Presqu’ile Needs Some Attention

I've camped at Presqu’ile Provincial Park in Ontario every summer and at times in the spring and fall for over 40 years. It is a home away from home and holds a lot of great memories as a kid and an adult.

It has gone through a lot of changes over those years, as you would imagine, some for the better and some for the worse. I could write a book on these changes but will try to keep my thoughts as brief as possible.

It still remains a great park for camping with good sites however the CAMIS reservation system is not the best online. I spoke with many campers who are dissatisfied with how it works now and what appeared to be very slow servers. Twice while booking sites I was kicked off 3 or 4 steps into reserving the site and lost the site I wanted. I never had this issue in the past. I hope they upgrade before next winters reservation period.

For some reason, maybe to save on fuel costs, the park workers weren’t cutting the grass as often as they should prior to the lack of rain when it was growing a lot. Plus, there are a lot of areas that used to be kept cut that no longer are and this looks dreadful. I'm sure it has something to do with the naturalists wanting to keep the park a more natural setting. It just looks like they're lazy or too cheap to cut the grass the way it used to be. I’d say it makes it harder to spot the deer but that’s another story.

The main roads in the campground need to be paved or resurfaced properly right away. Not only have they been patched over and over and are very bumpy but the dust kicked up by passing cars is disgusting and an absolute disgrace. Anyone camped on the side of the road where the dust is blowing towards is constantly eating the dirt, having to clean their vehicles and must keep their tents and trailers closed up tight to avoid having everything covered in grit.

This has been like this for many years and so far the best solution the park staff have come up with is to pour a little water on the roads to try and keep the dust down but this happens infrequently and does little to solve the problem. Campers will even walk back and forth with jugs of water and will wet the road themselves for some relief. Not exactly what these paying customers had in mind for an activity when they booked their vacation.

For the amount of money that is spent in the park each year you would think they could afford to properly pave the roads most in need. At the very least, pave the main roads around High Bluff and Trails End where the problem is the worst. Use recycled asphalt on the other campground roads. But it seems the powers that be would rather stay under budget and continue to find temporary and cheap solutions that really aren't solutions at all.

One nice change recently was the addition of newly built comfort stations on High Bluff, The Pines and the Maples campgrounds. Although I guess they couldn't afford to put hot water into the Pines washroom. Now they just need to build one more with showers near Trails End.

I'd also suggest that as every camper registers upon entry, they be given not just the park newspaper that contains the rules but a separate piece of paper with five or six of the main rules that are constantly being broken. Among those are people cutting through campsites not their own and washing dishes at the fresh water taps where people get their drinking water.

And speaking of drinking water, what does the health inspector think about the dumping station being located only a few metres from the fresh water tap. While one camper dumps their septic tanks, another is filling their holding tank with drinking water. It would be a smart idea to move the location of the drinking water across the road where trailers could fill up with water in a much healthier location. Plus with the tanks being on different sides of the trailers they could set up the new water filling station so trailers could fill up on either side.

Finally, the biggest safety issue in the park is the speeding. How a child hasn't been killed or injured is just luck. The speed limit in the campground is 20 Km/h yet it is not uncommon to see cars doing 40-60 Km/h at times in the camp area. Campers can often be heard yelling at the speeders to slow down but if the security would set up on foot and catch and fine a few each weekend, it would go a long way towards solving that problem. It wouldn't take long to nab a few and they're easy to spot. You can see their dust flying from some distance down the road.

I know to some this all might sound like nitpicking but the back of every campers registration card that goes in the post at the campsite has a place where suggestions can be added and turned in. I have a sneaky suspicion that a lot of those cards are either ignored or just filed and forgotten. This might be a little more public and harder to ignore.

I love the park and spend a lot of time there with family and friends and I think these changes if implemented would go a long way towards improving the stay for each and every paying customer.

Space Station Flies By

Earlier tonight I was visiting my parents at their trailer by Lake Ontario. It was a gorgeous evening for a campfire by the lake.

I had my iPod Touch with me and as a night sky watcher, I also had my Satellite Flybys App installed and handy. It's a cool little gadget that gives you the times that the ISS and other old rockets and space stuff will be flying over your area.

So knowing that the space station would be passing by, I set up my camera on a tripod and waited for it to appear.

Below you will see the results of my effort. Obviously the streaking light is the space station. In the first you can see it passing through the Big Dipper and in the second it is moving away from me. Both photos were 30 second exposures.

I thought you might find them interesting so I figured I'd share them with you.

Stormy Day in Ontario

Yesterday we had some nasty weather roll across the Province of Ontario which produced some devastating storms in some communities. The rest of us were lucky enough to only deal with the numerous warnings and some intense active weather.

While four confirmed tornadoes hit some areas and caused one death and millions in damage, we dodged a bullet. There were tornado warnings and watches for our area which had us on edge a little as the evening progressed.

In the end, we were dealt some nasty thunderstorms with non-stop lightning, strong winds and heavy rain but the trailer I was in with my parents remained firmly planted on the ground.

Prior to the worst of the storm arriving I managed to take some photos of the impressive cumulus clouds on the leading edge reaching high into the sky. Quite often clouds like these are a good warning sign that trouble is on the way...and as it turns out, they were right again.

Copyright © All rights reserved.


Copyright © All rights reserved.

On Holidays

Another Campsite
Originally uploaded by *Bundy*

Just a head's up to my regular readers that I am enjoying a holiday break this week and likely won't be updating my blog much until I am done relaxing, sleeping, golfing, traveling and spending time at my parents trailer by the lake.

I hope you can get by without me for a week or so. I promise I'll be back with many more opinions that you'll either agree with or hate me for very soon.

Thanks to those of you who stop by as often as you do. It's nice to know that I'm not just doing this to release my creative juices and that some people actually enjoy reading what I have to say. Since I left the radio biz, this blog has been about the only way I have to express myself and it has been very therapeutic.

See you again soon!

Bundy

Presqu’ile, Show Me the Money

For those of you who enjoy camping in Ontario, don’t you just love going into the Provincial Parks with their nicely paved campground roads? OK, maybe you can find that at almost every other park, except Presqu’ile Provincial Park near Brighton, Ontario.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Presqu’ile. In fact, I love it so much I’ve camped or visited there for 40 years and my parents have been going even longer than that. It has changed a lot over that time, some good and some bad, but it’s still like a home away from home. I know several of the staff at the park and they’re all super people but perhaps it’s time to stop worrying about going over budget for a change and get the park back in shape.

Believe it or not, birders, naturalists and tree-huggers aren’t the only people who use the park. While I respect those people and the fun they have, I’d hazard to guess that most of the parks revenue comes from your average campers. These are people who enjoy meeting with other campers, spending time with their families and sitting by campfires under star-filled skies. Sure they might look for the odd bird or plant but most are there to get away from the phone and to enjoy the great outdoors.

I can’t even begin to imagine how much revenue Presqu’ile generates each year. Just for fun, let’s assume the park is full for a weekend and in most cases during the summer it is. An average night of camping is around $35 and with 400 campsites; the revenue generated from only a two night weekend stay is $28-thousand dollars. Multiply that by 12 weekends from June to September and it comes to $336-thousand dollars. That's just the weekends during the peak part of the season and doesn't even count all of the sites that are full from Sunday to Thursday, the early Spring or the Fall camping. The number would grow a lot more if we counted those.

Of course, that’s just the campers and the numbers don't include senior or disability discounts. We haven't even factored in the daily passes purchased by visitors coming in for a picnic, day at the beach or a drive through to see the remaining few deer that weren’t killed during the last few culls. Believe it or not, I’ve actually seen a couple of deer this year but it is a rare sight. A day pass is around $16 per vehicle so there’s a lot more extra revenue that will come in from those.

OK, I think you get the picture, money shouldn’t be an issue. My point is this; why won’t the management of the park or the powers that be spend some of that money to upgrade the steadily deteriorating roads in the campgrounds? I’m starting to think they don’t even read the suggestions left on the backs of the expired permits. Patch jobs just don’t work anymore. Surely there must be some money left after paying the staff and any other bills to lay some asphalt and do the job properly.

Last summer the dust created by the lazy and quick fix effort to improve the camping area roads was unbelievable. It was everywhere including all over the trees and vehicles, not to mention inside the trailers. At times you couldn’t even sit outside and enjoy the day. How did the park respond to this problem? They sent around a small water truck to trickle some H2O on the roads to keep the dust down. Would anyone like to guess how well that solution worked in the 28 plus degree heat we had? The roads were dry and dusty again in a matter of minutes.

Forget the dust, how about the fact that the campers are forced to use the roads when driving and pulling their trailers to their sites. We’re talking about trailers that cost any where from $5-thousand dollars to several hundred-thousand dollars for motor homes and luxury bus models. That’s a lot of money to have bouncing around causing damage to your second home or only home for some campers. I can just imagine how many dishes, TV’s or other items have been broken over the years.

Some might argue that paving the roads might increase the speed of the vehicles in the campground. Trust me when I tell you, there are plenty of people speeding in there already and I am amazed a child hasn’t been killed yet. I don’t know why security is never around to slow people down. After the roads are paved, put in a few speed bumps or speed humps like they have in the U.S. to help with that problem. Four or five speed reducers in each camping area would be a lot better than the potholed roads they have now.

Of course, nothing surprises me anymore. Last year the main road leading into the Park was ripped up to be resurfaced just before the August long weekend. That is easily the busiest weekend of the year and the dust created along that road for the next few weeks was disgusting. The trees were white and anyone riding a bike or walking along the road had to have a shower to clean the filth off them after they finished their outing. Obviously someone who makes more money than me but with fewer brain cells came up with that idea. No doubt they did it because it saved money somehow and that’s all that matters isn’t it? Perhaps this was a screw-up on Brighton’s part since it is a county road but it still reflects poorly on the park and they should have fought it and held off until September when the peak season was over.

Someone needs to step up, open the purse strings a little and finally get the roads paved once the park closes after Thanksgiving this year. It’s time for Presqu’ile Provincial Park to stop shipping their profits to other Parks and keep some of that money for themselves, increase the budget and get the campground roads fixed. If not for the reasons mentioned above, then do it for all of those kids who are trying to rollerblade and keep falling because the roads are a mess.