Thanks, Metchosin. What's a Metis Card?

Hey Chief Chaos. Thanks for the tips on where to stay and what to do in Niagra. Sorry we can't take you with us, but I guess you can probably understand ;-)

We've had quite a lot of rain in the past couple of weeks. A lot of it has been a really heavy drenching downpour kind of rain. We ran out of LP gas last Thursday night. I was still learning how the system works, and I didn't stay on top of the supply situation. It was raining hard and the temperature was probably in the 40s (F) when the gas ran out. That was a cold, damp, night. The de-humidifier wasn't up to the job. It puts out a small amount of heat, and I turned the computer on just to have the little bit of heat it puts out. They probably helped a tiny little bit, but Friday morning was cold and wet and no fun at all.

I got the LP tanks filled, and that was a big improvement. Then I wrapped up the tent compartment where we sleep in mylar emergency blankets that I taped together, and then duct-taped to the trailer. What a difference! Last Friday night was the best night's sleep I'd had in weeks. It was the first time I didn't feel damp all night long. It was also nice to have a more even temperature in the sleeping compartment. On the cooler nights in the past, I'd feel toasty warm under the blankets, but any exposed skin would feel cold. I find that distracting when I'm trying to sleep.

After a few days of using the mylar, I've discovered that it's important to provide some kind of drainage for the water that collects on the inside of the mylar due to condensation. So I've taped some drinking straws through the mylar where the water is most likely to collect, so that they can be outlets for the water. They seem to be working quite well.

The rain we had last week was so heavy, water was washing over the river rock in my diversion ditch, and depositing mud all over our astro-turf. The nice thing about the astro-turf is that I can take it over to a little grassy hillock and hose it down with our garden hose. I pulled the edge of the astro-turf slightly over the gravel in the ditch at the upper end, and I'm hoping that'll help divert the water under the astro-turf instead of the water flowing over it. So far, so good.

I'm a bit surprised at the number of people who live more or less permanently in campgrounds. I knew about people staying in campgrounds for a whole season, because my parents used to spend four or five months of the year (the warmer part) in a fifth-wheel trailer they had set up in a campground on Mount Desert Island in Maine. But there are people for whom the campground is their only home and they live there (here) all year long. It appears that there are several families and individuals who stay here at the KOA all year, and I get the impression that it is a pretty common thing at many other campgrounds. I'm not sure why they do it. It isn't really very cheap to stay in a campground if you use the electric and septic hook-ups. The monthly rent for our lot in the mobile home park in Alabama is less than a quarter of what it is here in the KOA Kampground.

I'm also suprised at the number of tenters who use the campground as home, presumably while they're looking for someplace else to live. Two of the sites across the little roadlet from us have people who are staying in tents and who appear to go off to work during the day. And I've noticed several others during the time we've been here.   I really felt for them during the heavy downpour and the cold. Our cold, damp trailer was luxurious compared to their little dome tents sitting right on the sopping wet ground.

Another thing that amazes me (just a little) is how fast the campground can fill up and then empty out. Eary in the day on Friday, I noticed that our part of the campground was almost empty. Then later in the evening, the sites were almost completely full. It reminds me a bit of how mushrooms suddenly pop up in their dozens after a rain.

Dean and Linda cleared out of their site here at the KOA on this past Saturday, heading for another campground. They'd been our neighbors since we came here. They're from Minnesota. Dean is an airplane mechanic (at the supervisor level). Several months ago, Dean's job dissappeared, and because his is a union job, he bumped someone with less seniority from his or her job here in Michigan. So they've been living in their camper here at the KOA until they could sell their house back in Minnesota. Now they've learned that a shop in another part of the country (Nashville, I think) might be terminated, and Dean might get bumped from his job here. I asked Dean if people should be worried about the fact that the airlines are cutting back on the number of mechanics they employ. He said not yet, but maybe some time in the future. He said that these days one mechanic is expected to do the same amount of work that two mechanics used to do. He said that the routine maintenance is getting done, but sometimes there isn't time to do the non-routine maintenance. They both still travel by airplane and they aren't worried yet.

Anyway, thanks goodness for duct tape is what I say.