And so it begins...

A pretty good start to our busy summer season here at the campground. We had everything ready to go, or at least we thought we did. Turns out that we missed a couple of things.

Nothing serious, but it did cause a little bit of aggravation.

We said goodbye yesterday morning to friends Doug and Nancy. They headed out around 9:00am. Good thing they didn't hang around because we wouldn't have been able to spend any time with them anyhow!

Doug and Nancy have been traveling the U.S. and Canada for the last six months and living out of their VW van! You're almost home guys!

We spent the morning getting various things ready, and it was about 2:00pm when the first campers started to arrive. I was on office duty, looking after checking people in. Ruth had been up at our little entrance booth cleaning it up. It was a mess, and looked like it hadn't been cleaned in years, if ever! So at least she had something to do in between people showing up.

The Saskatchewan Regional Parks (there are 90 of them) charge a vehicle entrance fee. It's $40.00 for a season pass that's valid at all the Regional Parks in the province. Or, you can buy a day pass for $8.00. Of course at this time of year, the beginning of the season, it makes sense for most people to buy the season pass. Part of our job is to ensure that people have paid their fees and are displaying their passes.

So, having someone at the entrance booth makes a big difference in making sure people pay their vehicle fees. All the revenue from the vehicle fees we sell stay in our park for maintenance and improvements so it makes sense to collect all that we can.

We had about 18 campers to check in. By 9:00pm, 15 of them had shown up. Of course there are a LOT more people than that who come in. Our canteen does a fish fry supper on Fridays, so we had quite a few people who come from the various surrounding communities just for supper. And then of course there are the 80 seasonal campsites that have a lot of people coming in as well. And fortunately, it was one of the nicest days we've had this month.

So it was pretty busy.

But by 9:00pm, we were still missing some campers who were booked to arrive in our 15 amp electric section. This is an area of the park that has no sewer hookups so many don't want to stay there. But we're almost booked up so some people had no choice.

But as I said, it's only 15 amp electrical outlets, the same as the ones on your house. Many trailers try to overload the circuits and run air conditioners and things that simply take too much power. 

I made the mistake of never checking these outlets to make sure they actually work!

Around 9:15, I noticed one truck pull in. A couple who are camping in that section. I got them checked in and brought them up to their site.

At 11:00pm, I've showered and just getting ready to head for bed when this guy comes knocking saying that he has no power. 

Great. But, its part of the territory and this is what we signed up for!

So I head out into the dark to check things out. By this time, the two other late campers have also arrived into that section. One of them has power, but the other two don't.

It turns out that it's only that one post that's not working. I went and got them some extension cords and plugged them both in to another post. Problem solved for now, but obviously I need to check that out. 

I also noticed that two of our streetlights are burned out. Going to have to get someone with a bucket truck in to change out those bulbs.

You'll notice there's no other pictures from yesterday. We'll go around and get some today showing the park all filled up!

Today's header photo is of our dog Whiskey, out for a stroll at a rural property that Ruth's parents used to own near Pakenham, Ontario, Canada. Our favorite photo from the month of April, 2010.