marg has been suffering from some nasty allergy symptoms, but we still managed to have a busy day.  We started out with a group from the rv park with the park managers [Curtis & Aggie] for her famous sticky buns.  They were delicious and it was my first time to enjoy them, although Marg had been previously.  There was a large group, about 20 people from the park invited.  As expected the most often asked question was - when are you leaving?  It seems that within 10 days there will only be the permanent residents and the odd casual camper left in the park.
  After we went out to Costco as we needed some things to take home and fuel.  I was amazed to see how the people traffic in the store has slowed down from the prior month.  We picked up a nice bottle of Irish whisky and other less essential stuff.  LOL.  The price of fuel was pretty good, it has come down a bit in the last week, a trend we hope to see continued for the next week.  On the way back to our place we stopped at Sonic for a hot dog and sundae for lunch.  We have coupons for these in our book and every year we use them this way.  They were 2 for 1, so our combined lunch was about $5.50 and it is actually pretty good.
  After we got back I bbq'd some steaks.  This is the time in our stay down here that we are trying to use up what is in our fridge & freezer.  Marg had a package of steaks out when we were invited to join some other folks for a dinner where Mavis was cooking some chicken from hers.  To allow us some free time in the afternoon, Marg made it into a Swiss steak [one of my fav's] and put it in the slow cooker.
  This gave us time to do some more running around.  Went out for water, then over to Ace hardware, well Bells for Marg.  Marg picked up a few things and I got some glue traps to leave in the place.  When we close it up we close off the vents and drains to try and keep pests out, but also put glue traps down.  They will usually catch any critters that get past the vent barriers; things like spiders and what not.  We also contacted a pest spray applicator to spray the exterior.  This is mainly for: ants, spiders, roaches, scorpions, etc.  They spray next week, then August and December.  It's something almost everyone does so that pest don't get established.
  There were 4 couples for supper, so just a nice sized group and the food was excellent.  One of the other couples is leaving Monday, us Tuesday, the third on Wednesday and the hosts within a week or two.  A common theme here is that people leave to accommodate other events in their lives, usually family.  We had the Swiss steak, mashed potatoes, fried chicken, potato salad and then a slice of cherry pie.  There was also sherbet that Doris had made and left for us, so it was difficult to resist.
  We were pretty full, but still had another engagement.  It was off to the Smith's for rhubarb pie that Bob had made.  They had about a dozen people and we were just about the last to arrive.  Fortunately they still had pie and a nice vanilla ice cream.  Well we were full before, but now were at our maximum.  Had a nice visit with the folks there, good people.  They were watching a 500 mile nascar race and the guys were really in to it.  I had to confess that we don't really see a lot of it on tv at home, so was unfamiliar with the drivers, the strategies or much else about it.
  Got home finally to kick back and chill-ax.  Marg was outside and was chatting some folks where she heard that one of our neighbours is not well.  Really nice guy, so we hope it will work out.
  Yes we are making firm plans on our departure from the valley of the sun.  We should leave Tuesday morning and if our normal routine works out, we should cross the US border at Sweetgrass/Coutts on Thursday and home on Friday.  The weather is mostly looking pretty good, although we may have rain/snow around Salt Lake City Wednesday and rain from Edm to GP on Friday.  Towing the trailer will slow us down a bit & the weather is always changeable, so we'll see.