We move tomorrow. Even though our house is on wheels there is still a fair amount of work to get ready to go. Certainly not as involved as moving from one house to another. But not as simple as just turning the key and hitting the open road. Even less so when you have been planted for almost six months.

Let’s call it the creeping root syndrome. Because we were in one place for the past six months, we began to plant. We were able to spend time with family. We became very involved in our church. We made many new friends and really connected with our community. We even bought a complete outdoor sitting area for our site.

In a surprising way, it makes this moving day somewhat bittersweet. I am sad to go.

Winding up in Florida and bypassing the harsh and bitter cold of a Canadian winter is not a hardship. This is our site in Florida.

We are connected to the community down in Florida as well with family, friends and church. It’s hard to explain but there is a bit of a split life between living in Canada for six months and living in the United States for six months. There is an adjustment that takes place when you are saying good-bye to one place and hello to another.

Perhaps some of you can relate.

Almost ready to go.

We had to pack up the outdoor furnishings on our site. Because we are returning here next May, we can leave all of our outdoor furnishings on the site. To prepare them for the winter months, we needed to remove all of the soft material — cushions, umbrella, decorative elements — and put those items into storage. We needed to bring all of the furniture into a corner of the site, cover it with a large tarp and shrink wrap the contents to protect them from the elements.

There were numerous tasks to get the coach ready to move. Backwashing and regenerating the portable water softener before capping the inlets and the outlets. Now safely stored in a basement bay, ready for transport. Checking inflation. Inspecting all of the various systems of the coach. Re-organizing the basement bays for transport. Re-organizing the coach interior storage areas for transport. Updating the GPS system. Charging the tire pressure management system. Performing maintenance on the tow bar and car guard system.

You get the idea. Lots of things we had to do before embarking on a major trip with our motorhome.

The only system failure was yet another Oasis pump failure. I am really ticked off with the folks at ITR. They have wonderful people on the support desk but, in my view, they supplied defective pumps in their product and, rather than making it right, they let their units fail and they let their customers bear the cost and the inconvenience of resolving the issue.

We have three pumps in our Oasis system. Two of the three have been replaced. A few nights back, the temperatures dipped well below freezing. Our heat pumps cannot produce heat when the air gets that cold. The third pump failed when we called for the coach to provide hydronic heat. Fortunately it only impacted one zone in our coach. And fortunately we have in-floor radiant heat. We could get by.

But I am not changing out the pump here in Canada. I’ll wait until we get stateside and do it then. I’d rather do that job where it is warm.

The forecast for the rest of the month we are in Canada is looking fine. No sub-zero temperatures in the forecast.

The jacks go up tomorrow morning. By the afternoon we will be setting up camp near the border. We will cross into the United States on November 1st.

Fall. In Canada, fall and winter can share very similar weather patterns. Come to think of it, so can spring. Our weather takes a predictable turn towards the end of September. You can feel it. The nights are colder. You can see it. The days get shorter. And, when you have to take out a winter coat to walk the dog, it hits you.

Almost time to go.

This is the weather forecast for the week:

Friday evening looks like a winner. We will drop from 26 Celsius (roughly 80 Fahrenheit) today to 1 Celsius (roughly 34 Fahrenheit) in a matter of a few days.

We will sometimes see some warmer weather in October. But generally, October is the month that Canadians begin to pull out their toques (a toque is what Canadians call a knit cap head cover, often the last defence against our freezing weather).

We begin our trek south in three weeks. We will leave our current site on October 23rd and park the coach near the U.S. border until we cross over on November 1st.

The long-range forecast for where we will be staying at the end of October is not all that encouraging:

Snow is always a possibility. When we were there last year, we were surprised at just how cold it was for that time of year. Temperatures were well below historical averages. Perhaps the weather might be a bit milder this time around.

There is always hope.

Plus 1.