Day 21
Travel Time:
~ 2 hours
NM today: 8
NM total: 528
Locks today:
2
Locks total:
58
OMG! OMG! OMG!
BUGS! BUGS! BUGS! I had to abort
the rest of my blogging last night as we were invaded by tons of bugs. All the screens were in place but apparently
these bugs were skinny enough to find their way through the mesh. First we saw one land on Clark’s charts that
he was studying, so he killed that one, then another, and another. The fluorescent light overhead had a couple
of bugs at first, but as we watched in horror we saw that we had more and more
bugs – on the table, on the floor, on the rugs, on the window sill, everywhere
we looked and tried to step it seemed there were numerous bugs.
We pulled
out both the bug zapper and the Off candle that we had purchased just that
morning and turned on both. The glow
from the bug light acted like a black light so Clark’s and my white T-shirts
became most attractive to the bugs. Soon
I found they were crawling all over my shirt, i.e. me. I ripped off my shirt so that I was uncovered
from the waist up to get them away from me.
I told Clark to do the same, but he said he didn’t want them crawling on
his skin. I couldn’t convince him that
they were only interested in white or bright surfaces and his skin did not
qualify. Since the lights were out, I
guess he didn’t believe that I had no clothes on from the waste up.
The bugs
were somewhat attracted to the bug light but not enough to enter and get
zapped. They were more interested, as I
said, in any surface that turned white or bright from the glow of the bug
light. I think they are not meant for
indoors. Anyway, I pulled out the Off
Lantern we had purchased and lit that baby up to smoke them out. We vacuumed up a number that were covering
the floor in front of the sliding door.
We wiped up the ones that were covering the bathroom floor and the ones
on the dining table and kitchen counters.
We both decided we didn’t dare open the door to the boat to take a trip
up to the washrooms for the night, so we left everything as it was and got
ready for bed.
Fortunately,
the bedroom had been totally dark through all this so no bugs were interested
in that room. Still I was convinced that
I would have nightmares all night long about bugs crawling on me. Surprisingly, although I went to sleep
thinking about bugs and woke up thinking about bugs, I slept well in between! I woke up at 6:05 and decided I needed to get
up and immediately wished I hadn’t. What
we couldn’t see in the dark the night before, I could see in the morning light
and it was not pretty. We had hundreds
of alive and mostly dead bugs all over the boat outside and still some we had
missed on the inside.
The Off
Lantern must have killed the bugs as they came to our boat trying to get in or
having gotten in succumbed to the vapor given off by the candle. I carefully got dressed trying not to step on
any of the corpses in the process. I
then wiped up what I could from non-carpeted surfaces. I didn’t want to run the vacuum with Clark
still sleeping so that had to wait. By
the time I came back from the washroom Clark was stirring so I could make a bit
more noise. I gave him the vacuum so he
could get the carpeted area near the bedroom.
I headed outside with a bucket of water to wash living and dead bugs
(hundreds of them) off the boat. I
couldn’t even think about eating breakfast with the situation the way it
was. Ugh!
Finally we
had either vacuumed up, wiped up, or washed up 99% of the bugs. I’ll be finding the other 1% for the next
several days I am sure. This bug episode
is worse than the 2012 Waterford, NY bug infestation because for that one at
least we were able to contain it to the outside of the boat even though it was
harder to clean the remains of the May flies off the fiberglass. Moral of the story, boating is not all fun
and games. On the bright side (I always
try to find a bright side), the boat is cleaner now than it was before the bug
attack.
We pulled
away from the lock wall to start the day’s travels just after 9:00 the second I
finished eating my breakfast. We decided
to head to a marina tonight– not due to the “camping out” nightmare but a
welcome change after last night’s challenge.
Our next stop was Buckhorn – only two locks and two hours away, so a
nice short trip. Along the way we passed through Lovesick Lake.
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| Lovesick Lake on route to Buckhorn |
We got into the marina,
Buckhorn Yacht Harbour, at 11:00 after very confusing instructions from the
first-day-on-the-job dockhand which sent us past the marina into waters where
Clark was afraid we might hit bottom. We
didn’t and we managed to find our way back to the marina and to the slip once
we saw her waving her arms frantically from shore.
Our first
order of business was to check our mail forwarding service to see if we had any
mail that had arrived. In the 3 weeks we
have been gone from home, no mail has been delivered to our home and we have
seen none at our boating address. We’re
getting worried to say the least. We
discovered that the post office is not including the full address – like sending
mail to an apartment complex without including the apartment number – someone has
to figure out where it goes by hand. I
called the post office and spent over an hour on the phone with them with very
little satisfaction. They did not seem
to be familiar with their own rules and regulations. Very frustrating. Thank goodness I have a VoIP Vonage phone on
the boat so the time spent on hold and arguing with the post office was not on
my cellular phone plan!
By the time
we got through with the necessary business items, it was 1:30 already. We knew rain was forecast for later in the
day so we decided to have lunch in town as a treat and dinner on the boat. We found a recommended restaurant in town
called “The Olde Ice House” where I was able to order roast beef with Yorkshire
pudding. I think the Yorkshire I make
myself is better, but it was good just the same. As soon as we left the restaurant, it started
to rain – drizzle first and then heavier.
We walked around town – first to the information center, then the
general store which turned out to be just a convenience store with a fancy
name, the hardware store, the bakery, and the Foodland. Besides being interested in checking out the
stores, we were trying to dodge raindrops.
When it appeared to be getting lighter and the thunder and lightning had
moved on, we walked the 1.5 miles back to the boat in the rain.
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| Buckhorn Monument |
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| On the road to Foodland and the Bakery |
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| Stuffed Bear with cub inside the hardware store |
We hung out
in the boat the rest of the day – me blogging and Clark catching up on world
news with the Wall Street Journal on his iPad.
Tomorrow we head for Bobcaygeon, and I’m hoping to find WiFi there as
well, if not at a marina, then at least at a library.
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