Fall 2020 Update

Thursday November 5th 2020

Well we spent a hour on the beach this afternoon, the only problem was that the beach was on the east shore of Lake Huron, usually by this time of year we would be on a beach in one of the southern States. But Miss Laurie did find some beach glass, and I enjoyed a craft beer from a Thunder Bay brewer, and all seemed well. The sky was overcast for the most part, but the temperature was 16ºC (61ºF), and for November that was quite warm, but with a 23 km/hr breeze from the south, it was cool enough that blue jeans and sweatshirts were required.

It’s been two days since the America election and still we have no declared winner, the voter turn out was one of the highest for a number of years. The number of mail in ballots has caught many states understaffed to get them counted. I’m sure that has been complicated by one of the candidates telling their supporters to vote twice, not something that most normal people would do, but when you know that you have comprised the countries postal service by installing one of your own supporters that knew nothing about the post office. This is the kind of stuff that leaves normal people scratching their heads, now with all the legally received mail in ballots being counted, the chants of fraud are being rolled out by one of the parties, along with a chant from the other party to count all the votes.

My expectations are that in the next few days there will be a winner declared, and then there will be all sorts of frivolous legal battles waged until the loser finally admits defeat.

In the mean time today the United States exceeded 100,000 new coronavirus cases and over 1,000 deaths for a one day high, yes I know the only reason the cases are that high is because of all the testing … but if there weren’t any coronavirus cases out there it wouldn’t matter how many test were being done … why is that so difficult for some people understand? And I don’t now what corner that someone thought they were turning with this virus, but I thinking they are a little lost when it comes to coronavirus, in fact I’m pretty sure they don’t even any kind of a map, let alone know what corner they are at … just saying

Here at the park, trees have been the big topic, with many trees being removed by the Bayfield Tree Service staff, most are the poplars that make such as mess, but a few are left over ash trees. After the big wind storm we had last weekend, we have lots of branches down all over the park, but only one tree was blown down and only damage to one trailer. Lots of barbecues blown off of decks, and lots of items blown around, it will be like a big game of hide and seek for some people in the spring. We have been burning leaves for the past week, which should be appreciated in the spring. More work is being done at the lookouts, and the park has suffered considerable damage at the beach access, but we have more beach and sand now than we have had all summer.

We are now eight days with only a hydro connection, and will most likely have to reload fresh water and dump the tanks this weekend while the weather is still good. We seem to have worked out, our boiler issues, a new fuel filter, cleaning the nozzle, and purging the fuel system and now we have uninterrupted heat for those below freezing nights. I have been preparing to winterize the water system on the coach which I have never done but will need to do in about ten days.

We are also preparing to move into a house on the fifteenth of the month, so our plan is to drive the coach to the house to move our supplies into the house, then return the coach to the park to be winterized. We are also moving to a different site at the park, to give us a little more privacy on out days off, so we are preparing the new site now as we seem to have some extra time on our hands and some above average weather in the forecast.

As I’m trying to finish this blog president Trump is on the news, alleging illegal ballots again, voter fraud, and that the election is being stolen from him. Now it is not news to anyone that I’m not a Trump supporter, I think it is criminal how he has handled the coronavirus pandemic, which now has caused close to a quarter of a million deaths. I also think it apprehensive how he has coined the term “fake news” and who had heard of alternate facts before he became president? The reality is the man lies constantly, in fact if you read his book the “The Art of the Deal” he brags about lying and intimidating, the difference between business and politics, is that someone will call you out for it as a politician, in business it just gets to the stage only crooks or the mafia will deal with a lying businessman. And it doesn’t matter how many times you tell the same lie it’s still just a lie! Oh the special people may start to believe it, but anyone that has a grasp on reality, or can think for themselves, doesn’t believe anything without proof, and there is where president Trump is caught falling short. There is never any evidence, no just a lot of verbal diarrhea, with no substance, no proof, just nothing to back up any statement, no it’s alway “everybody says” or “good people say” but those people don’t exist in the real world.

If this election has proven anything, it is that there is a huge division in the States, there has been a divide for years but never to this extent. I understand people hear and read what they want to hear and read, but when someone feeds that divide it just grows deeper and harder to bridge. There is a growing civil unrest, in fact I couldn’t help thinking as we watched businesses boarding up windows before the election to avoid damage and looting, of third world countries and dictatorships.

This is why!

Friday October 30th 2020

So we woke this morning to snow, now we are not new to snow, but we still don’t have to like it!

We are often asked why the park is not open later in the season, well this is why. This is also why there was a huge panic this year to get the park winterized, as the temperature dropped to 0ºC (32ºF) over night and here at 11 o’clock we have almost reached our high temperature of the day of 3ºC (37ºF) but with the breeze the wind chill will remain below freezing all day. So we closed the park on Tuesday at 5 pm and we were able to have everything protected from freezing at 10 am Thursday. It was kind of been like an endurance test this week, but one that we had to accomplish to evert any frozen water line nightmare …

We now have started working on park projects, Thursday we cut down three large poplar trees, which is just a start, we have a long list of trees to trim or remove. We were able to take down these first three trees by our selves, making use of seasonally empty lots, we are able to drop the trees and then cut them up and remove the debris. Because these three trees today were all poplar trees which literally explode when we drop them to the ground and the clean up is time consuming and cleaning up the debris involves gathering and burning all the smaller branches.

We also have a spool of tech-cable strung between a pair of picnic tables to replace one of the older power lines in the park. The old power lines was loop feed which means the power line runs to the first breaker box then goes on to the next, and then on to the last breaker box. So each power line feeds a total of 10 thirty amp sites, protected by one large circuit breaker. The new system will have three separate power feeds to three no espérate breaker panels, each with its own smaller circuit breaker. One of The issues has been that more people have been using their trailers as summer homes as opposed to weekend getaways, and have added almost every appliance that they would have in your home … the difference is that most homes are operating on 100 or 200 amp services as opposed to 30 amp circuits so breakfast and dinner were becoming overload times which would see the main breaker being tripped for that whole row. Just because of all the extra appliances being used at once instead of using the propane equipment that the trailers were supplied with, or as we say glamping not camping …