June 17th 2023, and we have finally succeeded in getting the swimming pool open here at LHR (Lake Huron Resort) and while that may not sound like a big deal, this year I was given the task of getting this done. It is usually a task that is shared with Richard and all his years of experience, but as he tries to step back from some of the day to day operations, this is an example of where I need to step up and just get the task completed.

It is father’s day weekend and saturday afternoon the park does not seem as busy as we might have expected. Miss Laurie has finally closed a deal on one of the for sale units in the park, there have been some people looking but not many people buying, as the vacation market has changed from being the sellers market of the last few years and is now a full blown buyers market. The cost of borrowing money has just gone up again this month, so some of the sellers that were trying to take advantage of the inflated prices of the past years are now finding out that true market value price is what someone is willing to pay, not what you think it should be. And quite frankly some of the units for sale have not been shown any real love for a number of years, and when so many units are for sale at once it is the pretty ones or the best priced ones that go first.

We have been left without supervision this weekend, as Bonnie & Rich are at the other park catching up on some work as well as a bridal shower for Bronte, Bonnie & Rich’s daughter who is getting married here at the park in September. And so far all is moving well, the campfire ban from last weekend has been lifted already and there were lots of fires last night as people were trying to stay warm, everyone seem well behaved and that is always a blessing on a cold night. The pool opened today and seemed very popular at times even with the cold breeze off of the lake, I know I wouldn’t be getting wet when it is this cold. It appears that the thermometer will be climbing tomorrow as the weather improves to more summer like temperatures.

Sunday June 18th, “fathers day” which also means the final round of the “US Open” golf tournament, just like the Canadian Open last weekend this tournament is open to anyone who is able to qualify. There were over 10,000 people who tried to qualify this year for only 160 openings so as you can imagine only the best of the best can raise to the level needed to succeed. The tournament is put on by the USGA (United States Golf Association) and just like the Canadian version the venue moves around the country from course to course, this years open is being contested at the Los Angeles Country Club which is located in the centre of Los Angeles, apparently an easy walk to Rodeo drive, and has almost every stroke played covered by television coverage. I have been watching the play all week on the USA and NBC network and coverage so far has went on till eleven o’clock at night, since it is three hours different the final group will not tee off till 5:30 our time, so the final round will not end till at best ten o’clock tonight.

I’m sitting on the patio, under the awning, watching our basement television, drinking my last Mexican craft beer, and we’re still over two hours from the last tee off time of the tournament leaders. The sun has made an appearance today, but it is still not warm yet by anyone’s imagination, I do have on shorts today but I’m also a sweatshirt hoodie to try and keep warm.

Monday & Tuesday our days off, the day we get to catch up on our chores around the site, today I was weed wacking with our battery powered trimmer, it has always preformed reasonably well but it was one of those purchases that has never felt like a good purchase, but it was on sale and fit the requirement when I purchased it, and I have used it for six years, so it was not a terrible purchase, just one that I kind of regretted from the beginning. But know the battery seems to be failing and a replacement battery is somewhere between ridiculous and crazy in price, so some research will be required before this guy spends that much money, jus’saying.

Well Monday evening just took an ugly turn, we were enjoying a good day off, and we’re planning a kayaking adventure Tuesday morning with Dale & Fiona, the plan is a down river adventure so a couple of vehicles will be required. So I had pulled out the kayaks and loaded them into our toad. Then Miss Laurie got an unexpected text from Miss Bonnie, asking us to meet them in town for dinner, now dinner with Rich & Bonnie is not an unusual thing, but a dinner with no pre-planning made it seem a little strange, but we agreed to meet at the Park House at 7:30. So I unloaded the kayaks and we headed into Goderich for dinner.

Now I always enjoy visiting the Park House, as one of the staples on the menu is liver & onions, and I know some of you are going to be going oh gross while others are thinking oh that sounds yummy. But this paragraph is not about a debate over a menu item. No this dinner was to break some bad news to us, that the other half of the “dream team” had just given two weeks notice! Just when we were thinking that all was going well, and now the other couple who signed the same season long contract that we had, are quitting, bailing out, or to put it simply are just not going to honour their end of the contract. Are we disappointed, well hell yes we are disappointed, but in the next breath whatever, it will all work out, I was just brought up in a world where your word actually meant something. We could have bailed out of our job last summer when it wasn’t what we expected, but that’s not how we operate, when we commit to do something, we always fulfill our end of the contract. But on a happier note the liver was just as just as good as I remembered and the draft beer was just as cold.

Tuesday morning and we are off on a kayaking adventure, we have always thought that there should be some good kayaking on the Maitland river but have never figured it out, so we are looking very forward to this adventure today. It’s 9:30 and I have the kayaks reloaded, and we are headed to the village of Auburn and to our entry point into the Maitland river, after unloading the kayaks Dale and I drive a vehicle to our exit point near the bell bridge a few kilometers down the river from where we drop off the kayaks and left Dales vehicle there and then took our toad back to the entry point.

The kayaking trip was a longer adventure than we had expected but the views were worth it, there were a number of shallow spots that made us work at weaving our way through the stones. With the occasional surrender to escape being trapped between a couple of larger rocks (or are they called stones this side of the Mississippi?). The bird life was abundant, here are a few of what we seen and heard; Red-winged Blackbird, American Redstart, Warbling Vireo, Yellow Warbler, Baltimore Oriole, Song Sparrow, Common Yellowthroat, Common Grackle, American Crow, House Wren, Kildeer, Downy Woodpecker, Swamp Sparrow, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, and a Green Heron. We also seen a camera shy deer on the bank well downriver from us, the group also spotted turtles, and a blue heron, a hawk, even a groundhog on the river bank, and of course numerous fish of various sizes during our adventure.

We had a number of spots along the route that caused some navigation issues, but the overall consensus was that as a journey it would be worth a redo, either a little earlier in the spring or after a significant rain storm. The down side of that would most likely be the clarity of the water which at this time allowed excellent allowing viewing of the fish. Our most significant rapids was just upriver from our exit point and while more substantial were still nothing to fear, and at our exit point we encountered our first gaggle of Canadian Geese with lots of young goslings. Below are a few of the photos from our adventure:

Well we have made it to the weekend, and while the park is busier, it is usually a time when we as staff can relax a little as well and just spend time answering questions and interacting with the guests. But on the initial check of the pool this Saturday morning we found a major leak, a glued joint on a two inch line just past the circulating pump had failed flooding the pump room, and luckley shorting out the pump which stopped the loss of pool water. An attempt to re glue the connection failed and at that point I was off to town to try to locate enough pieces to at least get the pool back up and running temporarily as the pool is always a popular spot on the weekends. So some three hours later I had managed to secure enough parts to make a semi permanent repair with only one pipe fitting preventing the total repair. Always an exciting way to start a busy weekend but by noon everything was back to as normal as it ever gets at a campground.

The rest of the weekend seemed reasonably calm and rolled by smoothly as the weather has taken a turn for the better and after the fog burnt off on Saturday the sunshine came out to provide us a great weekend. Although a couple of thunderstorms are moving through the area late Sunday afternoon and we are expecting some rain showers through the next couple of days, our days off, but we need the rain very badly to keep the lawn and gardens happy and green.

And almost amazingly we are back to Monday and our days off again, we have nothing planned for this week as we are closing in on the end of June and are starting to prepare for the first long weekend of the Summer season. Canada Day is our Canadian celebration while our American friends celebrate Independence Day, but this is a big weekend at the park with lots of activities planned.

The week was jammed with lots of projects, last minute lawn mowing, the building of the stage for the band, the preparation for a fireworks display, setting out tables and chairs for the vender event. This weekend is always the busiest of the summer, but with Canada Day the 1st of July falling on the Saturday it means that some folks will have Friday off while others have Monday and a few will take both days off which meant the weekend traffic started on Thursday afternoon. As we close in on the departure of the other couple it becomes apparent that they have already checked out as our workload increases.

So as June comes to a close the heat and humidity seem to be building, and our normal westerly breeze off of Lake Huron has disappeared as the now busy parks electrical system starts to suffer from the load of air conditioners as in true Ontario weather fashion we have went from cool weather into sweltering heat in just a matter of a couple of days, the lawns and gardens are suffering as well as some people. And we seen the first issue of a problem with our refrigerator … oh damn!

Let’s all take a moment just to appreciate our great country’s, both Canada and the United States!

Blog 481

Day 2096

June 1st and it is already 30°C (86°F), which if we were still in Arizona would be a spectacular temperature, but because we are in Ontario we have to add in the humidity factor, making it more that a little uncomfortable. And many of the natives here in the park, have fired up the air conditioners, afterall the price of the electricity is included in the seasonal rates … jus sayin.

Rich & Bonnie are off for a week, they have guests from the Dominican Republic visiting, so they have been playing tour guide, but that is also another reason why they have brought us back, just to deal with the normal day to day operations of this park while they spend more time at their other park and enjoy life a little more.

We joined them at the beach for a sunset fire, always a popular event here at LHR, and the colour of the sun has turned nearly red because of the smoke from the forest fires in Alberta, and we are obviously also only a day or two from the full moon.

So on Saturday night Lorne while doing his security rounds had an issue with a site, persisting on breaking the quiet time rule, and had to respond to a number of noise complaints at the same site. I had discovered an Incident report form last year because of some of the nightmares that I dealt with last year so I suggest he fill it out and forward it to the office, now I’m thinking it is something that we will implement here this year just to record the times and details of the problems that happen arise from time to time. I’m pleased to see an email followed shortly after reminding everyone of the rules and expectations

OK it’s Tuesday June 6th and we have been invited by friends, to take in an international earth exhibit at a church in Exeter, a bit of a strange outing, certainly not a normal adventure for the Buchanan’s. But as it was explained to us we decided that it sounded interesting enough to be worthy of an outing, so as a blogger I decided that it would be a good plan to do some research before our adventure. So, I started with this Google search “earth exhibit in Exeter church“, thinking I had covered all the possible parameters, this is what came up.

S0 back to google search with this description “earth exhibit in Exeter Ontario” and it brought up the actual exhibit that we would be attending. The exhibit was created by a UK based artist “Luke Jerram” who created the exhibit using detailed imagery of the earth’s surface from NASA. It allows the public to see the earth almost as though they were floating in space looking down at the planet, the exhibit only runs from June 1st till July 3rd. The globe is 6 meters (19.6 feet) across and is called “Gaia” (the word means the personification of the Earth by Greek mythology) and is being hung from the church roof, the pews have been removed and the stained glass windows have been tinted to allow viewing. I also observed that the exhibit seems to have shrank a meter (3 feet) during the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, as the English description referred to a seven meter exhibit, the price of viewing £5 in England or $10 Canadian here in Ontario.

Today was also my appointment day with the people from the “Old Fart” (Canadian Longevity Association) survey calling to confirm that I have managed to make it through another year of life, and to most likely confirm that I have obviously been losing (or at least misplacing) some of my marbles as I get another year older. So this survey consists of multiple phone calls over a few weeks where they ask old farts like me numerous question to determine just how much our mind continues failing us as we age. I have been participating for a number of years and as an old fart I already know just how much my memory is starting to fail me, even for the simplest tasks, or just remembering names of either people or places. Let’s just say that the whole aging thing is not a pretty process, but it is a process that we will all struggle through the golden years.

Before the exhibit we enjoyed a lovely lunch on the patio of Eddington’s of Exeter, a venue that Laurie & I had yet to explore, it was a little breezy and cooler than we had expected but the good food and great company more than made up for it. Laurie and I shared a caesar salad and a pizza for lunch, I enjoyed the salad more than the pizza, both were good but maybe my flavour expectations of the pizza were too high. It is always a bonus when someone else drives, and unlike when I drive we secured prime parking for both lunch and the exhibit.

This is most likely one of the strangest exhibits that we have encountered, and in the same thought, it was also at one of the strangest places possible. So let’s explain a few little things that we discovered, first of all the difference in the exhibit size was not caused by shrinkage from the trip across the Atlantic, no actually there is more than one exhibit and they vary in size. Our tickets for the exhibit today were for four o’clock, and I must admit I expected there to be a number of people there, and technically there were but the during the hour we spent at the exhibit, there were only six people in total, now it was a Tuesday afternoon, but still. Included was a 20 minute video about reducing our carbon footprint, Dr. Suzuki was involved in the making of the video and it also was very informative.

So let’s look at the exhibit, a six meter globe suspended from the ceiling of a church is something that you don’t see often, as this is the first one I have seen in seventy some years. The globe was actually rotating, taking approximately three minutes to complete a single revolution, I understand that the globe was made up of NASA views of the earth that have been stitched together to create the exhibit. The desire was to create the earth as it would be seen if being viewed from the moon or the space station, and while I have never viewed earth from the moon, I certainly can imagine that it could be true. This exhibit has been in a number of different locations and from what I have read and seen many of these other exhibits gave viewings from different levels which would have allowed us better viewing of the northern hemisphere area. And I guess the cloud cover shown is natural and real but a little less would have made the experience a little more enjoyable.

Now was the exhibit worth the price of admission? A big resounding YES, if for no other reason than just to gain perspective, everyone commented on how big the Pacific Ocean appeared, and how much of the earth is actually covered by water. We also were surprised how much cloud cover there was, I for one had a globe as a child, but this is so much cooler. The venue had to go through some major changes, like removing all of the church pews, covering most of the stained glass windows, and I can only imagine the expense incurred bring this exhibit to a church in Exeter Ontario. But this exhibit is only there for a month, so I hope the word gets out and they get some more people there to experience it.

Friday June 9th and although there had been an open fire ban introduced to the area a week ago, today the county has added campfires to the ban as well today, never a popular ban at a campground but with all the forest fires burning all across the country I guess it should have been anticipated. The crazy part is the wording of the ban seems to include propane fire pits as well, very unusual as normally a fire ban excludes these propane fire pits as much of our winters are spent in areas with campfire restrictions that do accept them.

Well it’s Monday morning the 12th of June, the day after the the Canadian Open. So for those of you who are not golf fans once a year the PGA (Pro Golf Association) make the trek north to Canada for a golf tournament, the venue moves around a number of good Canadian golf courses and this year it was held just north of Toronto in North York at the Oakdale Country Club, and for the last seventy Canadian Opens a Canadian golfer has not won this Canadian national tournament. But that all changed yesterday, as on the fourth playoff hole. Nick Taylor from British Columbia native has secured the long awaited Canadian win. Our last close chance happened back in 2004 when Mike Weir lost in playoff holes to Vijay Singh, it was a true heartbreaker for Canadian golf fans. This year it was a playoff between Nick Taylor and Tommy Fleetwood an English player, and Nick has won it with a astonishing 72 foot long eagle putt on the fourth playoff hole to secure the title and win the trophy!

Other than the excitement of the golf yesterday we are under dreary skies here in Ontario with rain today, oh I’m not complaining about the rain, as we needed this rain badly, mid-June and the lawns were starting to brown off, and it has been a steady rain that started overnight and continued into today. The problem is that the temperature has dropped almost as fast as the rain with today forecast high of 13°C (56°F) in fact the whole week is looking to be cooler till the weekend which should bring temperatures back up into the 20°C (70°F) range. Typical unpredictable Ontario weather, but the rain should help with the fire hazard.

Today we had our Huron County health department inspection of the pool at the park, after working within the guidelines of the British Columbia health board last year it is somewhat amazing how different the rules can be, what was a concern in British Columbia is not even a concern to be checked here. But Ontario wants the chemicals checked every two hours while British Columbia was twice a day, we are having a issue with the alkalinity of the pool water, just an issue of being on well water, and our readings are always on the high side. The issue is to bring it within the desired range it means adding a lot of corrosive chemical which could be hard on both equipment and people. It is not a new issue and certainly provides no danger to anyone using the pool, it is just an issue of not fitting into the desired box here in Ontario, while we would fit nicely into the British Columbia box.

Well, the results are in and long and the short of it is, our pool inspection was a fail because of the high alkalinity of the pool water, so now the fun begins to make the pool water a government acceptable mix of chemicals. It can be brought into the parameters, but this old fart still has trouble understanding how a mix of muriatic acid and sodium bisulphate is better for swimmers than straight chlorinated water. The issue is really balancing the mix to keep all three standards within the proper parameters, because adjusting one effect’s the other two, and it’s usually in a negative manner.

Tuesday June 13th, and I’m going to do battle with the Ontario government today, it will be the day of trying to renew my drivers licence and health card that expired last September. It expired because I needed to re-write my air brake endorsement, and to be very honest the whole “air brake endorsement” is simply a money grab by the province in the first place and to make every truck driver re write the exam every licence renewal is definitely a money grab.

So I start my quest at the “Service Ontario” (just a name, service is totally optional) office in Goderich, to see if I could write the test there, but I was told that I would have to drive to Clinton to write the test. The term writing makes it sound like I would be putting pen to paper which is not what happens, it is actually all done on a touch screen computer terminal. Twenty multiple choice questions with instant feedback as to whether you chose correct, 80% is required for a pass which allows only 4 mistakes, now I did purchase an air brake study book some five or six years ago. I have a good working knowledge of the different air brake systems as I was a certified truck technician, but that was a few years ago and it was before Canada went metric so I was trained in psi (pounds per square inch) as opposed to kPa (kilopascal) which is always confusing to an old fart like myself. But I got to Clinton to the drive test location, I paid my $16 for the privilege to take the test, I passed with three wrong so 85%. But this drive test office can not do my renewal so now I have to drive back to the “Service Ontario” office back in Goderich, where they quickly took my $90 for my drivers license renewal but because I didn’t have a photo identification other than the two pieces issued by the province of Ontario, I was unable to renew my health card, after all you couldn’t expect the office that issues the photo identification to accept something that they had actually issued, could you.

So now I have to sit back and hope that they will actually send my new licence before we leave for Arizona in October, and I will take another run at getting a health card renewal next week, but just one battle at a time.

Well Friday June 16th and our second pool inspection is scheduled for today, and I’m feeling pretty good about our chances of passing today. Dropping the alkalinity has also drove the Ph level way down but I think I have got both of the numbers into an acceptable level, the chlorine level is well within the parameters but we are just waiting for the inspectors seal of approval. Well the inspector just left and we have walked the tightrope and got our approval, so the pool can open tomorrow as scheduled.

I’m going to close this blog out here, as we are settling into the summer routine at the park, the second couple has made it much easier and certainly more enjoyable. We didn’t take a lot of photos during this period, with the wildfire smoke making it seem overcast and then a week with rain and real overcast skies, and temperatures have fallen down in to low double digits (low fifties), we even had to fire up the heater again!

Let’s bring on some summer warmth!

Blog 480

Day 2082