Sonya's Blog - Day 47 - Historic Brampton

Sonya’s Blog - Day 47 - August 8th - Checking out Brampton

We didn’t really feel like heading back into Toronto today so we thought we would check out Brampton. The wifi at this campground is really poor and we thought we might also try and find somewhere with decent wifi so we could get caught up on our posts. Isaac is really far behind and we need to get his posted. He writes them on his phone and it is a lot of transferring and copying and pasting to get them online. He is also very uninterested in the whole process so that makes it a bit more of a challenge. Natasha likes the blogging and so she will just get to it, Isaac does not love it so it is more of a fight with him. He doesn’t realize he really gets no choice in the matter and this is part of his schooling. He is going to be tons of fun to school this year if we are already arguing about this.

There is a Saturday Farmer’s Market in Brampton, in the historic area, which works out perfect because that is the area we wanted to check out. The Farmer’s Market was 2 blocks long and had lots of great stuff. We spent too much time walking up and down looking at stuff and listening to the live entertainment though because when we started to think about what we wanted to buy the vendors were already packing up. We raced around and got a few things before everything was packed up. There was a Starbucks right there so we headed over there as we know they have good wifi. We had Kizmet with us and tried to sit outside, but the wifi was only available inside. Blake went inside with the kids and I took Kizmet on a walk and to put the groceries in the truck. I found a nice walk along the Etobicoke Creek and through some older neighbourhoods on the way back to the Starbucks. Some of the homes have plaques on them that tell you the style the home is built in (for example, Victorian) and the year the home was built. I am not sure if these homes are designated historic sites or what, but it was neat to read the plaques. Kizmet and I then walked along the road beside Gage Park, which is a very nice park in Brampton. There was a wedding going on in the park, so we stopped to watch that for a bit. We were quite far away, so it is not like we were crashing the wedding or anything, just having a look see and being nosy.

I got back to the Starbucks and not much was happening. Blake had helped Isaac get some more of his blogs posted, but it is a long and arduous process. Natasha was trying to get online and look at her Math lesson plans, but was frustrated and having trouble navigating the site. We need to figure out a new plan for the internet as we clearly cannot rely on the internet connections at the campsites and the kids will need good internet connections for a lot of their schooling. So far most of the campsites have had terrible wifi, I actually preferred the Owen Sound wifi set-up. The camping rates were a little cheaper and then I signed onto their provider and paid for my own access, it was a way better connection. I started doing some research into what our best options would be for someone who is constantly traveling. I figured someone would have talked about it, there are enough full-time RVer’s out there, and I was right. There was a blog post that detailed exactly what I needed to know. Getting a satellite dish is the most reliable, but is also super pricey (for the dish) and then you have to get a plan on top of that. We are not going to be in a lot of remote places, so I am not sure we need to take that route. Data cards for the laptop were also discussed, but we have a Bell plan which is good in Canada and we can just hotspot to my phone. We called Bell and upped the amount of data on my plan and we will test it out and see if it is enough. It doesn’t solve our problems once we get to the US, but it will work for the rest of the time we are in Canada. Hopefully this will work out better.

We had to get to Yorkdale Mall for 5 PM because we had an appointment with Apple for Natasha’s broken ipad mini. It was a pretty fancy mall and super busy. We found the apple store and they replaced Natasha’s ipad for a fee, but less than buying a new one. Maybe she will stop storing the ipad under her leg when we are out and about, or simply leaving it behind if we are touring around. Blake also added my old phone onto my Bell plan so that he can have a phone as well. He was allowed to bring his work phone as part of his leave, but they changed their minds and now he has to send it back. Originally he was told that because it is a leave of absence they would let him keep his phone and ipad so that he could stay in touch with Husky and keep abreast of the happenings. Now that is not the case, mmm, I wonder who made sure that happened - I have my suspicions. Anyhow, he will now use my old phone or my new phone, it doesn’t matter. We both have a phone and things will be fine, usually we are together so we really don’t need two phones.

We came back to the campsite and I made supper. I made Zucchini pasta and Caprese Salad and they were both very yummy. We tested out my new data plan and posted a whole bunch of stuff to the site with pictures to see how much data we used. It seems to be pretty good, I thought uploading the pictures would use up more data than it did. So far it seems okay.

Kizzy at the end of her day:

That's it for me,

Sonya

#Toronto #Brampton