Over the years we have done a lot of stupid things. Mistakes happen. However, sometimes there are mistakes that happen that you cannot be prepared for. You always hear about things and think to yourself, “That could never happen to us.” Well, that is what we thought and hopefully, these never happen to you! These are our top 10 newbie RV mistakes.

1. First septic hose hookup

When we hooked up our septic hose for the first time we had not clicked it over to the locked position. This misalignment ended up being catastrophic. The hose popped off sending goodness everywhere. To make matters worse, when we went to push the valve back in it broke off in my hand. There was still enough sticking out so that we could shut off the flow. this was not the start to camping that we were expecting. A smarter person may have stopped right then and there, but we powered on.

2. Melting our electrical plug

Now, this was Carma’s fault. Generally, Carma is the one doing the cooking and she had the air on, and then she turned on the microwave. And that’s usually a no-no.

That usually blows the breaker in our camper. Yes, we probably have some electrical issues with that. However, in this case, for whatever reason, I think our plug was an aftermarket plug and the hot and the neutral, must have been touching, and the plug warmed up and melted together. But yeah, because usually it just blows the breaker right away it has not been an issue before.

We have since upgraded our electrical plug on the RV.

3. Switch on the Truck

Number three, switch on the truck. We can’t talk about that. We’re going to push that to the end because that was the stupidest thing that Richard has ever done as far as it comes to an RV.

4. Dumping out winterized fluid

Okay. This is also Richard’s fault. Up here in Canada. It gets stupid cold and we have to put antifreeze in our lines during the winter so they don’t break. Otherwise, if any water gets trapped in there, then it freezes solid.

So what Richard had done is open up your drain valves and you let out all the water, and then he pumped in the winter ice fluids. He forgot to close the valves. And so He pumped all of the winterizing fluid through the system and straight back out onto the street.

5. First time unhooking the camper… well trying to

The camping site hasn’t really changed that much since we came here the first time because this site is still horribly unlevel. But when we tried to hook up here our camper must have been slightly over to the driver’s side. So it was very much tilted.

And then over here where the truck was it was tilted the other way. So we sort of had this cockeyed situation going on and that’s why we couldn’t unhook. But we have since learned from that mistake and found a couple of tricks, such as unhooking the top portion of our hitch if things are super out of wack.

6. Driving through residential Saskatoon, SK.

Well, we were already late because of other reasons and our plan of cooking our supper at the campsite was not looking good. We were hungry and needed supper. So we said, “Let’s just grab McDonald’s and keep going”.

But of course, the only McDonald’s we find is on their ring road. It is the perimeter of this city, but it really was in the middle of a chaotic city and was not easy to deal with. We like to scope out locations ahead of time on Google Maps, in satellite mode. Then we look for large parking lots, semis, RVs, and basically areas that we can park in as we’re traveling.

In this situation, we had found such a parking lot. Yeah, it looked fairly open. However, once we got there, the whole place is under construction. The big parking lot now had two more box stores going up, so we just parked in the middle of it with our camper, and Carma ran in to get food.

However, the only way to get out of there was to actually drive through a big residential area in Saskatoon, where I’m sure that an RV has never gone before. We were cutting through some pretty narrow spaces, but we made it. No injuries to report.

7. No proper tools for a tire change

If you are new to driving, you don’t have the experience of changing a tire. You should do so ahead of time. Take the time, to figure it out. Do it in your driveway. We had it all planned out as to how this is going to go down. And once we actually got on the road and were stuck on the side of the highway with a flat tire, well, it wasn’t even flat.

It was a low tire. One thing we did do right, though, was that our tire pressure monitor told us that a tire was going flat. We use an EEZTire-TPMS that saved us a couple of times.

We’ve been stuck on the side of the road, but we didn’t have any issues because we had the warning ahead of time to actually stop and pull over. But then you couldn’t deal with it on your own.

So everything we had didn’t work. We had a plug-in compressor and it didn’t work because it wasn’t long enough and it wasn’t working with the plug-in. We didn’t have a proper jack to deal with it anyways because our RV is so high off the ground and when a tire goes low, it’s actually quite the process to take care of that and our camper doesn’t have anything on it to deal with that.

So the next day we went out and bought a portable compressor, and we bought a two-tonne bottle jack, which allows us to easily lift up and change tires now. And that’s been a lifesaver.

8. Not watching the weather

And because of that, our awning almost got ripped off in a storm. So we were camping at Rivers, Manitoba, and we woke up to this crazy, whipping sound like the wind was just howling and our awning was starting to flap and we were actually legitimately scared.

Usually, were not scared of storms, but we were scared. Richard ran out and quickly tried to put the awning in. But our awning isn’t always very friendly at all. Our awning sucks if you’re an awning company. If you make beautiful awnings, would you like to sponsor us? Because ours is horrible.

Richard ran outside in whatever he was wearing and it was raining and hailing and lightning like crazy. We thought that he was going to get struck by lightning, but he quickly just brought it in so that it was a foot away from the camper, but it was no longer like whipping up and down.

And so now we keep a close eye on the weather, specifically the wind speed.

9. Almost lighting our camper on fire

The previous owner must not have used the gas ever because it turns out there is so much crap inside the water heater that when we turned on the gas for the first time, it lit on fire and it was spewing like black smoke up the side. We had scorch marks on the side of the camper and so we ended up having to completely clean all of the garbage out of the water header.

So we ended up cleaning it out completely, and it works fine now, but that first time, it was a little exciting

10. Truck issues

One time coming back home from a friend, camping at a friend’s. Our truck was giving some trouble. And the only way to get home without, stalling or not being able to start it up again, we had to hold the brake.

So every time we stopped, we didn’t put it out of gear. We kept it in gear. Call it stupidity. Call it what? But this is more of a camping experience most people don’t get to have.

This is not a mistake because there was no other option on the transmission. It’s an electric transmission and when you get moisture into the switch, it goes into the safety mode where if you put it in to drive, it remains in neutral and you actually can’t drive the truck. And so we left our friend’s house. It had been wet and we don’t know how it got moisture in there, but it happened. And so we ended up on the side of the road a couple of miles from their house.

We had stopped. Richard had put the truck into park to try and reset the error code that was showing. Could not drive anywhere. So we sat there for half an hour. Long enough that we were all happy.

Once we got the truck going again we said let’s just drive all the way home. If anyone has to go to the bathroom, we’ll pull over and not take it out of drive and hold the brake.

And we did that. We even stop for supper. We stopped for supper and we stopped for fuel at a card lock and we never turned the truck off and never took it out of drive. But then when we parked at home, we unloaded. We were then able to start it again. We since have a different truck.

Our biggest mistake in my mind to date

This mistake is the biggest because it is the simplest. Nothing went wrong. It was 100% our fault and we spent two, three, and three days fixing it.

As we were leaving Yorkton on our way out to Jasper the truck had no power. We could barely get up to 80kmph. So we booked a campsite in Yorkton and spent the night. With the camper unhooked we had full power or so it seemed. The next day we hooked up again and took off.

Still the same issue. So with our camper in tow, we went 60kmph all the way from Yorkton to Melville to a transmission specialist there. he could not find the issue. So we dropped the camper there and went back to the farm to grab another truck that we could use.

So what was the issue? What was the big mistake?

Somehow we had switched on the high idle.

The only thing that we can think of is that somehow when I thought I was switching on the fuel, I actually switched on the high idle. So one thing about this truck, when we were driving it a while ago, we’re not driving it right now. But the issue that happened, is that we have two switches on the dash.

So the top one is actually the high idle switch. And the bottom one is for the auxiliary fuel tank. And so it has a beautiful auxiliary fuel tank on the back and we can hold a lot more fuel, which is awesome. However, what happened is that we accidentally switched the wrong one. So then when you have the high idle on, you’re actually not able to drive at top speed, you’re not able to pull.

And that was the whole problem. Richard switched the wrong switch and that’s why we ended up spending a couple of days driving around in the wrong location. It still bugs me to this day that it’s such a stupid mistake, but it’s such a little easy mistake to make. So I don’t think you should.

It’s such a great story now.

So what are your RV stupid mistakes?

Leave us in the comments below your best and most favorite stories because we love to hear them.

RV decals can be annoying. Sometimes you want a clean slate and other times you simply want to remove all that annoying dealer stickers. In our case, we wanted to add some of our own decals and they were going to go where all the Jayco Eagle words were. Removing these decals was actually a lot easier than I thought.

I understand that results may vary based on your rig, the type of outer shell, etc. So it is important to understand our situation as it may be a different experience for you. If you do remove decals from your RV make sure to leave a comment below.

What worked for you?
What result were you able to achieve?

We have a 2005 Jayco Eagle with a fiberglass outer shell. Our rig has been mostly outside and the sides have been baked by the sun. This is important to know as I am sure that if our rig was kept inside the walls would be brighter and decals would come off easier.

Decal removal #1.

The first decal that we removed was from the side. The previous owner had their name on the side and we wanted to remove it. To take this one off we used a combination of a heat gun and a razor edge. This combination worked pretty well. It was time-consuming and required you to be quite careful so as not to nick the camper shell.

After removing the decal we were left with a sticky residue that we then used goo be gone on the residue, however, it didn’t want to remove it. Finally, once it had some time to dry, we went back with a razor edge again and were able to scrape off the residue and we had a clean surface.

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Decal removal #2

The other option we have tried is a Wonder Wheel. You can find it on Amazon here – https://amzn.to/3QOBAYH This is basically an eraser at the end of a drill. I recommend using a corded drill as this is a great way to burn out your battery-powered drill.

By using the Wonder Wheel it is very easy to remove the decal. It does get a little hot and can be hard on the arms when you are removing larger decals. Once you are done you will end up with a lot of rubber residue that you can wipe off. This is the same as what you would get when you erase something on a piece of paper and you have little eraser bits on the page.

We did find that the wheel did leave what looked like burn marks on the side of the camper. This was temporary though and vanished shortly thereafter.

The result of this method was very good. In our case, we still had a hint of the decal when you look at the camper from various angles. We were not concerned about this as we were covering it up with our own decal later on.

This result could be due to the fact that the shell was protected by the decal and we are looking at the original shine of the camper, or it was because there was still a layer of the decal still there. Perhaps the original sticky layer. It is really hard to tell.

Our result in the end though is that the decal has been removed by both methods. You will have to experiment with what works best on your rig.

If you have tried something else please let us know in the comments below as we would love to hear about new and better methods for removing decals from your RV.

When the weather gets cold and temperatures dip below freezing, you have to take steps to protect your RV. Ensuring that you properly winterize my RV is essential to protecting it from damage over the winter months.

Here are the steps that we take to not only protect our RV from the cold weather but also from the different things that can happen while your RV is in storage.

Steps to Properly Winterize My RV

Please note that all RVs are different. This is the process we use for our RV. Yours may have different features and require different techniques than described in this video. If you have any questions about your situation please leave a comment below.

Before you begin.

Please take every step to ensure your safety.

• Be aware of the power you are hooked up to and any implications that may have.
• Disconnect from water sources.
• Ensure your water pump is off.
• Ensure your water heater is turned off and has cooled down.

Tools you may need.

• RV Antifreeze – we use 10L
• Crescent Wrench
• Flashlight
• siphoning kit if your RV does not have one
• water heater bypass kit if you do not have one

Okay, let’s get started on how to properly winterize my RV.

1. Drain your wastewater tanks.

Wastewater tanks can get very nasty if they are left full during the winter. Not only can they produce and grow a lot of ugly bacteria, they can also freeze and expand putting pressure on your tank, and potentially damaging it. Once you have drained your black and grey water tanks, a recommended further step is to flush your black water tank out and treat it with a black tank cleaner.

2. Drain your freshwater tank(s).

Don’t forget about your fresh water tank. Leaving the fresh water tank full over the winter would have catastrophic consequences. Locate the low point drain for your fresh water tank and completely empty it.

Our rule is that we open it up when we begin this process. Then once we are done we will go back and close it. On the off chance that a bug wants to make it home over the winter, we would rather keep them from setting up with our fresh water.

If your freshwater tank is drained, there is no reason to put antifreeze in this tank. It is also a pain in the butt to flush out if you ever do, so we choose to not put anything in our fresh water tank for the winter.

3. Open your low point drains.

Your plumbing system should have a low-point drain. If it does not then you will want to use the compressed air version of winterizing. Open up all the faucets in your RV and then open up the low point drains underneath to allow the water to drain out of your system.

4. Open your hot water tank plug.

As the system is draining you can locate your water heater. On the side of the water heater is a plastic plug.

IMPORTANT: Ensure that your water heater has been turned off and has had enough time to cool down. Draining a heated tank can be dangerous and could result in burns.

Important stuff acknowledged, remove the plastic plug to drain your hot water tank. I don’t put the plug back in, but keep it in a safe spot until spring so that the tank can continue to dry over the winter and there is zero chance of water expansion.

5. Close your low point drain.

Now that we have the water drained we will want to close all of our faucets and the low point drains, including your freshwater, once they are done draining. This is an important step, otherwise, you will pump your antifreeze out onto the ground.

6. Enable by-pass for the hot water tank.

Your hot water tank should have an inlet and an outlet. On these lines, there should be a valve to prevent the antifreeze from entering the hot water tank. There will also be another line that will bypass the hot water tank and on this line, there will also be a valve.

By opening the bypass valve and closing both of the lines into the hot water tank we will ensure the winterizing process will bypass the hot water tank.

7. Prep your antifreeze hookup to your pump and close off fresh water.

Under our kitchen drawers (your location may be different) are a siphon hose and valves. We will shut the first valve so that the pump will not draw from the freshwater tank. We will open the second valve so that the pump will draw from the siphon hose. If your RV is not equipped with a siphon hose you will have to install one.

I choose to use a 10L jug of antifreeze as then I can winterize the entire RV with one jug and I don’t have to switch. Open the jug and place the siphon hose in the jug all the way to the bottom.

8. Turn on the pump and open the kitchen faucet

You should have closed all your faucets and low-point drains. If you missed that step, this is your reminder.

Turn on your pump so that the lines will be pressurized from the winterization antifreeze.

I choose to open the kitchen faucet first as this is the longest run in our camper and will get the antifreeze throughout the RV the quickest.

Turn on the cold water in your kitchen faucet. After the antifreeze is coming out of the tap, switch to the hot water line and wait for that line to turn pink.

9. Open/close other faucets in sequence

Once the kitchen is done work through the rest of the RV winterizing the lines in sequence. Only open one line at a time to ensure good use of your RV antifreeze.

10. Ensure you check other water outlets

Make sure you don’t forget about other items in your RV, such as outside showers, ice makers, and other such lines depending on the setup of your RV.

Other items to consider during winterization

Mouse Proof your RV

When your RV is sitting there is a greater chance for mice and rodents to make their way into the RV. Watch our video on how to mouse-proof your RV to ensure you are protected over the winter months.

Clean pantries and cupboards to remove leftover food

This is further along the lines of mice, but leftover food will also attract insects so we want to ensure we are not inviting everyone in for the winter when we are not living in the RV.

Wipe down your fridge and leave open

One of the worst things is forgetting your RV fridge. If you leave residue in the fridge and forget it closed it will quickly fill with mold. This is the worst thing to deal with in the spring. Make sure your fridge/freezer is wiped down and propped open to ensure airflow during the winter.

Vacuum, especially in corners

RV Life is crazy and we drop bits of food everywhere. A quick vacuum will get rid of those last bits of treats, giving unwanted guests no reason to hang out.

Hide all paper products

We choose to hide all our paper products. This is more of a preventative measure. If a mouse did get in they would love to play with all that toilet paper. Since it is not the cheapest, we want to hide it away on a top shelf so they cannot tear it apart.

Disconnect batteries and/or remove them

There is no reason to have your batteries connected when in storage. We use a quick disconnect on our batteries that allows us to quickly disconnect the battery in the off-season. If we ever do need power in the winter we can quickly reconnect.

Double check tire pressure

By ensuring your tire pressure is correct you will ensure that the tires are not getting beat up over the winter. A low tire in the fall will go even lower as the temperatures plummet. This will cause your rig, especially if it is larger, to sit weird on the tire for the next 5 months. You may not notice the damage until the next year as your driving down the road.

These are the steps and items that we consider when we properly winterize my RV each year. Your steps might be different due to the type of RV that you have.

Have a question or idea that you would add to our list? Make sure to leave a comment below, we would love to hear from you.

Today, we’re doing something weird and strange. We’re sick of the way that our rims look, they look rusty. And I’m sure you could do this a million different ways. However, we’re just going to do it the super cheap way and spray paint them.

Here are our existing wheels right now. You can see they are lovely. But this week, let’s get these all cleaned up. So our process is going to be pretty simple. We’re going to take the wire brush on the grill and do a little grinding away on the wheels, just to remove some of the base rust, sort of scratch it up a bit, give the spray paint something to adhere to, and also debating what to do with these metal pieces here.

For this project we used Rust-Oleum Universal Enamel Spray Paint which you can find here – https://amzn.to/3TfUhG2

The center hubs, I think we’re going to wash them up and we’re actually going to spray paint them a different color.

What you could do if you were to do this properly is you could actually take the tires off of the RV and it would be much easier.

You wouldn’t have all this taping and stuff to do if you wanted to do it really well. Well, then you would take the tire off the rim and you would sandblast everything and powder coated and it would be absolutely beautiful.

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However, during the redneck version here, staying on the camper, we’re going to put some tape around everything spray-painted up. It’s going to look beautiful and we won’t have to worry about it. And I really don’t want to take the tires off the camper.

So now the coroner has done a fantastic job of taping this all up. We’re going to go ahead and do our first Premiere spray paint, and see how this works. Either way, it’s not going to look worse than what it did.

Now we finally get to reveal the secret color. But here it is. Drum roll, please. Bang, bang. It’s the same black as we spray-painted things inside, but I think it’s going to look pretty cool. I feel like the wheels look so good that they and now it makes the campus a little blue.

Now, what do we do with the rest of our camper now that our wheels look awesome? Well, hopefully, that inspires you to get working on your camper wheels. We want to see them if you’ve done anything fantastic. Leave us a note in the comment below.

Are you ready to renovate your RV? Like a home, it can turn into a big project, but the rewards are well worth it. We are so excited to have our renovation completed. It is so much brighter than it used to be and gives us a sense of being in our own space, instead of being in another camper. We were able to put our own touch on things.

There are so many things to learn when you are renovating a camper for the first time. Here are some things that we have learned and some tricks that will make your renovation so much easier.

1. Research your camper.

Take some time to learn about your RV before you start. Learn what it is made of. Does it have aluminum studs on the wall? What are the walls made of? How thick are they? What kind of flooring do you have? What is everything made of that you want to remove?

With these details in place, you will be able to make quicker, smarter decisions, with fewer regrets.

2. Make up a gameplan

Our renovation started because there was a rotten section in the back that needed to be replaced. This meant a bunk had to come out. From there we began to pick at trim, windows, and flooring until our couple of things turned into a full-blown reno.

I would not recommend doing that. Even creating a napkin drawing of what you want to do will allow you to have a budget, and timeline and to keep on task with your goals. Or you can wing it, lol. We did.

3. Choose the right paint.

It is so easy to go out and buy the same paint you would use in your house and not even think about it. However, there is a better way.

We have found that this is the best paint combination for our walls and cabinets.

First, clean and sand the walls. The purpose of the sanding is to scratch any gloss finish that might be on the wall so your primer can really grab hold of the wall.

Second, paint with 123 Bullseye primer. This primer is great and creates a nice base coat for the top coats to stick to. It also dries quite quickly allowing you more time to get back at it.

Third, apply your top coat. For this, we ended up using cabinet paint for everything. Cabinet paint is more durable and scratch resistant. Exactly what we need in our tiny home.

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4. Don’t forget about the lights

One of the biggest changes was our lighting. Upgrading everything to LED lights was great for power saving, but it also had the side effect of being much brighter.

Our old lights used standard RV bulbs and would fall apart sometimes on bumpy trips. The new lights remain in place and don’t have extra parts to fall off.

Now when we turn on the lights we have ample brightness. For the couple fixtures that we did not change we installed LED bulbs which have many of the same benefits, with the added benefit of not having to change out the fixture.

5. Change things up

I think this was the biggest hurdle that we faced. Whenever we would look at things in our camper that we wanted to change we would always have the conversation. “What if we sell it someday?” “We should keep that in case we sell it someday!”

Finally, we came to the realization that this is our camper. We own it. We can make it into whatever WE want and need it to be. If it ever does come to a place where we want to sell it will be the perfect fit for another family.

It was after this moment that we began to make the rv our own.

First, we removed the fourth bunk in the back. We only needed three beds in the back and the fourth could then be used for extra storage and gave the kids more floor space in the back.

Second, we removed our dining benches. Removing the bench seats and installing an L bench allowed us to have a lot more room and more storage space.

Third, we replaced the flooring. The real reason all the flooring was replaced, (Which took a full week, mostly in prep work) was because of the carpet in the slide. It was disgusting. So we pulled it up and started on the rest of the floor. In the end, we installed a floating vinyl planking. This flooring works well, but it needs room to breathe or it will come apart at the seams.

Forth, we removed our shower doors and sliding closet mirrors. There were minor things that bugged us about each of these elements. I know, there are some very good things about them, but really the annoying parts caused us to rip them out.

The shower door was starting to fall apart. It also seemed like an afterthought and never really fit right. So when you slid the door shut it would drop down a little. Then you had to pick it up to slide it over and the kids, especially when they were younger, could not operate the shower door. It also had all these grooves in the tracks that were impossible to keep clean.

We were also very surprised when we ripped it out and how heavy it actually was. I bet that door was at least fifty pounds. The new curtain is mounted about a foot higher so we don’t bang our heads on it and anyone can operate them.

The bedroom mirror had clips on the side that would break from time to time. It also had the issue that everything had to fit into the closet. If you can a shirt in the way you could not close the door. Now with our new curtains, there is a lot more room around the bed and you can access the entire closet at once.

The fifth change that we will mention is the curtains. The valences were very outdated, so we ripped all those off and replaced them with curtains. The only place we kept them was in the bedroom because they keep the room so much darker. We did recover them though so that they are new and bright. No more dark teal green lol.

Renovations are very exciting and I can keep going and talk about replacing the slide covers with stained boards, the backsplash with sticky tiles, the stainless steel behind the stove, and the many other upgrades that have made this space our own.

We hope that you are inspired to start your own renovation project and we would love to hear about it. Let us know below the project that you are working on, or what you would love to work on. I am sure it is going to be awesome.

Make sure to upload a story on social media of your reno and tag us in it (@ourcrazyrv), we want to see your creativity.

This of course was a fun video to make. Who doesn’t like eating?! Our family loves to have campfires, even in the middle of winter, the kids will ask to make a campfire out in the backyard and once the fire is blazing they usually break out the marshmallows or ask if we have a jiffy pop on hand! HAHA! This time we had to prepare a little ahead of time for our treats, but once we had everything bought it was so simple to put it all together.

1. Waffle Cone S’mores

Ingredients and supplies: * Waffles Cones * Marshmallows (small work better) *chocolate chips or bars *other yummy toppings of your choice *tinfoil

Instructions: Pack marshmallows and chocolate and other toppings into the waffle cone and gently wrap in tinfoil. Put on hot coals for a few mins turning a few times. Unwrap and enjoy s’more goodness in a cone!

2. Strawberry S’mores

Ingredients and supplies: * Clean strawberries (works better when you cut the green stem off) * Marshmallow fluff *Chocolate sauce *Roasting sticks

Instructions: Dip your strawberry into the fluff and then stick it on your roasting stick. Brown the fluff over the fire and then top with a little chocolate sauce! So delicious!

3. Bannock

For anyone who has never heard of Bannock – it’s a quick bread made without yeast. In Canada, the history of bannock comes from the Indigenous First Nations.

Ingredients and supplies:

4 cups all-purpose flour
2 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 ½-2 cups warm water

Roasting sticks, Nutella, jam or butter for toppings or hotdogs.

Instructions:

In a large bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

Make a well in the middle of the flour mixture and pour in the water, then stir just until combined.

Form dough around a roasting stick and cook slowly over hot coals. Or form dough around hotdogs and cook slowly on a roasting stick over hot coals.

4. Pizza Pies

Ingredients/supplies: * tube of biscuit dough, *pizza sauce, * pepperoni or ham, *cheese, *other pizza toppings of your choice, *tinfoil, *spray oil, *pie iron.

Instructions: Cut tinfoil into the appropriate size to cover the pie iron. Spray with oil. Take one piece of biscuit dough and flatten it to make a larger circle. Add toppings. Take another piece of dough and place it on top and press the edges together. Fold tin foil over the pizza and place it into the pie iron. Place the iron into hot coals. About 5 mins each side. Flipping more than once to avoid burning. What a great meal idea around the campsite!

5. Campfire Pie

Ingredients/supplies: *tube of a crescent roll dough, *pie filling, * tinfoil, *spray oil, *pie iron

Instructions: Cut tinfoil into the appropriate size to cover the pie iron. Spray with oil. Make one square of dough that is about the size of your pie iron. But a few spoonfuls of pie filling on the dough. Take a second piece of dough and place it on top and press the edges together. Fold tin foil over the pie and place it into the pie iron. Place the iron into hot coals. About 5 mins each side. Flipping more than once to avoid burning. Enjoy a great little dessert after your pizza!

What can we say, we love animals. What better place to find animals than at the zoo. The zoo we grew up with has been the Winnipeg Zoo. With hundred of different animals and lots to do we certainly enjoy it. 

Take a look at our latest videos that gives a little glimpse of the zoo and the types of animals that are there. 

One of the highlights is the seals and polar bears. With their unique enclosure it allows you to have a view of them swimming or walking throughout their space. It is definately something unique that we have not seen in other zoos. The seals we have seen a number of times, but not the polar bears like that. 

Is it worth the stop? We would say yes. Like any zoo you have to time it right to miss large crowds, wasp season and all those fun things. 

One of the highlights of this particular visit was the geese that walked past us. So funny that they would not walk overtop of the grate. 🙂 

What is your favorite zoo? Let us know in the comments below. 

This past year we had the opportunity to go and spend a weekend at our friends cabin on Lake Manitoba. Now Lake Manitoba is huge, so this was specifically on the West side up past cell phone reception :). So it had to be a non work weekend, which was nice, but different for me. 

The weekend was very relaxing with lots to do including paddle boarding, which we had never had the opportunity to do before. The kids absolutely loved it and inspired us to buy our own paddleboards to add to our RV as we travelled around. 

Now I (Richard), grew up on Lake Manitoba so the lake itself is not new to me, however this lake is so large I had never been to this portion of it. Although it is very much the same, it is a whole new experience. The kids also had a blast going tubing. 

One evening we also got our fishing rods out and although there was nothing big to catch by the dock there were tons of little perch that would chase the hooks in and made it a lot of fun. Braeden also caught a nice size perch, but for the life of me I have been unable to track down the footage of his fish, although I know we have it somewhere.