What Is Going On? (at the Humpback Visitor's Center)

When we pulled into the Humpback Visitors Center parking lot on Saturday to pick up some swing blades at the tool shed, this is what we saw:

Great balls of fire ..... our new trail maintenance tools finally came in!!  I can't imagine how we're going to get all this great stuff in the tool shed, but I want THIS one .... it's perfect for hauling those really big rocks I like to use on projects .... do you realize how exciting it is not to be limited to rocks under a few hundred pounds any more?!! Woo hoo! Somebody come right on over here and show me how to drive this thing .... it's got 'automatic', right?

What was that? They're not ours? Seriously? You're not joking even a little bit? Can we borrow them? No? Not even for an hour or two? Well drats ..... got a bandana? ..... I think I'm gonna' cry!

On a more serious note, we had a chat with one of the folks at the Visitor's Center (VC) and he told us that some of that "shovel ready" money from two years ago was finally available for work on the BRP.  The big projects are repaving the parking lots at the Visitor's Center and Humpback Rocks and all the overlooks.  The lots are not being expanded ..... the one at the VC will still be '41 spaces'. The sidewalks at the VC are also being replaced and the one behind the truck in the next picture has already been ripped out.

There is supposed to be an addition put on the end of the Visitor's Center and while they're doing some building anyway, we (two section maintainers) made a strong case for just going ahead and adding a new trail maintenance tool shed to the plans  ..... or at least a tool "closet" on the outside of the VC addition ...... nothing too big ..... I suggested maybe a modest 12 x 15 would be nice (?). 


In the meanwhile, there was that silt fencing to be dealt with in order to get to the tool shed ..... there were no breaks in the fence and I'm too old to leap things with a single bound any more. We used our tree-down-across-the-trail technique and carefully made our way over the plastic fencing one leg at a time.

One last note ..... we did inquire as to the 'time frame' for completion of the work at the VC since our June work trip is coming up just around the corner. The estimate was 2-3 weeks. We wish the workers fair weather, problem-free paving and hope they finish ahead of schedule before we need to use the parking lot. We'll be finding out on June 16 how the project is coming along!