Only hiccup for this year is that some of the campsites are now, for the first time in the history of the park, reservation-only fee sites. We're sure to have some interesting times with visitors over that. That process isn't new to Donna & I as we've used it for years in Shenandoah Natl Park. But when you go from free to fee, it gets interesting - especially when the national park is seen by some local individuals as an intrusion into the way things use to be.
And I can see their point. It wasn't too bad to pick up a permit at the boat ramp, fill it out, leave a copy at the boat ramp & boat on out to pick up your favorite campsite that your family has camped at for years (think "family tradition") on a first-come, first served basis. Now, if you want that campsite, you gotta go online, reserve it, and pay a nightly fee. Since Voyageurs doesn't have an entrance fee, this is how you recover costs to maintain screen toilets, picnic tables, tent pads, boat docks, bear-proof food lockers, etc, at the campsites. And given we survived the new boat reservation system two years ago, we'll probably survive this one, too.
The Coast Guard had determined that Rainy Lake is now ice free and the navigation buoys are in place. There's also more deer hanging around here this year (3) than we saw the last time we volunteered here (1). And one of them looks pregnant. They're skittish when we walk near them, but seem to be almost oblivious to motor vehicles. And they blend in perfectly with the woods. So we're becoming accustomed to looking intently around every curve when we're out on the roads. The ticks are out, too. So now we itch even when nothing is around.
It's getting warmer. We're suppose to be in the 70s this weekend. The birch trees leafed out on Tuesday. You could really see the difference between our morning and evening walks on Tuesday. Other trees are following suite. By this time next week, we'll barely be able to see our neighbor's trailer.
On a different note, we also got Ben, the park's electrician, to rewire our power pole to balance out the power a little better. We still don't have the wattage to run everything as we'd like, but we can now turn off a few things & run the microwave/convection oven as Donna pleases. And that's a big deal! Our surge protector still drops us offline due to low voltage every now & then, but it's still not as bad as it was. This has also pushed us to invest more heavily in LED bulbs. We're changing the ones we use the most to LED. Where we can, we're buying "warm white" LEDs to mimic the "color" of the original, non-LED bulbs. The picture below has the warm white LED bulbs on the left and shows a good comparison to the "cool" white LED bulbs on the right. If my math is correct, we'll drop about 5 amps off our power usage of lights each evening. And given our current electrical power conditions, that can be the difference between dropping offline due to low voltage when you turn an appliance on or staying up on "shore" power.
So that's the highlights of our week. Hope you're having a good time. Enjoy your Memorial Day weekend! Later, David
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