August 30th, 2009: Sorry about last week’s Report – we were at Little Loon Lake and there is no Internet connection there. You likely would have been bored anyway, with my stories about playing Blongo, playing Card Bingo, sitting around visiting, and drinking coffee.
Little Loon Regional Park is on Little Loon Lake, about seven kms east of Glaslyn, just off No. 3 Highway. The lake is long and narrow, roughly north and south. The Regional Park is on the west side, close to the northern end of the lake. It has a very nice man-made beach and swimming area, a camp kitchen, excellent showers and bathrooms, plus several toilets spotted around for convenience. Very nice playground for kids, a mini-golf, and great open areas for any types of activities. Throw in a nine-hole golf course, which our members found to be pleasant and well-maintained, and you have a really exceptional recreational facility.
I don’t know how many campsites they have available; there are a large number of seasonal ones right along the lake, some nicely shaded ones for short-term campers, and a big space out in the open where we camped. There are ten sites there but we doubled up so could have handled twenty rigs. All sites close to the core area are serviced with 30- or 15-amp power and water. There are some sites farther down the lake that are unserviced; on the other hand, they are right on the lake.
Doreen is a native of Glaslyn; she spent her whole life there prior to marrying me. On Sunday, the Park put on a pancake breakfast and she ran into a lot of people she knew from the old days. Very pleasant!
The Outing is three days, Friday through Sunday, but we (and several others) went out on Wednesday and stayed until Monday. The weather was cool, hot, sunny, cloudy and windy. We had a ball.
Street repairs and improvements are going on all over the city; you never know when you leave the house if you will be able to get where you are going or not. I guess that is the price of progress. After years of neglect, there’s a lot of catch-up to do.
We are in a quandary about our motor home. It is getting quite elderly – twenty three years – and there are places where it is showing its age. On the other hand, it is running like a charm, everything works, and we have never seen a layout we like as well. Should we sell it before anything drastic goes wrong? Replacing it with a new one is out of the question; buying a used one means buying someone else’s problems. Mint condition means nothing; if it’s mint, it means it has spent an awful lot of time doing nothing, and that seems to be harder on them than frequent use. I guess we’ll just keep looking; there’s not much on the market right now but sometimes something comes along that we just can’t resist.
The big market these days seems to be 5th wheels and trailers; on the other hand, several members of our group are trading in their trailers for motor homes. 5th wheels and trailers take quite a bit of setting up and taking down at a site; motor homes, on the other hand, are often a matter of driving in, plugging in, and relaxing. There is rarely any leveling to do unless one is very fussy, which we are not. As long as Doreen’s side of the bed is higher than mine, so I am not crowding her against the wall, we are happy.
The end of August, and we are finally getting some summer weather! We were promised several days of summer for our Loon Lake weekend, but it didn’t really materialize. Now they say it is going to be sunny and hot for the next week. I’ll believe it when I see it.
We drove out to Watrous yesterday with some friends. Many crops look as if they are ready for the swather but we didn’t see anything knocked down yet. Last Monday, near North Battleford, we saw some Canola in swath. Let’s hope we get a decent September so this crop can be taken off in good condition.
