Back where we belong

We left home last Sunday planning to spend the week in Saskatoon followed by the weekend in Waskesiu.  That plan almost came off the rails when the fridge in the fifth wheel packed it in at the start of the trip.  Many years ago now Al Dahl told me that I could revive an absorption fridge by whacking the coils and taking it for a drive.  I whacked it vigorously and, while we never actually took it for a drive, I have to believe that the newer fridges maybe don’t respond the way Al led me to expect. 

Youtube showed me how to replace the cooling unit in the fridge and it looked more or less doable.  But at a significant cost.  A new fridge is not cheap and the cooling coil replacement was going to end up costing over half the cost of a new fridge.  When I combined the relatively minor cost saving with the fact that there was no 100% dead certain guarantee that replacing the cooling unit was going to fix the problem, it seemed logical to replace the entire fridge.  So that’s what we did.  Carl at Mr. RV ordered one late on Monday and it arrived early Thursday morning.  Removing the old one and replacing it took less than an hour.  The new one took a while to get cold but its working like a charm now.  I still have to rehang the doors because – of course – they open the wrong way and the new doors came with blank panels so we’ll need to fit the decorative wood trim from the old fridge to the new doors.  I’m not going to try fitting the wood panels until we get back to Buchanan but I’ll likely change the door swings tomorrow.

The fridge incident temporarily made us consider not going to Waskesiu.  When I was thinking that I might replace the cooling unit it made sense to go back to Buchanan while we waited for the new cooling unit to arrive.  Once we decided to replace the entire fridge then we were able to put Waskesiu back on the agenda.  Big thanks to Doug and Jo for the use of their freezer.  Marilyn had stuffed the freezer in the fifth wheel with meat before we left Buchanan.  Its all back in the freezer now, none the worse for its detour through the Barmby freezer.

Tonight we had supper in site C5 in the trailer park at Waskesiu.  I guess they call it Red Deer now.  We’ve spent a lot of time up here over the years in various RVs.  When the kids were small we liked to stay in Beaver Glen which is more rustic.  The sites over there include fire pits which was a big deal when the kids were smaller.  There’s a few of the sites in Beaver Glen have water and sewer but most of them are completely unserviced.  The ones over here in the trailer park are less scenic but fully serviced. 

After supper we rode our bikes into town, bought tea at the store and then sat in the big chairs in front of the store watching the world go by.  There was a little thunder storm late in the afternoon but by early evening the lake was dead calm.  We can’t really remember when the last time was that we were up here but it sure feels good to be back.