Pressing Pause In Ottawa While Kitty Kitty Bang Bang Gets A Facelift

Posts have been more sparse because we decided to stand still in Ottawa for a while. It’s been a great time to catch our breath and regroup, reconnect with friends and family, and to make some much-needed upgrades to the truck. We watched the seasons shift from summer into fall. We also celebrated our 5-year anniversary, hard to believe!

After a couple of catch-ups with old friends (thanks guys, it was great to see each of you!), we settled into our little covid pod of one of my dearest friends, aka sister from another mister, her beautiful family, and of course my mom.

Plus, this allowed the beautiful friendship between Georgia and Xiao Meow to grow and thrive:

We were able to park on their streets, no problem, and catch the wifi. But I noticed that boondocking wasn’t the issue we worried it might be in Ottawa. I’m sure that’s in no small part to covid, I just don’t think that these days they’re as strictly enforcing the 6 hour parking rule.

And when we found ourselves missing the pace of the road and needed to change up the scenery a bit, one of our favorite getaway spots was by Britannia Beach, which used to be my old stomping ground when I lived nearby there. Water, greenery, the bike path, the sunsets, free wifi (we cracked someone’s code, and the moral of the story is maybe don’t put “guest” as your password to “guest network”?), and ample grounds for Xiao Meow’s nighttime walks all made it the ideal spot.

We encountered a woman from the neighborhood we regularly parked in, she’d taken an interest in us. She first flagged us down in the middle of Carling Ave on a Friday as we were leaving, to advise us on where specifically to park when we came back. Nice lady, she used to live in Vancouver too, by the Drive. And one night we got a loud knock on the door and thought, “Is this going to be our first knock from the local authorities?” But no, it was just our lady Jennifer. She just wanted to chat. Turns out that this neighborhood at Britannia has their own FB page, and we've apparently made an appearance there and have been the talk! Lol, hashtagLeoRisingLife.

And we found the perfect, secluded nearby nook to tie up our hammock and picnic:

Mom even became that night our first guest to crash on our couch, lol.

We also spent some time on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River, camping out in Gatineau Park for a few days. It’s so beautiful over there, and we secured a spot in the visitors parking lot and pretty much camped out there for several days. Which meant more moonlit walks for little Xiao.

And our mornings and afternoons were spent taking in all of the scenery:

And Mom came over and joined us for a hike:

We wrapped up our time in Gatineau with a hike around Pink Lake. It’s a meromictic lake, meaning that it was once more or less a big hole pothole in the sea floor that eventually rose above sea level. Its high rims protect the lake from the winds and other elements, so there’s very little mixing of water in the lake and consequently virtually no oxygen at the bottom. An abundance of algae gives it that otherworldly, turquoise color. It’s a stunner!

And we stopped for a dinner break on our way back at a tiny ile in the middle of the river:

We made a second jaunt to Quebec to explore the Hull area:

And found the holy grail - beer at a Canadian Costco! (And some of my favorite Quebec beer, to boot.)

And Mom also treated us to a lunch at Chelsea’s own L’Oree Du Bois, which can only be described as perfection. We didn’t capture our meal, but this is how we felt afterwards:

And of course, we enjoyed the looks we’d get in the truck. And elderly neighbor by my mother's place especially loved to make staring us down from behind his screen door into a sport. He pulled a Homer Simpson in the bush (gaping at us from his porch and then silently backing away into the darkness of his house when I waved) while creepily staring at our truck. These here hills (and porches and windows) have eyes. At least we were more dignified than some of the other denizens of the street - some guy passed out all night in the car behind our truck. With a Betty Boop air freshener waving from the windshield. Like Shane said, "What the hell is going on with this neighborhood?"

Other than that, the end of summer was spent enjoying outdoors, family, and whipping up concoctions in Kitty Kitty Bang Bang’s kitchen:

And always a reminder of what strange times we currently inhabit:

As we meandered out of summer and into autumn, it was time to focus on truck renos. We started by taking advantage of the seasonal sales at Canadian Tire and picked up a couple more solar panels for our roof. The extra panels will give us enough of a power boost so that we can truly boondock for ten to fourteen days without having to charge up.

We also picked up some paint to start to jazz up our decor with. First we coated everything with a latex primer, including what is turning into our shower wall and the area behind the stove in preparation for our stick-on tiles:

Supervisor kitty on duty:

Shane and Xiaozhang take a break and talk shop:

We used metallic silver for our bulkhead trim, from a Canadian company called Colorantic. It’s chalk-based, nontoxic and environmentally friendly:

We added turquoise to our cupboards and shelving:

And added an accent by our clothing storage:

Then we added our metallic peel-and-stick tiles that ordered online to our stove backsplash:

We also added a new frame to our ceiling vent over the stove. And then it was time to tackle the shower wall. We’ve had a working shower throughout, with a shower head that’s been able to spout running, hot water over the course of our trip. The problem is that we hadn’t yet taken the time to figure out how we wanted to waterproof the wall and create a shower curtain track. (And taking our showers in secluded forest areas just isn't going to cut it in the cold weather.) The first problem was deciding on what to use as the waterproof layer: Kerdi-Board, DensShield, and a concrete board (and an additional $95 on a gallon of RedGard as the waterproofing membrane for those last two) were all options. We probably would have gone with the Kerdi-Board if we were going to be tiling our shower wall. But because we decided to go with an FRP (Fiberglass Reinforced Panel) in lieu of tiles, and also wanted something lightweight, we took the advice of the incredibly knowledgeable guy working at Home Depot and went with Foamular Extruded Polystyrene Rigid Insulation. It’s light as styrofoam but it’s also water-resistant and blocks mildew and rot. So we found a parking lot by some baseball fields that happened to be under construction, and we got to work. We cut the Foamular up and glued it to our plywood wall:

Shane also created some makeshift framing to hold the foam in place overnight:

Our next hurdle was to figure out which of the many available shower walls to use. Acrylic is very nice but also very pricey. We had ventured nearly an hour away to an rv repair business that sold parts. We met the owner and told him what we were doing, and he then showed us around. He pulled out some sheets of material and told us that this is what we’re looking for. Great, we agreed that we’d come back for those once we had our waterproof layer up. But when we did go back, one of the employees broke the news that that panel the owner insisted was the right one should actually never touch water. And they only had a couple of samples left of what we needed. Which sent us back to the drawing board. Not going to lie, by this point we really started to hit a wall with the shower wall - even running out of gas (again! I think we underestimated the extra clicks that all of the city driving had eaten up) on the way to this rv repair store that shall not be named.

After a subsequent binge that night on copious amounts of red wine, we re-strategized and Shane and I were researching from our computers. Ultimately, we decided on the FRP panel (it’s the least expensive material of the options we looked at, waterproof and easy to install). And Shane spent a good two hours in Home Depot picking another very knowledgeable gentleman’s brain. He emerged with two panels of FRP, which were later cut up to size and glued to the Foamular, along with some edging:

And we had to cut up another panel for the ceiling:

We glued the ceiling panel on, and then sealed everything with silicone caulk. By next post, we’ll have put up the track for our shower curtain and will have a picture of the finished project!

We also added a medicine cabinet that we picked up at Home Depot. We’re finally looking like we have a real bathroom:

We’re wrapping up all of this work just in time for Canadian Thanksgiving. And we’re truly thankful, always, for vanlife, the coziness of our home, our many adventures (both past and future), and the support of friends and family along the way. Thanks for smoothing the path and for offering us wifi, showers, and parking spots - we’re certainly thankful for all of you!

We’re winding down our time here in Ontario. More like biding our time, as we wait for our letter giving us the greenlight to travel onward to the Maritimes. The plan is to spend winter with our dear friends on PEI. For those who don’t know, however, our Maritime provinces have formed a covid bubble, blocking them off from the rest of Canada as they work to keep their numbers down. So they’ve been screening travelers coming in. With luck, though, we’ll be on our way within the week and doing a two-week quarantine in the truck and on our friend’s property. It’s funny, the plan had been all along to go south for the winter, until covid closed borders and threw everything up in the air. (As has been the case with pretty much every Canadian vanlifer - and BC, I sure hope that the Island can handle all of them coming your way!) But I’ve always been a firm believer that life places us where and when we need to be. And hibernating for winter will not only give us a chance to (hopefully) reconnect with some people we love and miss, but will also provide a perfect opportunity (wherever we land) to just focus on building our businesses and mastering our crafts. 2020 may have been a “fecal hurricane” (thanks to the fab Betty Gilpin and her exquisite way with words for that apt descriptor), but it also creates an opportunity in the aftermath for us all to try to rebuild and redirect ourselves for 2021 and beyond. And while there may be less Kitty Kitty Bang Bang on the actual road for a while, the adventures and growth will continue nonetheless. Meow meow!

Vanlife Catlife:

This guy...I mean, c’mon: