Still a learning experience

View from our campsite yesterday. The first come, first served spots along
the river are filling quickly despite the cold. weather. And, yes, there are
some guys who are hardy (or drunk) enough to indulge in tent camping. 

Every time we do something with the Guppy, we discover something else it would have been nice to have but we don't. Sometimes it's been fairly minor stuff -- a bottle opener, for example, or a decent-sized mixing bowl -- and sometimes it's definitely more important. Like a carbon monoxide detector. The Guppy has a smoke alarm but no carbon monoxide detector.

This was a serious oversight on our part. It doesn't make much difference when you're camping in warm weather and really don't care about heat, but when the temperature outside is in single digits? It would be kind of nice then to be able to run the furnace at night without worrying about waking up dead. We run the furnace during the day, get things reasonably toasty in here, and then it's time to retire for the night. The last thing we do before turning off the bedroom light is shut off the furnace -- and turning it on is the first thing we do when we crawl out of bed in the morning. I may have mentioned before that the Guppy tends to leak heat rather rapidly. Got up this morning and the bedroom thermometer read a balmy 35.9 degrees.

When I was in the fee booth yesterday and we were all chatting about the cold weather, I got asked how we were doing here in the Guppy. So I mentioned our carbon monoxide paranoia. The park superintendent suggested we invest in an electric blanket. Not a bad idea, I agreed, but the way things go, as soon as we spend the money on one the weather will turn warm. Exactly, was the response. Go buy one and make Spring happen.

It may get chilly in the Guppy, but it's got to be downright freezing in this
pop-up. The giant woodpile won't help much. They must be planning one
heck of a campfire to celebrate Opening Day.

I have actually thought about getting an electric blanket -- it would be nice when we're camping at places that do have electric service -- but neither the S.O. nor I are too keen on electric blankets since the time he almost burnt his house down. Back in his bachelor days, he had an electric blanket. He left for work one day not realizing he'd forgotten to turn the blanket off when he got up. It was wadded up on the bed, and by the time he got home it was starting to smolder. There were definite scorch marks. That was the last time there was an electric blanket in use any place he lived.

In any case, carbon monoxide detector is now on the shopping list. We'll be heading into Springfield on one of our days off next week and will pick one up then. Of course, by then the temperatures are supposed to have climbed back out of the Arctic and we won't need the furnace much anymore. The weather forecast for today actually has highs predicted in the 30s (above freezing), and by Tuesday it could be pushing 60. Still, a carbon monoxide detector is something we should have thought about right after we bought the Guppy, not almost 18 months later.

The view from the other end of Loop 2. If you enlarge the photo, the Guppy
is in the extreme background in line with a picnic table to the right of
the 5th wheel in the leftof the photo. 

In other news, the park is filling up despite the cold and the snow. Some of the regulars have been coming here for opening day since they were kids. One fellow told me yesterday he'd been here for every opening day since he was 16 -- and he qualifies for the senior discount now. I wonder if he saves his tags? Apparently there are some bragging rights involved in being able to have an extremely low number on the daily tag for opening day. The primo tag, of course, is number 1. We plan to do some fishing ourselves this month, but won't be part of the mob fighting for river bank space on Sunday. Things will thin out considerably during the week so we'll do our fishing when the pressure on the fish slacks off a little.