Friday, June 1, 2018 (Travel to Pineridge Golf and RV Resort, Seba Beach, AB)

It was a cloudy, cool, drizzly morning as we carried our stuff back out to the trailer. After big hugs, we said goodbye to Charlene...we had bid Ken farewell earlier as he had an appointment and had left earlier. Thanks to you both for all of your hospitality...it was great seeing you!

As I was in the driver's seat, following Steve's directions as I slowly pulled off the blocks, he gave me the ''stop!" signal. The trailer had become unhitched...don't know what that was all about but he was sure it was locked in when we re-hitched the other day. Obviously not.

After getting re-hitched, Steve did his usual check of the whole rig, and we pulled out of the boulevard, making our way down to the turn-around area (Cochrane Lake Trail is a dead-end road) and headed out to highway 22 north.

We zig-zagged on the country highways over to highway 2 at Airdrie, AB where we fuelled up with diesel at a Flying J truck stop....$1.33 per litre.

Alberta is a major oil producing province and these dot the landscape everywhere...

On our way north to Wabamun Lake, we decided to make a stop in Red Deer at Zone Defence so Steve could pick up a new replacement camera for the passenger door. It started to fog up a couple of years ago and finally gave up the ghost last year. We arrived there just before noon...a quick stop and we were on our way again.

We took highway 11 straight west to Sylvan Lake, then highway 20 north...I took a few pictures along the way. As you can see, we had heavy clouds with on and off rain along the way...

We eventually made our way up to Seba Beach on Wabamun Lake. Our destination was Pineridge Golf and RV Resort where our friends, Dave and Leslie, have an RV site. They are in Phase 3 of the development with access east of the main resort, so we drove past the resort entrance to highway 16 and then east for about a km to Range Road 55. Dave gave us directions as we neared the resort and  met us at the turnoff to their location and we followed them in.

Dave had arranged a site (#11) for us just two away from them. After big hugs, they left us to get backed into the site and set up. It was a bit of a challenge getting backed in due to the ditch drop-off on either side of the paved road...but we managed.

We started our usual set up routine...and that's when things went a little sideways. The inverter/charger panel started beeping at me, so I called Steve in. Apparently there were 3 internal fault codes.

After repeated attempts to reset/restart, it continued to have the internal fault codes. Steve spent the next hour or so on the phone with the Xantrex troubleshooting. With no success, they finally did a hard re-boot...which involved disconnecting the batteries and leaving it for a half hour. We still needed to register and pay for our site, so Dave and Leslie drove us over to the resort office to take care of that while we waited...and hoped that the reboot would solve the problem.

A half hour later, Steve was back on the phone with Xantrex following instructions for the reboot...well, it didn't work. Final outcome....our almost 8 year old inverter/charger was toast and needed to be replaced...no parts available so no repair! That meant we had absolutely no power in our rig as the internal transfer switch didn't work either. Geez...why couldn't this have happened when we were down south where we have friends in the solar business?! Rock chip in the windshield, busted bolt on the trailer jacks, and now this...that's 3 things...we hope we're done!

Feeling frustrated...we wandered over to Dave and Leslie's site with our chairs and drinks. Time to sit around the campfire and visit. Neighbours, Bert and Vera, from across the street also joined us. Left to right around the campfire...Dave, Vera, Bert, Steve and Leslie...

After a couple of hours around the fire, it was dinner time. In RV Dreamer's tradition Leslie and Dave had invited us travellers for dinner, so while they were putting the final touches on that, we went home to set up our propane heater (the night time temps are pretty chilly) and run an extension cord through the window too.
That will give us a little power to charge up our devices....glad we happened to have a power-bar!

With that taken care of, we returned to Leslie and Dave's and sat down for dinner...steak and roasted veggies...all perfectly done and delicious! Nothing better than Alberta beef! (looks like I've enjoyed a little too much wine LOL!) Thanks so much guys!

We're looking forward to spending the next few days with Dave and Leslie, seeing the area.