We went to Walmart at Kill Devil Hills Monday and stopped at Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge visitor center in Manteo on the way there. We can move to their refuge for February if we want, and decided to drive to the area where they’ve got the RV volunteers parked. It’s an area surrounded by an electric fence (to keep the bears out), along with a small building with showers, kitchen and laundry room. One thing we didn’t like about it is their water is not potable. You have to go to their maintenance area five miles away to get 5 gallon water jugs. On the days you work, you drive to the maintenance area with your personal vehicle, pick up one of their Federal pickups and drive another 10 miles to the visitor center. When we got back to Mattamuskeet we stopped in and talked to Debbie and told her where we had been, and she told us she had someone cancel for February through August, so we could stay here until September if we wanted! I laughed and told her we want to go north for the summer. Funny how things work.
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The government shutdown only lasted three days. We worked some extra hours this week as Leslie was gone two days, and we’re working our weekend as usual. Mary, from Visitor Services, came one of the mornings so I went in to go over the gift shop inventory with her. She is in charge of the gift shops for Alligator River, Pea Island, Pocosin and Mattamuskeet. Curt cleaned out the rain gutters and fixed some leaks. It’s suppose to rain Sunday, we’ll see if it worked.
Friday there were hunters on the Refuge and one group had pickup problems and ended up calling a tow truck. To top it off, they didn't get any ducks while hunting. 
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We were busy Friday with the nice weather, but wondering if there would be a government shutdown. The hunters for Friday/Saturday were being told to listen to the news and or check our Facebook page or website. Leslie (the other Visitor Center volunteer) had already called hunters from the Monday/Tuesday group of hunters for next week. There was the possibility if the Government shut down, we could still be open; or the visitor center closed and roads open, or everything closed. Once Pete found out that it would be the roads open and visitor center closed if there was a shutdown, I called the Friday/Saturday group for next week. Hopefully, we aren’t shut down for that long.
With the Government shutdown, we are able to stay where we are parked (we're in a residential area) and the roads in the Refuge are open, but the Visitor Center is closed. So, we're not working this weekend, and are enjoying the 50-60 degree weather! Amazingly, there's still snow on the grass and ice on the water; and of course, muddy roads.
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The weather seems to have more and more “rare” occurrences now days. There’s worse hurricanes, droughts, temperatures, etc. The whole country seems to be having extremes these past weeks. Well, we got to experience rare snow and record low temps in North Carolina this week. We got rain, about 3 inches of snow after that and our lowest temperature was last night at 9 degrees, with a high of 26 today. We’ve made record lows the last four nights. The average temperatures for here are the upper 40’s, low 50’s. So comes the fun of trying to keep everything warm and not freezing; and when it warms up, so there isn’t a lot of moisture from frost and thawing.
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A lot of the lake is frozen over, which is also rare.
The visitor center stayed open, some of the administrative staff live on site. But most schools and a lot of businesses in the surrounding areas were closed. There isn’t a lot of snow cleaning equipment around and people aren’t used to driving on icy roads.
