ORDERED US A COMBINED CANADIAN/AMERICAN FLAG TODAY

AUTUMN SUMAC LEAVES IN OUR FRONT YARD

Cold enough for us to have our coats on this morning walking the forest trail.  And, with the heavy dew every night now we generally end up with some pretty wet shoes & paws. Cut down a couple small trees in the back yard today as I continue my revamping project. We slipped down to see Uncle Harry in Mitchell & he's doing fine. Nice big white fluffy clouds in a blue sun filled sky made for a scenic drive in the country there & back. Re-planted some Bamboo grass & that was about it. Sure nice to have cooler air to work in.

AMANITA MUSHROOMS ……ALSO IN OUR FRONT YARD
Back in 2009 I had it in the back of my mind to try my hand at designing a Bayfield Bunch logo. Just a little something we could put on a piece of paper or card to exchange with fellow RV'ers on the road. It would save having to scramble for a pen & piece of paper to scrawl email addresses or websites on. Started out by going to Clip-Art sites on the internet & trying to find drawings of cactus, trees, a motorhome, etc. Found some pictures but couldn't quite figure out how to join & size them together so gave up after a bit & decided to have a go at drawing the logo myself. 

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I remembered Microsoft's Paint program, so with mouse in hand & a bunch of patience (yes, I once had a lot of that patience stuff) I began figuring out the program tools, brushes, lines, pointers, pencil markers, colors, erasers, text & whatever else it had in it's little bag of tricks. Designed myself a basic logo, posted it in the blog asking for any suggestions from readers & with those returning suggestions I made a few small changes & the logo was ready to be printed. With the help of Kelly's Son Ben, who owns his own Graphic sign business, we had ourselves a thousand cards printed. Of course that was way too many so we still have a stack of them here at home. But, we have handed a fair few cards out over the past 3 years too.

OF COURSE MAX, CHECKERS & CORA ARE GONE NOW & OUR EMAIL ADDY AT THE BOTTOM HAS CHANGED
In MIKE'S post last week I saw a photo of a flag I liked. We are flag flyers & while boondocking I generally fly both a Canadian & American flag. I fly both flags on the same pole & it's always a bit of a chore each morning crawling to the top of our rigs ladder & getting our flag pole into place all the while trying to stay untangled from the two large flags blowing in the wind trying their best to knock me off the ladder. In the evening I crawl up there & take them down again. Going to be much easier with just one flag & I do like how both the American & Canadian flags are together.  We ordered our flag today from the EBay site linked below.

I COPIED THIS PHOTO FROM MIKE’S BLOG SHOWING THE NEW FLAG DESIGN, ALL IN ONE >>>

In Mike's words...... “I couldn’t help but think about this Flag a lot yesterday. Since 9/11 is always a day to remember and one that none of us will ever forget, it is great to see a flag that designates Peace between two countries. We have so many, many Canadian friends and I wish we could enjoy a relationship with all countries that is as friendly as the one with our great neighbors to the North”.
Link for flag... COMBINED USA & CANADA FLAG.  Also an EBay link…COMBINED FLAG ON EBAY.

<<< THIS IS HOW WE HAVE BEEN FLYING OUR 2 FLAGS

Gotta be real careful about where & how you fly your flags though. It's a touchy subject to a lot of folks. We used to just fly our Canadian flag but twice back in 08 I was hastily approached by 2 separate irate American RV'ers telling me I could not do that. It was an insult to their country. Not wanting to be the sole reason for having our 2 great countries go to war over a flag issue I did a little research on etiquette. Well, that opened up a whole can of worms as people on RV NET FORUM well know. Anyway, to make a long flag story short & keep peace between our two great Countries, we now fly our Canadian flag underneath the American flag when traveling south of the border. Of course, with this new flag design now, I’m hoping all problems will be readily eliminated. 

AWWWW COME ON MOM, WHEN’S IT MY TURN TO TALK ON THE PHONE

Judy, over at TRAVELS WITH EMMA had what sounded like an un-fixable problem with her used 75-300mm camera lens.  Wisely deciding on not spending money on repairs, she set herself up with a brand spanking new Canon Camera & telephoto lens.  This now gives her two cameral bodies & she can carry her telephoto lens on one camera & her wide angle lens on the other camera.  No need to keep switching lenses back & forth anymore.  I did the same thing a few years ago when I purchased a second Nikon camera body.  My 18-55mm wide angle zoom rides on my Nikon D90 & my 75-300mm telephoto rides on my Nikon D40.  I noticed early on in our travels there was a lot of fine grain dust blowing about in the southwest deserts & changing lenses back & forth a lot was only asking for a ‘dust on the sensors’ problem.  Also, for nature photography which both Judy & I enjoy, speed is of the essence many times when photographing birds or animals.  No time to be changing lenses.  When hiking, I always carry both my cameras.  Yes, there is a substantial weight thing with a couple DSLR’s plus lenses hanging around one’s neck & shoulders but small price to pay for quality & creativity, not to mention the sheer enjoyment of photography when using the right kind of camera & lens for the best possible results:)) 

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And, welcome to our latest Blog Followers, FULLTIME RVERS. Thanks for dropping by folks. With a bit of luck we should be on the road next month by this time.

GROANER'S CORNER:(( Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet he suffered from bad breath.This in turn made him a....."super-calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis."
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