Well I’m resting after a long day, this afternoon we found the water leak on the north side of the park, it was about three feet deep, and surrounded by tree roots. We had to get the back hoe to get through the roots, a broken tee was the culprit, a new tee a couple of clamps and we were able to pressure test the system and now we held pressure, this was a major concern with opening day next a Friday and multiple days of rain in the forecast.

Laurie finished off the gardens, and managed to get the golf cart and trailer stuck in the mud while dumping the composting product, and got started on the clean up around the courts but it has become a larger task as there is some build up under the plastic mesh on one end so we will have to peel it up to clean the concrete under the mesh.

This morning was tree removal day, the crew came in at 8am and took down about 10 trees, and cleaned up the biggest pieces and ran any thing smaller than 10″ in diameter through a chipper that created a truck full of wood chips. My morning was raking all the little branches from the five lots involved, the dropped trees were partially dead so many branches just shattered when they fell causing a major clean up. There will be more clean up at these lots in the next few days.

Miss Laurie has been working on preparing the camp store, cleaning fridges, stocking shelves, pricing products, just waiting for the happy campers to arrive. Booking appointments to tour the units that are for sale, and showing the last sites available for this season. We have many new trailers coming in this year, so should be a busy few weeks as everyone will want to be in before our first holiday weekend which is our Victoria Day which is one week before the Memorial Day weekend.

I will try to be better on the blog for day 4 of preparation, this should have been a day of photos but we were so busy I just didn’t get any taken…no excuses I will get better.

Day 2 of park preparation for opening May 3rd, well to say I’m a little stiff and sore would just barely scratch the surface, yesterday included using a lot of muscles that I have not used for a few months. Gardening not my thing as much as Laurie’s, but it is one of my tasks, all the walking yesterday in a pair of workbooks that I haven’t worn for years, digging to fix water leaks, just a lot of being busy.

But I survived and actually looking forward to cleaning up the rest of the gardens today, hope to get the leaves off the common area and the community centre cleared out and ready to be cleaned and prepped for opening day, I was told that about 75% of the 200 plus campers show up on the opening weekend, as they are all responsible for their own yard area so picture spring clean up for about 150 campers the same weekend….should be fun….I think

I have a number of work orders to un-winterize is some units for people for opening day, not sure what that will involve other than charging the water system and flushing the antifreeze from the lines but that will be getting done next week, I’m also in charge of picnic table maintenance when requested, a number of the campers have patio furniture as they are all seasonal with storage sheds. Yesterday I was introduced to most of the electrical sub panels where all the 30 amp breakers live and where most of the problem areas are located, there are a number of different sections to the park as it has expanded over the years so a number of different styles of water and electrical connections and breaker boxes. So quite a steep learning curve for an old fart like me.

Well it’s almost time to turn in for the evening, progress report only have one small garden left to clean up an hour at best, got the Toro zero turn mower out today and cut the grass on the common area (also mulched up the few leaves left on the lawn). Been a few years since operating a mower like that but it all comes back with a little time, tomorrow will be a day of finding the leak in the water system and I understand we are cutting some trees tomorrow so another new adventure. Was bright and sunny today only got up into the mid 40’s today, suppose to be warmer tomorrow but dry, as we have rain coming for the weekend and even a little snow forecast for Sunday….not looking forward to that.

The park has suffered some erosion and has has about 300 truck loads of fill dumped along the edge to help slow it down, but all that truck traffic has made a mess of some of the roads. The company is to be in next week to regrade the roads and add a little gravel to get us up and operational for opening day. We are about 100 feet above the water level, and with climate change the water levels in the Great Lakes are rising.