Fulltiming Road Runners

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!

We almost took a real day off today. I slept in until 8 a.m. and Thom opened the gates at 7 a.m. and then slept in until a little after 9:30 a.m. He didn’t get much sleep last night because of a very sore neck muscle, so slept in a bit today. We didn’t even do rounds in the campground until after 5:00 P.m. tonight.

We went down the mountain after 10:30 a.m. to get a cashier’s check from the bank to send to the lease company so our truck will REALLY be ours. After that we went into Salt Lake City to look at used cars at Saturn of Salt Lake. The first one we looked at and drove was sooooo sweet. Not only was it sweet, it was a couple of thousand dollars LESS than we figured we could afford. We drove it home today. They have a check in their hands they are holding until we can tell them the money is in the bank.fd

We compared the cost of gas and diesel and the mileage difference between the truck and a car with 27 mpg. We figured this for 5 years. Then we deducted the cost of insurance and title for 5 years on the new car. 5 years of fuel savings minus 5 years of insurance and title still covers the cost of the car with a couple of thousand left. I have a lot of work to do to get the new car titled in South Dakota and get it added to our insurance. Having our residence in South Dakota rather than Utah saves us 5% in sales tax.

We had 3 new campers in our Lower Meadows today. Got them signed up right after we got home. Had two day use families in the Upper Meadows when I did rounds after getting home. I really do believe I want a winter season where we actually get at least one full day off… no bathrooms or campsites to clean, no campers to register, no policing rules to do.

Tomorrow we have to go back down the mountain 9 miles to fax the request for transfer of funds from our IRA so we can cover the check we wrote today for the Saturn. We also have to go to the post office to “return receipt” mail our check to the lease company. At least we can drive down in the Saturn and get 29 MPG instead of 12 MPG.

I don’t know if anything I said tonight makes sense because I can’t say what I’m thinking, have you ask a question about what I really mean or to further the explanation and clarify my thoughts. Click comments if you have questions. In the meantime, I’ll post photos of our new “sweet ride” tomorrow.

In the meantime, stay healthy & happy!

Toodles

Can you believe it? I’m posting two days in a row!

Oh man!  I’m probably going to be called biased, bigoted, or just plain not a nice person.  I’ve been watching the people who come into our campgrounds and am seeing a lot of people of lower income, lower standards maybe - maybe not - may be just different ethnic group.
We get a lot of Chicanos in here.  They are very family oriented.  Each single site is allowed 8 people, two vehicles, double sites 16 people, 4 vehicles.  We have one “family” in here in a double site with heaven only knows how many people and 6 vehicles.  They’ve been here since Thursday night and their numbers multiply every night!  It’s like they go down the valley at night and invite more “family” to join them.

We have another non-Chicano guy who came in alone on Thursday, pierced ears, lip, and tongue.   Friday was his birthday and he had many other friends coming in to celebrate his birthday.  He’s in a double and is currently hosting 6 vehicles.  Gotta go talk to them too.  They really don’t understand having to pay $7 per extra vehicle.

This is what will probably get me in trouble…  I’ve never seen so many pit bulls in my life.  The lower income, less educated people seem to need the prestige and power owning a big, mean, killer dog might give them.  We have a lot of lower income, less educated people in our campgrounds.  It’s an inexpensive form of relaxation.  I’m learning that pit bulls can be sweethearts, and they can be cold, mean buggers!  I guess it all depends on how they are handled from birth.  I do know I never want to get on the bad side of any of them.

It has really warmed up here.  All of a sudden we have bugs driving us crazy… mosquitoes, gnats, box elder bugs (also called fire bugs), tiny flies… and so on.  I got 3 mosquito bites tonight.  I guess I will have to start using deet, but I hate too!  I’ll have to wash all deet off before I can handle my parrots.  I guess I could eat lots of garlic or take tons of vitamin B…  We’ll figure it all out.

I think I just realized I’m rambling a whole lot, so I’m going to say good night and send my Son an email to see if he will be here tomorrow at all.

Ya’ll stay happy and healthy!

Toodles

Some days I think I should write a post to my blog, but then I think it’s gonna be the same ol’ stuff ‘n I’m going to  bore everyone.  I guess I don’t know who my readers are.  If you are all doing the same thing Thom and I are doing… following our dream and workamping to make it happen, then you’ve “been there, done that”.  If you are reading our blog in the hopes of gathering useful information for your future plans,  then maybe, just maybe we are helping.

Lets, see… I’ve exhausted the “we’re COLD” bit.  Besides, it’s warming up, only got down to 27F this morning and s’posed to be in the low 30’s tonight.  I can’t believe the difference in highs ‘n lows here.  Low here 27F, High here 77F.  That’s a 50 degree spread!  That was today.  Tomorrow they say we’re gonna have a heat wave.  It should be in the high 80’s in the Salt Lake Valley, probably high 70’s, low 80’s up here.  It’s the lows that are so different from the “local” weather reports.

This weekend has been our most active ever.  We started getting people in on Wednesday and by about 2:00 PM today we were full in the Lower Meadows.  The Upper Meadows campground was closed for two days while they put in a “tire ripper” on the out side of the gate and only opened around 2:00 PM today.  The Forest Service Ranger told me that he opened the gate on the Upper Meadows this afternoon and 3 vehicles went in and claimed sites immediately.  It was full by 3:30 PM.  I like having it full in the sense that I don’t have to go in around at 9:30 PM looking for new campers, but it’s the pits having people drive in, see we’re full and cuss and get mad, then speed thru the whole campground getting out.

It’s drying up on the hillside above our campground, which is bringing the moose down.  Yesterday we had a moose just on the other side of the fence between our campsite and the one next to us.  It was a good sized bull moose.  I didn’t realize they were so dark in coloring.  I kind of thought they would be more like deer and be fawn colored.

Here is a shot of the Moose that came so close.

I honestly hope to get more opportunities to get more shots.

I’ve mentioned the road base material Thom has offered to distribute throughout the campground.  They finally filled our request for a trailer to pull behind our golf cart to haul the stuff.  The first time out for Thom using the trailer, it had a flat tire.  We told Maintenance, and they don’t have any extra wheels/tires for the trailer.  It’s very frustrating for us to be expected to do requested duties and the equipment we are given to do them is a piece of junk.  I wonder if all the concessionaires are the same.

Okay, I think  it’s time for me to post this before I’m forced to save it for posting another night.  I hope to have stuff to post tomorrow night about our campers and the joys of having a full campground.  Yeeeehawww!

Toodles.

This afternoon we took a much needed break away from the campground. We only have two campsites occupied and neither have kids in them.

We went down to Ogden to do some shopping… Lowes, WalMart, and Harmon’s Grocery store. After Lowes and WalMart we went to visit Mike, Tiffany & Coen, then on to Harmon’s grocery store. Even though groceries are much less expensive here than in Arizona or California, they are still quite a bit more expensive than they were when we left Utah last September. I guess we can blame the quick increases on the price of fuel used to transport the goods.

All in all it was a great day off (even if it was just 1/2 day) and I’m ready to go back to “the grind”. I just hope the weather gets better.

On my way to bed I just have to share a photo of Coen laughing. He’s really getting personality.

Toodles ‘n nite nite!