Dave & Dar's Big Adventure: Seniorville

Parksville is a beautiful city on the ocean on Vancouver Island. It seems to be a favorite location for seniors to live. There are some advantages to living in a "seniors" city. One is the terrific selection of yarn for knitting. :o) So much better than Winnipeg! Another is free standing "cupboards" in random outdoor locations that have books in them. It is a free book exchange. Love it!
They are also into pickleball in a big way here. It is supposed to be kind of a cross between tennis, badminton and ping pong. Sounds like fun! We haven't had the opportunity to watch a game yet. I think they have moved indoors for the winter. We were hoping to try it out before going south. We hear it is all the rage down south.
In the park next door to our campground they have outdoor exercise equipment that is used regularly by many seniors and their grandkids.
Now for the negative reasons about living in a "seniors" city. The grocery shopping and the driving! They can both be very frustrating.
We take Cleo for a walk on the beach every morning. We have seen sea lions, bald eagles and blue herons. Sometimes the tide is way out in the morning and Cleo has a ton of fun running on the beach and through the water chasing the sea gulls.
We have been trying to spend a lot of time with our grandkids but between them being sick, and now me (Dar) being sick.........Oh well, better to be sick while we are here rather than on the road. Colton & Teegan are adorable and unbelievably smart. We are constantly amazed by them.
We had an awesome Thanksgiving dinner. We were invited to join the family of my Dad's friend, Elma and they made us feel very welcome. Our family and theirs have spent a few evenings together and we have made some great new friends.
Dave and I have been looking into some other campgrounds in Parksville and Nanaimo. When we come back in the spring for two months we thought we might like to try another location. Park Sands Resort where we are now, is a great location for walking to shop and to visit our grandkids but it's a little pricey and doesn't allow wood fires. We explored Living Forest today which is about a 35 minute drive from the grandkids but it has a lot of positive things about it. Less money, camp fires, great hiking trails and we can still walk to shop. If our grandkids lived in Winnipeg we could be a 35 minute drive away so I'm sure it's do-able.
I don't think we've been having the great weather that you have in Winnipeg, but we can't complain. We've had a couple of days of non-stop rain but most days it just sprinkles occasionally and the rest of the time it's nice. The best thing is that the nights don't get very cold.
We miss all of our Winnipeg friends and especially Shelley & Darren!