Quiet Days

It was another cold and blustery day at the park, and it was the Monday after the Christmas holiday, and the spring is browned out.  Needless to say, the park was dead.  I spoke to one group of visitors today.  They were the only ones who came to the park.  It was nice that I was able to devote so much time to them, but it would also be nice to have more than one car enter the park in a day.  My day started out in the usual fashion, I made a drive through the park.  I found a group of six deer in the parking lot!  It was too dark for good photos, so I didn't "catch" them.  I did stay to watch them for a little while, but they were a little unnerved by my presence so I moved on.  I put up the flags, opened the gate, and settled in to the office.  I did all of the usual end-of-the-week paperwork and answered some e-mails.  I updated the rainfall amount and the water level on our forms.  I also started preparing forms for this week and had to date some forms with 2010!  Its still a shock to me that we are so close to a year that I have always associated with futuristic, flying car type ideas.
While I was working on these forms, I had the whole year's daily water level readings in front of me.  We have had a wet year, so I decided to do some math.  The spring has been browned out, or flooded to the point of closing 26% of the year.  Not all years are this bad.  I looked back at the last three years, the time that I have been at Troy, and found that 21% of my time here has been browned out.  My first year gave me a false sense of security when we had low water levels all year.  You would think that I would be used to the floods by now, but it still bothers me.  I hate having to tell people on the phone the bad news and I hate even more to send people away to find other springs that are clear.  At least that group of three visitors enjoyed the park today.
After my paperwork was done, I went for a walk around the park and opened up the cabin.  It was so cold and windy that I didn't stay anywhere for very long.  Here is what I saw:



The water is almost on the dock.  I think it might be there by tomorrow.


When I returned to the office after my walk, I headed out to run my Monday errands.  Ichetucknee was just as quiet as Troy.  The only cars in the giant parking lot were employee cars.  Now you all know, the best day to visit a park if you want it all to yourself is the Monday after Christmas.  When I got back to Troy, I stopped at home to pick up some lunch and headed to the office.  I put away some office supplies that I had picked up from Ichetucknee, and responded to another e-mail.  Later in the afternoon, I encountered the only visitors and helped our volunteer break down the old gas box.  Another coworker and I stacked all of the bricks that lined the bottom of the box into the wheel barrow to be relocated.

We are expecting a low of 24 degrees tonight, so we had to drip faucets again tonight.  I meant to take care of the barn faucets on my way home, but I was on auto-pilot and went straight to the house.  I decided that I would take the dog for a walk to the barn instead of driving back.  Because we were on an official park task, I put Dozer's uniform on him.  I made it for him when he was a puppy.  It is just a joke, he has no official business in the park, but it is the same patch that is on my uniform and coat.  He did check the water for us though, everything was to his liking.