Fulltiming Road Runners

The Independence Day weekend.  The crazy hassles are already starting, and it’s only Monday.  We have 17 campsites other than our 3 group sites and 9 of them are filled.  3 of them are family groups with cars and people coming and going, and we are supposed to know who’s here legitimately and who’s not.  They complain when I have to charge them for extra vehicles in the campsite, thinking that the fee for a double site should allow 6 to 8 vehicles.

I saw a young lady with a black ‘n white kitten in her arms yesterday.  She said it was her new pet and she just couldn’t go camping without it.  Today we are seeing that kitten in the bushes in the campground and her family has gone home.  Unless someone takes pity on it, it will not survive a week in here.  We have ferrets, mink, bobcats, mountain lions, even pet dogs who would be happy to tear into that kitten. I can’t be that someone who takes pity… I have 2 parrots, a dog and a husband who is terribly allergic to cats.

Our new managers for the Monte Cristo campground up canyon should have arrived today.  We haven’t heard a word yet.  Their arrival has come at a really bad time.  We’ve got the July 4th rush at our own campground to deal with, issues from our managers at other campgrounds to deal with, demands from our managers to deal with, and now we have to spend a good deal of time at Monte Cristo training the new managers.

Hmmmmmmm…. today was our day off.  We worked until 2:30 p.m. then headed down canyon to deliver the canyon monies to our managers, then went grocery shopping.  We were back home around 4:00 and back at work signing up new people, cleaning up messes left by folks who left this afternoon, and being yelled at by folks who think the rules don’t apply to them.  How’s that for a fun time on your day off??

If the opportunity presents itself, we’re going to take a half day off to just wander the canyon.  We need to get away for a real 1/2 day off.

At least the weather has been beautiful the last couple of days.  Highs in the 80’s and lows in the mid 40’s to 50.  I may just take an hour or 2 to drive to the Meadows campground to walk around and shoot all my wonderful photo ops in there… like the puddling butterflies, the cedar waxwing hunting bugs on the river, the wild blue flax, the butter ‘n eggs flowers, etc.  That would be so relaxing.  Yup!  I think I’ll do that tomorrow or Wednesday.

Ya’ll stay healthy ‘n happy.

Toodles.

It’s been way too long since I’ve posted.  Same ol’ story…. we’ve been busier than those with a full time job.

I’m beginning to think I need to start a document every day and when I have time to jot down my thoughts, I should do so, then consolidate them into a blog at the end of the day.  Of course, some of our “end of the day’s” are at 12:30 a.m. like last night.

This weekend, starting Wednesday, June 24th has been really interesting.  Lots of joys, and lots of headaches.  We had a young people’s group come in to one of our group sites on Wed the 24th to stay until tomorrow, but they went home today.  That’s $150 spent but not used.

Then on Friday we had a family reunion come into another group site.  They are a real joy to talk to and deal with.  I enjoy them so much I’ve even taken pics and made prints to give to the people I’ve shot or shot for.

This is a young man tubing down the river.  He’s in the family reunion group and a real fun kid.  He gave me a hug when I gave him a print of the shot.  His name is Gavin.

The young peoples group did a lot of tubing too.  This is one of the leaders of the group.  When I gave him a copy, his wife was with him.  She was thrilled with the shot.

Thom had the golf cart to clean bathrooms, etc, so I hung my camera around my neck, threw a hat on my head & I headed out on foot to check the campground this morning.
While I was in the group sites, one of the young men in the family reunion came running up to  me saying there was a bunny rabbit down the path.  I was able to get a shot of it.  I made a print of it and gave it to the young man (about 8 yrs old) as a memento.  He too, was quite thrilled with the pic.

The last few days we’ve had a couple of devout bird watchers come into our campsite to take photos of the birds coming to our feeder and hanging about in our trees.  I love sharing my yard with them and gathering information from them about “my” birds.  This is the part of my job I love…. sharing and learning and meeting wonderful people.

Of course we meet our share of un-wonderful people too.  This weekend we’ve had some real dilly’s!   Maybe one day I’ll write a book about the absolute idiots we run into on our job.  In the meantime it’d take to much space and time to write about those people who regularly keep their heads buried in places they don’t belong.

Right now we have a darling young girl in here who is camping with her grandparents.  She and Grandma have a special relationship and  Grandma’s dog should be hers, they have an unbelievable bond.  This young girl (maybe 9 or 10) has seen me walking around with my camera, so when she see’s something she thinks is worth photographing (like ducklings in the river), she runs to our campsite to tell me to come take photos.  Unfortunately, with the ducklings, I wasn’t at the trailer. I’m going to miss her when she leaves.

Today I was totally disgusted & frustrated by some of the people in our campground, but luckily little Shawn (gal who looks for photo ops for me), & the bunny boy in the group site make my days so very tolerable.

Since I don’t have time to grab my camera and go for walks, I take it with me on my rounds in the campground.  Today this butterfly landed on a tree leaf in front of me. It’s a Weidermeyer’s Admiral.  I love being able to get shots of the butterflies this time of year because they are fresh and still beautiful.

Yesterday, Tracy, the manager in the Meadows called me on the radio and told me to go to a certain spot in our campground to look on the hill across the river from us.  There was a bull moose grazing up there.

One more picture.  I did take time to stand on my patio and try to get pics of the hummingbirds.  We finally have the Rufous Hummingbird showing up.  This is a female.

We’re busy, frazzled, tired, but doing just fine.  If you find yourselves in our corner of the world, come spend a night or two.

Ya’ll stay healthy ‘n happy.

Toodles!

I can’t believe it’s been 4 days since I last posted, & since Mari got here.  Mari is doing fantastical, and Linda is doing pretty good too.

It’s really nice that we don’t have to go to the other campgrounds to collect from campers, & lock gates.  BUT, it seems that since we don’t have those added responsibilities, they are dumping new responsibilities on us.  We’ve been told we have to cut the tall grass thru the campground.  There’s no way we could get it all done with a hand held weed eater before the freakin’ season ends!  Of course, the person who told us is no where near our supervisor, he’s the maintenance supervisor.  We’ve been asked to go post signs at Monte Cristo campground, which will be opening 6/26.  That’s not our responsibility, but they think we’ve got time to do it anyway.  We don’t, so maybe the signs will get posted sometime before season ends.  We have reservations for one of the group sites at Monte Cristo for opening day, but the new managers won’t show up until the day after, so we’ve been asked to send one of our campground managers up to babysit Monte Cristo.  Mari said she’d do it, but then Thom and I have to monitor Mari’s campground and collect from campers there as well as our own campground.  Fridays are our busiest days!  At least Rick is sending his maintenance crew up tomorrow to get the campground ready for campers.  I’m thinking the opening of Monte Cristo is going to be a real can of worms for us.  The new managers are brand new to campground management and they are going into a campground with no phone or radio contact.

This too, we shall survive.  We always manage to make things work no matter the difficulties.

We’ve had tons and tons of rain this month, but it looks like we will have at least a few days of sunshine before another storm comes through.  We had our best weekend yet in our campground in spite of the rain.  I’m hoping the weather gets warmer and dryer rather quickly.

The rain is kind of keeping me from taking many pics, but maybe I can find something to share next time I post.

Ya’ll stay healthy ‘n happy.

Tah!

This afternoon Mari arrived to manage the Willows campground until Linda is well enough to return.  Tomorrow another Linda is arriving in Magpie to manage Magpie & Botts campgrounds.  Thom and I can quit running up ‘n down canyon to deal with these 3 campgrounds!  Yay!!!

I’m super pleased with Mari.  She catches on fast, she isn’t afraid to logic her way through an unknown, and she isn’t afraid to ask questions.  She has the added benefit of listening to Thom and I talk about our joys and pains of managing a canyon campground, so she already knew a bit about the job.  She’s going to do great!  We just have to remember to get her our extra generator for backup.

This weekend is going to be one of our best weekends in the campground.  I guess Father’s Day weekend is a big camping weekend in here.  We only have 3 sites empty and one of them is the handicap site and one of them is reserved for Linda if she chooses to come live in her motorhome during recovery, so effectively we only have 1 site available and it’s just Thursday night.

This afternoon while I was doing rounds, I noticed one of our campers had a good sized fire going in their pit (actually ON their pit), with boards across the fire pit on the concrete, not in the fire pit within the metal protective ring. I stopped to tell them they had to get the burning wood inside the pit or I’d douse the fire.  They had gone for a walk and left the fire unattended with flames going high and outside the fire ring.  I did what I could to get the wood into the pit and took one long piece down to the river to douse it. They came back as I was finishing up.  They probably would have been better off had they stayed away until I’d left.  They were read the riot act (in a nice managerial way), and I told them that if I found their fire like that again, I’d douse it with a bucket of water and they’d be kicked out of the campground.  We’re not concerned with forest fire danger at this time (too much rain), but damage to the concrete fire pits.  Our fire pits are concrete with a metal liner where the fire is.  The metal liner protects the concrete from the heat.  Well… ’nuff said ’bout that… it’s one of my pet peeves in the campground.

I managed to steal some time to take photos of flowers yesterday.  Here’s a few of them.

I’ve been complaining about the lack of flowers in my campground, especially the wild geranium which I love.  Here’s a wild geranium bush I found in my very own campground.

We’ve had so very much rain so far this season, the mushrooms and fungus are rampant.

One of my favorite wild flowers here in the canyon is the Blue Flax

And another of my favorite flowers in our canyon, the Sky Rocket, which reminds me of a fireworks sky rocket in the sky.

No matter how busy we get, or how much we have to do, as long as I can get out to enjoy nature’s beauty now and then, I’ll be fine.

Ya’ll stay healthy ‘n happy!

Toodles.

What a coupla days!

Ya’ll know we are without a manager in the Magpie - Botts Campgrounds and have been collecting camper fees ‘n tending the campgrounds.  Wellllll….. we had another of our Managers become ill on Sunday and is now unable to work for at least 2-1/2 weeks.  Thom and I have been dealing with  that campground as well.

Luckily, our very good friend, Mari let us know she is interested in hosting for the season, so we asked her if she would be willing to take this campground temporarily until the regular manager is well enough to come back to work.  She said yes, and we are anxiously awaiting her arrival here on Thursday.  I know it’s a real chore for her to get ready to come up here for an extended period on such short notice, but I’m sure she’s up to it.

We’ve made arrangements for the regular manager’s family to move her motorhome into our campground for her to stay until her doctor gives her a signed full release to go back to work. I just have to keep her from going over to her campground to tell Mari how to do the job. hehe,  Seriously, it could be an issue.

Today, all our managers were at a meeting from 9 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.  We were invited to lunch at the meeting, but not the meeting (they needed someone here overseeing the canyon).  We missed out on a lot of information from our partner entities, the Forest Service (we’re contracted to them) and the Sheriff’s Dept (contracted to the USFS for law enforcement).  We pretty much know what they might have had to say, but it would’ve been nice to have been there.

Thom and I were hoping to drive up to Monte Cristo tomorrow to see what it’s all about, so when we open the campground we’ll know just what we’re dealing with, but with everything else going on, we’re not sure we can do it.

We have a manager for the Magpie & Botts campgrounds.  She doesn’t have an RV, she’s going to be staying in a large tent.  The campground has vault toilets, potable water hydrants, and there is a shower available to the employees at Anderson Cove.  Hopefully she’ll be fine doing it this way.

Before we left Quartzsite in April, I bought a bunch of rock slabs to cut cabochons from so I’d have plenty to keep me busy during our off hours (last year I beaded).  I don’t think we’ve had an off hour since we got here.  I certainly haven’t had time to do more than fill my bird seed feeders and make hummingbird nectar….. ‘n I fall behind on those too.

Yesterday we DID pretty much take the day off.  We did a few of the morning chores.  We delivered money to our managers, then we went grocery shopping.  We came home put groceries away, then went back down canyon to have dinner with my son, Mike, his wife, Tiffany and our grandson, Coen.  Russ was there too.

Here’s a couple of happy pics of the day.  Mike Coen and our Willow.

Mike ‘n Coen in the pool.  Coen is a real water bug.

Ya’ll stay healthy ‘n happy!

Tah!

Mari ‘n Scott are in the canyon this weekend.  They arrived at South Fork, Russ’s campground on Friday afternoon.  This evening Mari cooked for all of us.  She had crab and artichoke dip, chicken rollups, corn on the cob and I did a tropical fruit salad.  Mari was going to grill the chicken and corn, but, as usual, it was raining, so she brought it all to our place and cooked it in our kitchen… since there’s more room in our place than in their camper or Russ motorhome.  Needless to say, it was YUMMY!  The chicken rollups were filled with ham and swiss cheese and had a mustard sauce.  The crab ‘n artichoke dip was outstanding!  I guess they are going home tomorrow sometime.

It rained a bit yesterday, it rained a lot today and is supposed to rain the next 3 days.  I gotta tell ya, we are certainly ready for some sunshine and warmth.

Yesterday I had gone to the Magpie and Botts campgrounds to check them out and collect registration fees.  When I drove into our drive, I was met by a camper wanting to pay his fees.  At the same time Thom came barreling in on the golf cart yelling for me to call 911.  He said for me to tell them a young lady was in siezures.  The camper wanting to sign up just said he’d go and come back later.

Apparently a group of people were tubing down the river (on innertubes) and one of them was dumped out of her tube and hit her head on a rock.  It knocked her out.  Her friends pulled her into our campground (they weren’t camping here) and contacted Thom to contact 911.  He called 911 and they told him to call them back if there were any further info or symptoms.  She started siezing and that’s when Thom came barreling in to tell me to call 911 again.  We had 5 sheriff’s respond, the Forest Service Enforcement Officer, the Weber Country Fire Dept and an ambulance.  Because it was an head enjury and she was seizing  they called for the helicopter Life Flight.

This is the Life Flight taking off to take her to the hospital.  It didn’t appear to be a very serious situation, she was responding very well to questions, etc. after she woke.

This is the life flight taking off from the highway in front of the campground.

We kinda thought that this year, since we had telephone, we wouldn’t have emergencies.  WRONG!  We had the first one in the canyon.

We still haven’t got a manager for the Magpie ‘n Botts campgrounds so Thom and I are still collecting from and cleaning those.  It’s almost midnight and I just finished doing the paperwork for Magpie/Botts before I decided I better blog before it went another 5 days without blogging.  If my words are as blurry to you as they are to me, I apologize for not waiting until my mind was a bit less tired.

Ya’ll stay healthy ‘n happy!

Toodles

We’re still getting rain and it’s expected to continue thru Wednesday.  It’s cold and not a lot of fun to try to do our jobs in the rain.  We’ve told our campground managers to do just what has to be done and not bust butts trying to make things perfect while getting soaked and cold in the rain.  It sure isn’t good for the campground business.  It’s Thursday night and we only have 3 individual sites occupied and 1 group site.  Sure hope we have enough campers to cover the operation costs this weekend.

We will NOT be using our pickup and charging mileage back to the company for towing the trailer full of wood to our campgrounds for the summer.  Rick, our manager, was told the reimbursement for mileage in our company is only $0.35/mile.  That won’t even cover the cost of fuel, let alone, fuel and maintenance!  We will suffer thru with their less than adequate pickup truck and when it falls apart or quits working, sobeit.

Rick dropped by today and let us know that only our campground managers have to be at the 6 hr meeting on Tuesday, we don’t have to attend since we went to the meeting last Tuesday.  We WILL have to be in our campground and available all day on Tuesday to cover any possible emergency situations while our managers are gone for the day.

Our high for the day today was a mere 60F, and our lows are going down to the low 40’s.  I’m ready for temps in the 70’s, sunshine, and the desire to sit outside in the sunshine.

Ya’ll stay healthy ‘n happy!

Tah!

It has been cloudy and raining for days ‘n days.  I think that in the last 2 weeks we’ve had 1 or two days without rain, but NO days without clouds.  The weather report says it’s going to be thundery and rainy through Saturday.

We had our canyon campground managers meeting today, just Thom & I, Tracy (Meadows campgrounds), Linda (Willows campground), ‘n Russ got the location confused ‘n didn’t show up.  I did a one on one with him this evening.

We went over the generalities with everyone today and next Tuesday we will all be attending a 6 hr. or longer meeting.  This will be the meeting where we are given the basic orientation and have to sign papers saying we were given the info and basically understand it all.

Did I mention it’s been raining a lot?  My weather station says we’ve had 3.5″ of rain the last week.  The weather station isn’t set up completely yet… not secured to the pole, so I’m not sure how correct the readings are.   This is just one more thing that’s not getting done because our time is so consumed by the job we don’t have time to set up our living space.  We’ve reached the point where we truly need to speak to our managers and let them know we can’t manage Perception Park, the canyon Managers, AND Magpie ‘n Botts campgrounds on only 60 hours/week… between the 2 of us.  They either cough up at least 80 hours until they’ve found a manager for Magpie/Botts or we’ll quit doing all they are asking of us.

On a lighter note, I’ve ordered a new camera.  It’s the Nikon D60 DSLR camera with the 18-55mm lens and the 55-200VR zoom lens.  It was on sale at Ritz Camera for nearly 1/2 price.  I got word today it was shipped from Kansas, so it shoud arrive at Mike’s  on Friday or Monday.  I’m really anxious to get it.

Since I don’t have a lot of happy, fun stuff  to share, I’m going to say g’nite and hope for better weather tomorrow.

Ya’ll stay healthy ‘n happy!

Toodles.

Today was our “day off”.  Thom spent the whole morning at Magpie & Botts cleaning the campgrounds while I did general things here at Perception.  A bit after noon (12:45 I think) we headed down canyon to go do our grocery shopping, stopping at Anderson Cove to turn in our money and paperwork for the week.  So far, do you see a day away from work for us?  LOL

We got back from shopping around 2 p.m.  We had Forest Service people in the campground cutting down dead trees and widow maker branches.  They went to all the campgrounds in the canyon today to do this.  Thom went to Meadows to help Tracy move the cut wood, then came back here to move our cut wood.  Russ has a bunch of wood cut down too, so he’ll need help moving his.  The reason we move it is the USFS cuts the wood into chunks too big to fit in our fire pits and the campers will try to burn it anyway.  Any burning wood hanging outside the metal liner will heat the concrete and make it break apart… so we try to keep the too big stuff away from the campers.

I did another run around the campground and signed up new people who came in while we were gone.

Do you see a day away from work yet?… a half day?

We did get our new 12 volt freezer out of the box, set up and when cold enough, loaded with the results of our grocery shopping.  I’m going to LOVE this baby!

Tomorrow we have a 3 hour manager’s meeting down at Anderson Cove.  Since we’ll be half way to Ogden, we’re going down after the meeting to buy some ice-cream, now that we have a freezer that will keep it hard.

Day after tomorrow we are going to have a meeting of Canyon Managers at our place.  We want to share any new info we get tomorrow, and go over procedures, etc.

We still haven’t been able to do our laundry, so I guess I’ll drag out my not too dirty jeans, hang ‘em up to dewrinkle and wear them to the meeting.  Thank heavens we each have a clean “uniform” shirt.

After we’ve done some time with our new freezer (which can be used as a fridge too), I’ll share my thoughts on it with you.

Ya’ll stay healthy ‘n happy!

Tah!

PS… we were told this morning that “they” haven’t been able to reach the person to take the Magpie, Botts management job.  We have no idea who or when.  Ain’t life a kick!

It started raining this morning before the sun rose,  and is raining still.  In spite of the rain we had campers come in this afternoon to stay 2 nights and when Thom went down to check Magpie and Botts campgrounds there were 2 new campers there.

Maybe I’m in a better mood today or maybe I’ve just decided we can only do what we can do and anything left undone is no big deal, but in spite of all we had to do today, I’m not feeling out of sorts at still working at 9:15 p.m.

Today was “collect money and paperwork” day, and finish my weekly reports.  We had all the money and paperwork for Magpie/Botts, Russ brought South Fork’s money/paperwork to us and Stacy at Meadows brought his money and paperwork to me… so I only had to go to Willows to collect money and paperwork from Linda.  Then I used all these reports to compile my reports and now I’m ready to turn it all in to Karla, our manager…. tomorrow.

On top of all the gathering things and doing reports, our kitchen faucet snapped in two when Thom was rinsing something.  We had to take time to drive to Ogden to buy a new faucet… with tax = $190.  At least we got a much better product than the original in the RV.  We both need a gold star pasted on our foreheads… we took out the old one and installed the new one with a minimum of cursing and tool tossing!  It took both of us to get it done.  The kitchen plumbing isn’t easily accessible as it’s in the el between the stove and dining area.  When Thom turned the water back on to the kitchen there wasn’t a single drip/leak *pat on the back for both of us*.

We also stopped for about 15 minutes at my son, Mike’s, to pick up our mail and packages.

We should have done our laundry (in RV) on Wed or Thurs, but wanted to get back on a Sunday schedule, so waited.  No time to do it today, tomorrow we go grocery shopping, hopefully, so I’ll be wearing sweat pants the next couple of days because I’ve only got 2 pair of jeans and they are both dirty.

Tomorrow is our “day off”.  We’ll be going down to do our grocery shopping & any other shopping we need to do, after we drop off our weekly money and reports to our managers.

I was told our new Magpie/Botts managers will be here the first of this week.  I hope we are involved in welcoming them.  After all, we are their managers.

It’s bedtime for me, unfortunately there’s no rain to put me to sleep.

Ya’ll stay healthy ‘n happy.

Tah!