June 19, 2005

June 19, 2005

West Hawk Lake day 33 of 113

YEAR 2 DAY 2

 

Today was mostly sunny, hot, and humid.

The animals woke me at 6:20 A.M. to be fed. After I fed them and walked Bo, I decided I might as well stay up. I wasn't feeling particularly well, and was having a bit of difficulty sleeping anyway. I went and showered, then did a bit of clean up of some very littered camp sites. The Park Patrol were also out early, evicting last night's trouble makers and cleaning up the messes they left behind. These "young adult" campers get themselves drunk by about 9:30 P.M., then head to the bar beside the campground and drink themselves into a stupor by the time the bar closes at 2:00 A.M.. They roll back through the campground from 2:00 until 2:30 making as much noise as seems humanly possible, and the Park Patrol are right here to quiet them down, or evict them if they won't. The Park Patrol can't send them out of here driving drunk at 2:30 A.M. so they try to get them to sleep, and then are back to roust them out between 6:30 and 8:00 A.M.. This morning the Park Patrol were also taking photos of the horrible messes left behind by the drunks. They will attach a photo to the tickets they send the campers, and they keep copies of the photos as evidence if these hoodlums decide to plead not guilty to the violations. It's hard for me to admit this, but I'm at a point in my life where I'm thinking the solution is to ban campers below 25 years of age !

I made some café au lait, using my New Orleans Café du Monde chicory coffee, then sat on the sofa reading a book. A violent thunderstorm blew in suddenly around 9:00 A.M., with much thunder and lightning. There was a lightning strike somewhere here in the campground. The power went out for a few seconds. Bo and Teddy bolted for safety. Bo into bed with Joanne, Teddy under the rocker / recliner. After the thunderstorm, I went to the campground office to get online and download investment data. I want to do an analysis of our investment portfolios after exactly a year of travel, to see how we fared, expenses versus investment growth. I returned to the trailer and read some more, until I felt sleepy. I went back to bed until noon. After napping, and a late lunch, we had a slow, lazy day. The sky had cleared, and it became hot and humid. We assisted quite a few over night campers arriving this afternoon, helping them to select sites and get set up, etc.. Teddy's screen tent was all wet inside, so we had to drain it and dry it. I wrote some postcards. We have a few people that we promised a year ago we would send postcards to every 3 months.

We had fresh perogies for supper. The Falcon Lake grocery store occasionally has fresh perogies for sale. I worked on my journal and investment files outside at the picnic table, watching deer walk by from time to time. The young buck that had little stubs on top of his head 2 weeks ago, and about foot long antlers a week ago, now has a small rack. I didn’t know their antlers grow quite that quickly.

We accepted a neighbour's invitation to join them around their campfire. Then I worked on investment analysis while Joanne baked muffins. She's going to spend a few days with her sister in Winnipeg this week, so she's leaving me a stock pile of muffins. The stock market growth in the last year has resulted in growth of our investments quite in excess of what the first year of travelling has cost us. That dampens our enthusiasm for buying another business.

I have just returned from walking to the bathroom shortly after midnight. The near empty campground is silent. The warm night air is still. The sky is clear. The moon is full. A shooting star streaked across the sky. Fireflies are flitting around. The doe and two fawns crossed in front of me, visible in silhouette in the moonlight. Moments like that make life worthwhile. Well ... that and the money we made in the stock market. HA HA HA !

DSK