Our last really busy weekend is over and done with. July seems like it went by fairly quickly, and hopefully August will too. September will drag a little as our departure date gets closer. But, there will still be a lot to do getting the park ready to shut down for the season.
And, the arrival of August means that we can say that our daughter will be 30 years old this month. Wow! How did that happen?!
Our long weekend here at the park was certainly a busy one. We had rented out our group camping area to a reunion of people from the Philippines who now live in Canada. All of these people used to work at a Mitsubishi car factory in the Philippines and they have a big get together once a year.
Our group camping area full of vehicles and tents.
It's a little deceiving, but there are tent sites in the trees as well.
They were really good guests, but our washroom facilities had a hard time keeping up with that many extra people. There were probably about 125 of them on top of our normal full camp!
Ruth put in some long hours keeping the bathrooms in presentable condition. We are known for the cleanliness of our bathrooms, so it's hard work to keep up with that many people using the facilities.
And then, our part time gate girl quit unexpectedly. Not getting into details, but boy we have had a hard time finding dedicated people to work here. You'd think teenagers would want the $12.60 an hour, but I guess that's not enough incentive!
And so Ruth had some extra pressure manning the front gate as well as bathroom duty, on what was arguably our busiest day of the year.
Then, the main water intake line blew. The pump had been giving me problems this weekend as if one of the impellers is broken, and I think it is. It's still working, but it's very difficult to keep the pressure constant. That was Saturday evening at about 9:00pm. Fortunately, it was a fairly quick fix.
And, we had to deal with the mosquitoes. All of the regulars here are pretty much saying they've never seen the mosquitoes this bad. I was using our new mosquito fogger twice a day, and while it was making things better, it seemed that a new crop of them were hatching twice a day as well.
When I walked up the hill to take that photo above, I had to run back down to get away from the blood suckers. They sure are thirsty little buggers!
And I had to get up during the night and make sure nobody was out being stupid. Had one noise complaint called in on Saturday night, but other than that people were pretty good. I had called the local RCMP detachment on Saturday and got them to do a drive through on Saturday night as well. Good to have a police presence when there are 400 or more people in the park.
Anyhow, now the worst is over. It will be good to catch up on our sleep over the next day or two. We're both pretty much exhausted. Maybe I'll even squeeze in an afternoon nap today!
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Check out the newest model from Segway. I can picture a few of these buzzing around campgrounds in the future. Might even be a good thing to carry in the RV...
Oh see, those mosquitoes would simply end it for me. I'd either have to stay indoors or be so slathered up with DEET that it just wouldn't be fun anymore. But hey, it's Canada. Around here the powers that be are terrified of any mosquito born ailments, so they go around and treat the catch basins. You'd be hard pressed to find a living mosquito anywhere, and I'm not exactly heartbroken over that.
ReplyDeleteIf we didn't have to work here we would have been gone as soon as they started to get thick! Unfortunately this is our job and WOW, are they bad right now. Even the fogger doesn't seem to do a lot of good, or perhaps it does and they would be as thick as pea soup if we didn't fog. We unfortunately don't have a catch basin to treat here, I think our problem has been way too much rain and they are hatching daily because of it. We don't like using but DEET have no choice so we slather up ourselves with bug spray! :-(
DeleteIf you have a lake, the mosquitoes have a place to lay their eggs and develop. Around here, if people have water, in a pond, or other standing water, they put a goldfish or two, or more, depending upon the size of the water. Depending upon the container or water feature, they can over winter in freezing temps. I am sure a few goldfish could wreak some havoc in a lake, but if you have any other standing water in smaller areas, a few goldfish could help keep the mosquitoes down.
ReplyDeleteA few gold fish aren't going to make a difference with the mosquitoes here. Our lake is approximately 140 miles long and when water is pouring in from all the rain the current is fairly fast moving so mosquitoes wouldn't be using it to begin with to lay their eggs. An no, other than when it rains we don't have any standing water in the campground.
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