The park starts to slow down after the Labour Day weekend, some of the slow down is because of the restarting of the schools here in Ontario and as the teachers and students report to classes, it is also a time when many people have to start reporting back in to their offices as the summer (slack off) season comes to a close. The day to day operations of the park continue on as normal, as next years site contracts are due by mid month, and all the rain from August has kept the maintenance staff busy mowing the lawns and trying to stay ahead of the weeds. And as the number of people in the park during the week reduces, I have had the opportunity continue my work on many of the individual electrical breaker panels for the mapping project, part my ongoing summer long project.
Oh yah, we also have that whole wedding thing happening in the park in the next week or so. The labour day weekend festivities featured music from a live band, with lots of fun events like the annual Halloween decorating contest, trick or treating for the kids and this year there was a haunted house set up by one of the campers which was a huge success. Only one food vender made it to the park this weekend and did a great business, I think many of the food vendor are thinking we have a limited amount of people at the park which is true, but there is also no other vendor competition for the spendable dollars, and I think they are missing out.
Yesterday a large white tent has been assembled on the playground common area, it will serve many purposes while it is up. It will host a birthday party, a wedding rehearsal dinner, and then the wedding reception with appetizers and beverages before the dinner which will take place in the rec hall.
The week after Labour day has seen a flurry of activity with lots of preparation for the wedding on the 9th of September, the rec hall has being transformed into a reception hall, camp site # 10 has been transformed into a wedding site with arches, chandeliers, and white sheers, and of course enough chairs for the hundred and twenty guests. Last minute touch ups being done as required, a pot or two of flowers being moved and then moved again. And all of this being done with little or no real inconvenience to the campers, no the only change to the campers was the shutting down of the playground and washroom area on the afternoon of the wedding.
The Sunday after the wedding there was a huge crew of helpers, and amazingly everything just seemed to disappear, the tent was disassembled, folder and packed away, the rec hall was stripped of the rental items and they were all loaded on to a trailer to be returned on Monday, Floors were washed the store which had been the staging area for the caterers to prepare the dinner, was reassembled and prepared for reopening Sunday afternoon to be able to accept contracts.
The next week seemed very quiet as all the wedding visitors have now left the area, and all the well planned and appointed items have been returned to their original locations and homes, and all the rental items has been returned and accounted for. The park itself is in great shape after all the pimping and pruning from before the wedding, the pool has been closed for the season as the temperatures are cooling off too much at night to warrant the expense of trying to keep it heated. But as much as the nights are cooling off we still have not had any frost so all the flowers are still blooming.
We just have had some new Bridgestone tires installed on our toad as we are starting to prepare to head south for the winter, we also took the 14th off to sneak in a round of golf at the Woodlands golf course in nearby Clinton, a course just a few miles from the park, we also went out for dinner with Mary and Julie to the Park House to celebrate my birthday.
Next week may seem like a long one as we will be on duty for over seven days in a row, as Rich & Bonnie are taking some needed vacation time on the Canadian east coast. There are no major projects on the go right now and as I’m getting close to the completion on my electrical grid mapping project, the quiet time is allowing for some panel maintenance and updating, as a number of oddities are turning up with more in depth exploration. The electrical grid in the park has endured many years of changes, patches, and expansions so there have been some surprising discoveries, some have even left Rich scratching his head as there seems to be no logical explanation for what we are finding or why it was done. I have been repainting some faceplates on electrical boxes to allow new labeling as some panels had multiple labels added over old labels for the same breaker, leaving everyone confused.
As September is coming to a close, the weather has been far better than expected with warm sunny day and nights that are cool but by no means normal for this late in September. This is a time of many mixed emotions for us as we are start the dreaded process of saying goodbye to many friends, with our Canadian Thanksgiving celebration falling early this year and because the Thanksgiving Monday is the park closing date, some patrons have decided to close their units this last weekend of September. It is also a time when we start looking forward to our winter travels as this fall as we make our way south to our adopted winter home in Arizona and our group of Winter friends that we left way back in April.
There have been a few surprises at the park with a few long term residents deciding to leave, but as life happens, so do people’s plans change and as surprising as some of these changes seem we have learned over the years that that is just real life. And as sad as some of the departures are for us, we now just look back at how lucky we were to have had those people in our lives at all. As I walk around the park and see flower beds being cleared out in preparation for that killer frost that still hasn’t happened, there are just a few trees showing fall colours sporadically around the park. And we are also realizing how very little time we spent down on the beach this year, which is normally a popular spot for Miss Laurie on our days off, but we seem to have been playing catch up all year.
We have started our goodbyes as we prepare for our winter adventures, so trying to stop and see family before it’s too late. we have ventured off to the Stoney Creek and Woodstock areas but will miss so many important people this year it is sad. We need to plan next year more carefully to visit everyone that we missed this year as we will be better prepared to enjoy more family time, it is obvious that our priorities need to chance next year, as life did throw us a couple of curve balls this year that we were not expecting.
Fall is officially here but still no frost!
Blog 487
Day 2189
The Buchanan's Rolling Down The Road 
It was indeed a very busy time & thankful that you were at the Camp managing through all the chaos.
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