The First Trip Down.

After being housebound for two days with ten inches of wet heavy snow on our long, winding driveway, I had no problem packing the car with items necessary to open the camp and heading for the Lordville Estate as soon as our shoveling and the bright sunshine got rid of enough snow to get the car to the bare, but salty road.

The amount of snow on the ground steadily decreased until bare ground appeared at Castle Creek, (just north of Binghamton). Heading east, the trees on the tops of the hills were covered with ice and there was a dusting of snow on north facing slopes. By the time I got to the top of Lordville Road the sun was melting the treetop ice and the car was showered with ice and water for the first mile of the decent down to Lordville.

All was well at the camp. The well pump turned on, there were no leaks in the pipes, and both the hot water heater and refrigerator went back to work without any complaints.

Stopped at Lowes on the way down and purchased "pet screen" to replace the screen in the screen door that a squirrel tore up trying to get in last fall. Didn't know what diameter spline to purchase so I bought a package of each of the two diameters they had. Alas, both diameters were too large as were the two pieces of spline I found out in the garage. The spline in the screen proved easy to remove and I decided to use it when putting the "pet screen" in the frame. The groove at the top of the door easily accommodated both the screen and the spline and I was able to seat the spline with my roller just like they do it on YouTube. However, the job went to hell thereafter as the grooves on the sides and bottom of the door were much smaller and I was unable to push the spline all the way down in the groove with the thicker "pet screen". Will try to find something I can lay on top of the spline and tap it down with a hammer when I return.

Water in the river is running clear, but is still high from last weeks rain. Don't have the faintest idea when the bugs will hatch. The record warm weather all winter should have put the nymphs closer to maturity than usual, but the week of unseasonably cold weather certainly slowed things down. The forecast after tomorrow is for a week of near normal temps which will not result in any mayfly hatching. It is probably worth your while to keep an eye on the water temps as we had a good many days with water temps in the mid forties during both February and March. Wouldn't be surprised at all to see bugs early if we get another week of unseasonably warm weather.

 In between glances at the USGS graphs it might be a good time to take care of a few items on the "honey-do" list, it might be a while before you look at it again once the bugs start to pop!