Fulltiming Road Runners

Until just a few minutes ago, our campgrounds were empty except for 1 site in each. We just had a trailer and two other pickups come in… haven’t gone round to see if they’re together or separate.

It’s so nice and quiet here now, it’s wonderful! (except for a woodchuck sitting upright on a stump whistling his hi-pitched chitter)

I’ve got some photos of Tiger Swallowtails to share as well as a Northern Flicker that visited us today… later in the post.

Today I had to grab forms online so we could fill them out and mail everything off to My Home Address in South Dakota so they can get our new Saturn VUE registered and title changed over to us. My Home Address is the mail forwarding service we use and they take care of re-registering our vehicles as well. After getting all the paperwork filled out and together, I then drove down the hill to get copies made and then mailed them off. On the way back, just as I was getting ready to go to Eden to go to the store I noticed the engine light on in the car (the one we just bought last month). I came home instead, but stopped downhill so I could call Saturn to find out what to do. As long as the light isn’t blinking, we can drive the car, so we will be taking it down to Saturn of Riverdale tomorrow. Sure hope it’s nothing big, there is no warranty on it.

Now on to my photos… after I tell you I did the rounds and we have two more campers in our Lower Meadows, one of the families is return campers and we love them, they are really nice people.

So far I’ve found two different varieties of Swallowtail butterflies here. The only difference I can see between the two is one is white and black and the other is yellow and black. The white and black one is called the Pale Swallowtail.

The yellow one is called the Western Tiger Swallowtail. I love the colors on the bottom wings.

This is the Red Shafted Northern Flicker I had visit this morning. He’d been feeding at the suet box and has suet all over his beak. After feeding at the suet, he hops to the stump and tries to wipe the suet off the beak on the stump… not always successful.
He’s called the Red Shafted because of the red on his throat and under his tail. There is another that is pretty much the same, but has red across the back of his head and yellow under his wings.  He’s called the Yellow Shafted Northern Flicker.

Thom has a fire going out back and I’m dying to join him so I’ll say g’nite for now.

Ya’ll stay healthy and happy!

Toodles!

Today is half done and we’ve had no issues at all.  It’s been a nice quiet day.  I even got a chance to go to the Upper campground and go to the spot on the river where the Swallowtail b-flies go to puddle.  Got several shots of a couple of them, but haven’t had time to look at them yet.  I do have a few shots of two different butterflies and a new bird I’ going to share with you.

I appreciate all the comments you folks are posting.  Thank you!

The other day I was down by the river and noticed a bird on a branch.  He was a lovely fawn color and had a top knot on his head.  I had my camera with me with the zoom lens on it, so I started snapping shots.  It was a beautiful Cedar Waxwing.  It’s the first time I’ve ever seen one.  Here’s two pics of him.  I’m showing two so you can see his beautiful red and yellow spots.

I also got photos of a couple of butterflies.  The first two shots are of the Aphrodite Fritillary showing the markings of both the top of  and under the wings.

This last photo is of Edith’s Checkerspot butterfly.

My keyboard is’t working properly, so I’m not posting as I’d like.  Sorry.  I’ll post as soon as things get back to normal.

The 4th of July weekend… This morning when Thom opened gates, he checked bathrooms like he always does. One of the bathrooms in Lower Meadows had human feces smeared all over the toilet in the ladies restroom. He immediately cleaned it up. Now, at 2:45 p.m. we just had a camper come tell us the mens room has had crap spread all over the toilet. It’s deliberate. How can anyone do that? Thom is down there cleaning it up again. I was going to go around to each and every campsite and tell them what is happening and to keep their eyes open and report to us if they see anything like that happening. Thom suggested it could have been a child with diarrhea issues so I didn’t talk to the other campers.

This afternoon we got a report from another camper that another bathroom had been fouled as the others had been. NOW we feel safe in saying it’s malicious! I’ve mentioned to the campers I’ve had occasion to speak to that this is happening and to report to us anything unusual they’ve seen. In the meantime, we’ve tried to contact management to get them here to give us direction in this matter. They took the day off and are not contactable (not really a word?). Heck! We take a day off.. which means we do the bathrooms, check sites, then determine we can safely leave the campground to be back in time to check sites and bathrooms again before bedtime. Day off?… not since we left Quartzsite, AZ!!!

Do you get the same impression I do? It seems every post I’ve made to the blog lately has had very negative stuff. I’m beginning to think that if it keeps being negative we may be leaving here well before the season ends. I know I’m having a heck of a time keeping Thom’s temper in check and he usually doesn’t show temper at all.

Is this a growth experience or just a totally negative experience we need to shed as soon as possible? We do have several offers for workamping jobs elsewhere.

I don’t want to leave. I love it here as far as the countryside and wildlife is concerned, but I don’t know how long we can keep telling ourselves “it’s all part of the experience”. If we stick it out, we’ll have a nice cushion for fuel to get to our next location and a bit extra for excursions. If we leave, we may have less of a cushion, but more peace of mind.

I’ve got photos to share… of butterflies and a bird, maybe tomorrow.  It’s time to shut down now tonight.

We’re still getting crazies in our campground, but normal crazies.  Thom and I have both decided to be tuff over the 4th of July weekend.  We don’t have time to let people walk on us this weekend, so they’re hindy’s will be booted the minute they create problems.  We have a large family in one site staying until Friday that expects to be catered to.  I guess the previous hosts did just that.  They’ve only been here 2 days and they’ve already had Thom clean their firepit twice.  They’re trying to burn magazines ‘n stuff that just doesn’t burn… so it fills the pit… DUH!  Thom said next time, he gives them the bucket ‘n shovel!

I did mention to the Managers that we will have communication abilities within 24 hours or we’re through.  They had already bought new walkie talkies and we are supposed to have communication by now.  I intend to check it out first thing tomorrow morning by calling out to whomever can hear me.  I don’t mind giving them a little extra time.

I’m curious to see what the weekend brings, but apprehensive as well.

As I said, I’ve been taking a few photos and want to share them with you.  I think there are 5 of them this time… flowers ‘n  butterflies.

This is a group of Flax.  Imagine this group multiplied by 20 and this is the little field of Wild Blue Flax we have here.  Beautiful!

I’ve found Yellow Yarrow, White Yarrow and now a Pink Yarrow growing right next to the White Yarrow.

This is a wild onion.  I even picked a leaf, smelled it and tasted it.  Yum!  I happen to love onion.

A butterfly found puddling by the river.  A Weidermeyer’s Admiral

And last but not least, a photo of the river from our campground.

Yes, I’ve taken more pictures of flowers, birds, etc.  No, I’m not going to share them tonight.  We seem to be going thru the weekend from hell, and it’s not even the 4th of July yet, and I’m going to vent and ya’ll get to close the window now or “listen” to me vent.

Last night I mentioned the group of 21 people who took over 2 campsites… they’re still here, still being noisy, messy and annoying as hell to us.  The other campers are very forgiving and saying “well they were screaming in the bathroom at 11:00 pm, but it wasn’t so bad.”  They are leaving Bud Light cans all over the place.  The kids are dropping candy wrappers and cups all over the place.  At least we’ll have a day or two to clean their 2 sites before the next barrage of campers show up.

Someone, last night, was smoking pot (very bad grade) in one of the restrooms.  As we were doing rounds last night, on the other side of the campground from that restroom we smelled much better grade of pot in the vicinity.  We’re finding broken balloons in the bathrooms… kids are running around with water balloons… but in the bathroom?  Balloons are a sign of crack.

Just 10 minutes ago Thom found sign of someone shooting up in the mens room just down from us, and part of a family that came in this afternoon is beginning to act more and more impaired.  I’m not liking this at all.  If this is what we get here, I don’t even want to think about next weekend (4th of July).

Thom is now checking the Upper Meadows campground and will go from there to a campground with a phone to call the sheriff to report the paraphernalia he found and what we think is going on.

Did I mention that I am going to tell our managers they provide a way for us to deal with emergencies immediately or we will be gone within a week.  They gave kiddy walkie talkies to all of us and they didn’t work.  Thom and I use our own set which are a quality set.  The other campgrounds (those with phones) had junk walkie talkies and we couldn’t communicate with them.  They are supposed to get decent equipment this weekend, so hopefully we won’t be so isolated here.  It takes at least 10 minutes to get to the other campgrounds to use their phones, and 10 minutes can be deadly.

There… I’ve vented.  Next post will either be happy stuff or us telling you we are on the road to another camp hosting job.

I can’t believe it’s been 3 days again.  The days seem to just flow from one to the next and all of a sudden it’s Friday instead of Tuesday.

Yesterday Thom had to go to the dentist.  He’s had a tooth bothering him for a couple of weeks and finally decided it was time to do something about it.  It was infected so he’s on antibiotic and will go back on July 14th for a root canal and the fitting for a crown.  It seems we just start getting ahead with a decent $$ cushion and something like a toothache comes along.  Oh well, ya gotta do whatcha gotta do.

I sure did like having the golf cart whenever I needed to do my rounds or check something out.  Of course, being without the cart is better for me, I get a lot more exercise walking the rounds.

A while back I mentioned I had a gentleman stop by to see if it was okay for him to hike a group of girl scouts through our campground.  He’s a botanist.  They came through this morning.  Stopped and knocked on our door.  He asked me to come outside and tell the girls about our  experiences here.  It was kind of fun.  He also told me the names of a couple more plants.  Would you believe my books don’t have Jacobs Ladder in them?!!

We had 21 people move into two adjacent sites yesterday.  I had to talk to them twice about burning oversized wood in the fire pits and Thom had to go speak to them last night about being quieter.  It wasn’t quiet time yet, but they were really disturbing their neighbors, and that’s a no-no.

I need to get busy.  I hae a couple of campers to register.  So I’ll share these photos with you and then post the blog.

This is the Apricot Globe Mallow.  It’s interesting that it grows here as well as down in the heat of the desert.  I think it’s a lovey flower.

This is one of the wild roses.  It’s much darker than most of them in the campground.

This is the Jacob’s Ladder the botanist had to tell me the name of.  I hate sharing pics when I can’t identify them.

And this is a Bald Faced Hornet.  He was on the side of a stump in my yard.  His markings are very interesting.

Gotta go.

Ya’ll stay healthy & happy.

Toodlels!

Ya’ll are gonna disown me if I don’t start blogging more.  My friend Nancy reminded me tonight I’ve been remiss.  Thom and I seem to be getting away when we can now in our car.  Our excuse is we want to run thru a tank of gas to see what our gas mileage really is.  We’ve only used 1/2 tank so far.

We were full both Friday and Saturday nights and currently have 7 sites being used in the Lower and 1 site in the Upper.  As I mentioned on Friday, being full really keeps us hopping.

Sitting in the trailer, in front of the computer is reminding me of one of the reasons I’ve not blogged lately.  It’s hot here and right now it’s almost 10 degrees warmer inside than it is outside.  I know I can take the laptop outside to blog, but I have to disconnect everything and I’m basically lazy.

Mike and Tiffany came up to bring our mail and visit for a bit on Sunday.  Coen just keeps getting more and more fun.  And I love hearing all about what’s happening with their family.  It was a great visit.

With the days getting so much hotter and having the river so close we are getting quite a bit of mosquitoes.  I can attest to the fact that garlic keeps the mosquitoes away.  We had Garlic Chicken brats night before last and all day yesterday the mosquitoes stayed away and I didn’t put on repellent of any kind.  This morning I went for a walk around the campground with my camera and got a couple of bites… as well as a few new flowers.  I’ll share after I share the photos of our new bird visitor.

Yesterday morning I looked out my dining window and saw this HUGE bird on the stump I put bird seed on.  It was a lovely wild hen turkey.  I’ve not got good pics of her on the stump, but here are a couple of her in the yard and going away.  She’s BIG & she’s beautiful.

Here are some of the new flowers I found today.

This is a Wild Geranium bud just opening.  I thought it was pretty.  I’m loving the geraniums here.

This is the first Wild Rose I’ve seen open here.

This is a weed to many, a very pretty flower to me.  It’s called Salsify.

And last, but not least is a Mallow, I call it the Mountain Mallow.

I hope you enjoyed the photos.  They are a huge part of what I enjoy about my current world.

Ya’ll stay healthy & happy!

Toodles!

As the citizens of Utah would say - “Oh my heck!!”.  This has been a day ‘n a half wrapped into 24 hours.  I got up a little after 8:00 a.m. and seemed to have kept running ever since I got out of bed.  We were half empty at the beginning of the day and are totally full at the end.  We had people trying to wheel and deal sites, cajole us into allowing this or that, and basically made us think to decide what was allowable, and how far we could push the parameters to give our campers what they wanted.  Of course, some of them we didn’t even want to accommodate.

Thom and I both were unable to quit and take a breath until well after 7:00 p.m.

Yesterday Thom was trying to clean campsites and the blower just kept quitting on him.  It would take him nearly a half hour to blow off each campsite’s concrete pad when it should only take 1 to 3 minutes.  I’m sure you recall me mentioning our complaints about equipment in the past.  He finally called me on the radio and told me to get ready to go down to Anderson Cove (where our managers are).  Thom was ready to quit if they were unable to assure us we’d have reliable, usable equipment to do our job with.  We got a brand new blower and assurances we’d have reliable equipment.  I hope they follow thru!  I really don’t want to pack up and hit the road again so soon.  We have plenty of opportunities for workamper jobs to go to, but I hope to see this one through.

Speaking of Workamper jobs to go to, I’ve sent out enquiries for both a winter season camp host position in Virgin River Gorge and a winter season host position at Butterfield Resort in Southern California.  Haven’t heard back from either.  Both of my enquiries were via websites, so now I guess I need to send emails direct and see what happens.

Thom has gone to lock gates, it’s after 10:00 (quiet time) so I better go turn off the generator for the night.

Ya’ll stay happy and healthy!

Toodles!

I know… it’s been 3 days again.  I’ve just been lazy the last couple of days.  I’m loving the weather so much I don’t want to spend time inside.  Day before yesterday our low was 33F and the high was 96F, yesterday the low was 42F and the high was 90F.

I took a few walks while it was still cool, in the 80’s.  Got some photos of new flowers that have opened in the warmth.  Only one new “critter”, but was extremely pleased to catch it, as it’s a bird that doesn’t come to feeders, so I had to catch it “in the wild”.

It’s been fairly quiet here in the campgrounds.  People have been coming in, but most of them are staying more than one day, which means we don’t have as much work to do until their sites are emptied.  Right now, in the past 1/2 hour though, we’ve had 4 trailers drive in and not go out… that means they are parking in a spot and I have to go register them when I finish this blog.

Something dawned on me this morning as I was getting dressed.  We are camping out in nature, in the woods alongside a river.  In AZ we camped in the desert amidst the ironwood trees and creosote bushes.  In both places we can/could hear the traffic of a highway… not as far away from civilization as I’d like to believe.

Speaking of highway brings to mind our new (used) car and the photos I promised to share.  Here are two photos.

And now I’ll show you the shot of the bird I was thrilled to get.  It’s the Yellow Warbler, caught in the act of singing quite prettily.

Gotta go start registering new campers, and one site just emptied so I’ll start cleaning it so Thom has less to do when he gets to it.

Ya’ll stay healthy and happy.

Toodles!