Red Deer Log Cabins

Just outside the office window, hopping around on the driveway when I was on the phone.  They are such striking birds.  Day by day the bird population grows.  Any birders out there that want to count?  It should be easy to see 50 or so species in the next while, as they move through to their summer grounds.

Oh, and there is starting to be green in the landscape other than pine trees.  With all the rain the last while, grass is starting to show.  Trees are budding.  It's all happening.

Finally!  I hear peepers out there.
You know what that means...

Hope you found lots of eggs!

The Madawaska Country Store is installing gas pumps.  The drought is over!  I'm going to bet it will be an Esso, because the owner also has a store in Harcourt, where he has an Esso.

Environment Canada says it is 1C here, updated 17 minutes ago.  I have 9C, and all the snow from yesterday is melted.
Yay!

Indeed, I woke up to a landscape of white.  Amazing how long it takes to melt, and how quickly that gain can be obliterated.

Fear not though, spring is here, and the warm weather is coming.  I think people have lost touch with the fickleness of our weather because of central heating/cooling.  This is very typical weather.  So is spring flooding.  We get a lot of press on these weather situations, and people get stirred up needlessly. 

Flooding has become a major issue because humans are building on land that was historically flood plain.  A couple of decades of really calm weather lulled many municipalities into allowing building on what was known to be unstable land.  The lust for waterfront property, and the human sense of supremacy has made for these disasters.  Our ancestors weren't so dumb as people might like to think.

With regards to snow though, my memory serves that the long weekend in May can be a crapshoot.  Some of them have been hot an sunny.  2 years in 25 there have been firebans, because of a lack of spring rain coupled with high temps.  More of them have been cool and rainy, and there has been more than 2 with a skiff of snow, nothing substantial.

One Victoria Day weekend in the early 90s was fabulous.  Lots of people were here, swimming and canoeing.  One family stayed for the entire week.  On the Thursday, which was actually May 24, they packed up and went home though.  6 inches of snow fell in less than 2 hours.  They ran out of warm clothes for the youngster, and gave up.  The young one was happy though...
The snow was gone by the next morning.

Let this serve as a cautionary tale.  Weather forecasts are only as good as the forecasters.  The best way to enjoy nature is to BE PREPARED.  It doesn't take a lot, really, just some mindful packing.  Bring more than one of everything, even if it is a short visit.  Rubber shoes for dewy mornings, a light jacket, a sweater.  Extra socks are really important.  Dress in layers.

My memory is good.  I don't think our weather has changed much, because I can remember certain dates and the weather conditions, year over year.  There have always been fluctuations.  What has changed is other peoples' memories, and expectations.  Nature is bigger than all of us, and it will win every time.  Might as well get along, instead of fighting it.

To me!  Today is my 25th anniversary at Red Deer.
In honour of this auspicious occasion, tent campsites are $25/night this season.  That includes the tax, like all of the pricing here.  $25 for a night in paradise for 2 adults and their children under the age of 18.  Long holiday weekends are not included in this promotion and there is no week discount of 2 nights free.  For trailer sites using electricity and water add $5 (air conditioning or heat if needed is an additional $10).
I don't think you can find a less expensive campsite in Canada.

Today is similar to the day I arrived here take up residence.  Sunny, light breeze, a little bit of snow lying about.  Bird song.  Even the water level in the river is similar.  That first summer here was fantastic from a weather standpoint.

What do they eat before the ground thaws?  No worms to be found, but maybe there will be tomorrow, because it is raining.  I have seen robins for most of 2 weeks.
The amount of birdsong, when the sun is shining, is impressive.  Far beyond the 2 geese I heard the other day, there are now flocks flying about.  Considering how cold and snowy this winter has been, the melt is proceeding well.  Nothing overwhelming here.  Lots of bare patches on the ground.  The level in the river is up, probably because they are letting flow in from the control dam at Whitney, trying to avoid the floods they saw late in April 2013.
By the time the rain passes in another 24 hours, likely the snowbanks from plowing will be all but gone.

Now it's in routers and phones.  And the NSA has admitted that they have known about this bug for some time, and have been exploiting it.  So folks, all of those things that you didn't want everyone to know...the American government has been collecting the details.

Changing passwords is not effective, because the leak allows the new password to be collected as well until the problem is fixed.  Go ahead and fix the server, but if the router and mobile phone have hardware faults containing the bug, well, need I say more?
I have spoken with banks, and they insist that their systems are secure because of multi-layered security.  Yeah, right.
How much denial can we possibly stand with this? 
There is no internet security.  The oxymoron of our times...
I bet someone yesterday that the American government was complicit in this problem.  After all, they made a deal with Microsoft in 2003 to backdoor all PCs, so that the machines could spy on their owners.  I have the information in file, from a reputable IT specialist.  Edward Snowden has revealed the effects of this; it is not news now.

They're here!  Probably coasted in on the warm southwest wind today.
Let the nest building begin!

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26954540

I especially love the part where you are supposed to put your passwords on your smart phone, instead of writing them down.  Hackers are no good at cracking pen and paper.  When was the last time you heard of password theft through a non-digital medium?  At any rate, this is the kind of security issue that affects online, secure payment portals, as well as online banking, including credit card accounts.

Revenue Canada is scrambling. 

Apparently 2/3 of the world's secure servers are affected.  All of the social networks are at risk as well, but that is not threatening in the same way as financial breaches are.  Getting your financial identity back once it has been stolen can ruin you.  If anything happens, don't let the institution(s) suggest for a moment that any action of yours led to the infringement.  They all guarantee safe transactions.  Trouble is, when the crap hits, it may be difficult to determine where the breach occurred, so which institution is actually responsible?

See, I am not paranoid!  Hope you didn't get dinged!

If you rush out and change all of your passwords today, you may not be safe.  The bug is not fixed yet.

All transactions for reservations are done here off the web.  Very secure.  I do all of the transactions personally.  Very secure.  Maybe not as convenient as pointing and clicking, but absolutely no repercussions to booking a vacation.  I pay a premium to do manual credit card transactions, keeping your credit safe.

Is anyone else tired of the "branding" experience?  How many logos can a single soul possibly respond to?  Consider that huge manufacturing conglomerates have bought up brands, and even changed the recipes while maintaining the recognized look.  When does a brand cease being a brand?

Of course, people need to be able to identify a product, so that they can purchase it again.  However, I think this over the top branding is another thing that crowds peoples' brains, and something from which they need a rest.

Branding costs the consumer.  You already know this because of the difference in price at the supermarket between identical products, one packaged with the brand name, and the other, on the same shelf, packaged with the grocery store 'brand'.  The are made by contract for distribution through certain stores by the expensive brand manufacturer.

So why have all tourist regions embarked on "branding" exercises?  Does it mean anything (except that an 'expert' was hired to help them through the exercise)?  More signs, more logos, more names; does anyone really remember one from the other?  Or does the consumer just remember the good times, inconsequent of the brands?

That being said, the name that goes with this property, Red Deer, is a brand in this area.  People have been coming here since 1947 to have a good time, one way or another.  Same place, new faces, but a lot of return clients as well.  I had a woman here in her 70s who stayed here the first night of her honeymoon, 50 years before.  There was a couple here who honeymooned 35 years before.  There have been clients whose parents and grandparents were here hunting and fishing in the 1940s.  A couple of people have told me that a forefather helped to build the cabins in 1946, when the property first started taking tourists in, making its first shift from farming.  In my time here, I have had return clients from Europe, and lots from the US and Canada.  Because this is not primarily a trailer park, I don't have the "poor man's cottage" type of embedded clientele, but there are a lot of worldly travelers who return every couple of years.  There are a few who make this their favourite getaway, so they come by a couple of times a year, or every year.  It's quite the mix.  I've been here long enough also to see people who came as kids now arriving without their parents, but with their own children.  It's great.  There is no one discreet group of vacationer who enjoys the property.  They come from far and wide, in all shapes and sizes, and all age groups.  Many nationalities are represented.

Everyone welcome...you don't have to belong to a club.!  Have a slice of the simple life.

The first of the Canada Geese have arrived.  I know that isn't particularly exciting for anyone living in a city, where they stay all winter because people feed them.  What it means here is that there is open water. 
Inconsequent of the lack of snow, the poor condition of the trails, and the temperatures well above zero, I am still seeing and hearing snowmobiles.

Program on CBC right now, but for some reason I can't find the link.  The program schedule insists there is a documentary about Afghanistan playing.  Anyway, one component is about "nature deficit disorder" and again, the effect of not spending time disconnected from electronic devices, and especially in nature.  Sleep disorders, ADHD, obesity, anxiety, the list goes on...
Take a nature break, as often as possible.  Better than a pill, any day.

First sighting this spring.  That means the hibernators are coming out, waking up. 
I saw a raccoon crossing highway 523 a week ago, but I never take the first raccoon sighting seriously as an end to hibernation.  Depending on where they live, they may not hibernate.  If they have a warm place near a constant food supply, they will continue to forage and can be sighted on warm days throughout the winter.  City raccoons don't seem to hibernate; watch on any garbage collection day!

I just tried to map a route from here to Sudbury on Google Maps, and it still insists that Madawaska is near the town of Renfrew.  This is not correct.  I thought they had fixed this, but NO!  I have sent them another trouble report.  This has been going on for most of a year.  Dumping the browser cache has no effect on the map results either.
Please follow the information on my How To Get Here page for directions.  GPS is based on Google information, so following your GPS will still get you lost on a dead end dirt track east of the town of Maple Leaf, on highway 28, and nowhere near here.
Speaking with someone at Algonquin Park administration the other day, it turns out Algonquin Park has the same problem.  People following GPS to go to the East Gate at Whitney are not achieving their destination.  Different dead end on a different dirt road...just as scarey if you are driving in the dark.  Since cell phone coverage is spotty, due to geographical characteristics of the area, once you are stuck on that dead end, you may not be able to call for help.

As far as I know, you can still get free road maps from the Ministry of Transportation.  No cell signal required!