09:05 – Marcy picked up Barbara at 7:15 for their week’s driving trip up the Parkway. Colin wasn’t entirely sure what was happening, but he’ll figure it out this evening when Barbara doesn’t return.
Mary and Paul weren’t available yesterday, so Barbara and I did a Costco run by ourselves. I went prepared with Amazon Prime Pantry prices for some stuff I wanted to buy for our food storage program, and took along a small notebook to record Costco prices on other items for later comparison with Amazon. As it turns out, Amazon is considerably higher than Costco on all of the items I checked.
For example, Amazon Pantry sells a 16-ounce can of Bush’s Baked Beans for $1.48 plus about $0.16 shipping. I was thinking that Costco charged about $12 for a case of eight cans, but when I checked yesterday they were $8.49 per case of eight, or about $1.06/can. Also, the Costco cans were 16.5 ounces rather than 16. So Amazon was about 55% higher on that. Same thing on vanilla extract. Amazon had either McCormick or Kirkland (Costco) branded vanilla extract in 16-ounce bottles for $9.99. Costco sold their own brand for $6.99, so Amazon was about 42% higher on that. Costco had canned corn at $0.67/can. Amazon was $1.04. And so on. If Costco carries something, we’ll get it there.
But there are a lot of things that we want to stock up on that Costco doesn’t carry, or at least our Costco doesn’t. So just out of curiosity, I went over to the Sam’s Club website. As it turns out, unlike Costco, the Sam’s Club site lists store-only items, including prices, and they carry a lot of stuff that Costco doesn’t, including Campbell’s canned soups by the case. Barbara’s going to check with her sister to find out if they still have a membership at Sam’s Club. If not, we may join just for the better prices on a lot of items we want to stock up on.
15:42 – When Barbara travels, she’s often pretty much off-the-grid. But this time she took her laptop with her. I tried to get her to let me install Skype, but she didn’t want it. At the moment, she has no cell service, but at least she can email me. I emailed her earlier to say that Colin is still afraid that I’ll forget to feed him, and wants to know when she’ll be home. I got the following response a little while ago.
Tell him I will be home Friday afternoon.
We arrived at Peaks of Otter about 2pm. On the drive up we saw a fawn and her mom. The fawn was about the size of Colin at six months. We also saw a wild turkey and a ground hog.
We got off the Parkway and drove to the little town of Stewardsville, VA outside of Bedford for lunch at a little diner. Homemade food; she cooked and served.
After we checked in we were going for a walk around the lake but Marcy wanted to move the truck to a different parking area so we drove over to the lodge to see if we needed reservations for dinner and check out the gift shop. Good thing we waited we are having a thunderstorm.
No cell service. Had no problem connecting to the wifi. They give you a room map with the password.
Give Colin a hug.