Fulltiming Road Runners

In spite of clouds and not very warm temps, I took in over $1,200 just during my shift of noon to 5 p.m.  It’s not as good as past Memorial Days, but pretty good considering the cooler weather.

It’s early in the season yet, but from what we’ve seen so far, we seriously doubt we will ever come back to this job.  It’s not bad, at least we get a full day off, but we aren’t real happy with the parking situation.  We are only about 15 ‘ from the motorhome next to us.  AND… I’m really frustrated in that even though I have two bird feeders out, I’ve not yet seen a bird on the feeders.  Our good friend, Mari, has told me that in her campground in the canyon she has already gone through a whole 40 lb box of wild birdseed, and she’s only been there a couple of weeks.

The job here isn’t bad, but I’ve found I really miss the birds at my feeders.  We don’t have the trees for cover for them, so they avoid being around our trailers in the open.

It’s early yet so who knows what may happen, but I’m really praying that we get the position at Cape Meares National Wildlife Refuge next summer.

Time for me to shut down so I can get the computer ready to take down to the booth for work at 7 a.m. in the morning.  We expect rain and it’s a week day so I anticipate a day of no business, without the computer, I’ll prolly go crazy.

Ya’ll stay healthy ‘n happy!

Toodles.

Normally this park is slammed with use on Memorial Weekend, but this year it’s a bit chilly and windy so they’re saying usage is cut down to about 1/2… so far.  There’s still one more day to the weekend and it is supposed to be a lovely warm day (75F, slight breeze).

The weekend actually started on Thursday because it was the last day of school and “skip day” for seniors.  Of course many of the younger kids skipped school too.  We had 23 car loads of kids in here celebrating the end of school.  The weather was cloudy and cold, but they came in anyway.  I had the noon to 5 p.m. shift and took in $500.  That includes a couple of season passes at $120 ea.  Friday was cloudy and cold also, with a little rain, so not much business at all.

Yesterday we had the day off.  We had planned on going down to finish our project on the motor home and get it listed, but the day before we got a phone call from our coordinators in Quartzsite, AZ saying they wanted to buy the motor home.  We worked out a deal and they said they’d come down from Idaho to pick it up before Wednesday, so we really wanted to get down to de-winterize it and get it ready to roll.  We got a phone call Saturday morning (yesterday) from them saying they were 15 miles from the Utah border and would be here in about 2 hours.  We got down to the motor home about 1/2 hour before they got into town and we cleaned out the water lines and put about 20 gallons of water in it so they could use the potty on the way back to Idaho.  Larry is a super-whiz at fixing things so we just gave them the items we bought for the molding repairs, made sure they were aware of the few things that needed tweaking and sent them on their way.  It’s sooooo wonderful to be out from under the motor home payments and not have to worry about getting it sold.

Today was a fairly busy day for the park.  The gal who did the mid day shift said she had fairly brisk business.  I had the closing shift (5 p.m. -10 p.m.).  By 5:00 very few people come in to use the park (I had 8), but it being Memorial Weekend, and the cemetery being in the middle of the park, I had a steady flow of cars coming in to visit the cemetery.  We don’t charge them anything for access to the cemetery, so I spent most of the evening just telling people go on in.   By 7:30 p.m. I’d not had any park users in for 40 minutes so I closed the booth.  Thom will go down at about 9:45 p.m. to check the park for stragglers and tell them they have only 10 - 15 minutes to get out because at 10 we lock the gates, locking them in the park.

Tomorrow I have the middle of the day shift and am looking forward to being really busy.  I truly love interacting with the people and staying busy.

We’ve heard a rumor recently about the way things will be run at the Long Term Visitor Area’s in Quartzsite that has us thinking that there’s a good chance we will not be volunteering for the BLM next winter down there.  I hope things won’t go the way we heard because we really love doing the job down there, meeting/greeting people and even making new friends.

As for our possible job the summer of 2011, things are progressing.  I sent our resume and references to Dawn on Thursday and received an email back on Friday saying she would be in touch shortly.  Will let ya’ll know what’s going on.

I’m trying to gather photos of what our customers pay us $10 to do.  I’ve a couple already but they aren’t uploaded yet.  I’ll try to share them soon.

Ya’ll stay healthy ‘n happy.

Toodles.

It’s been way too long since I’ve posted.  The weather is still being poopy, but maybe the end of next week will bring a turn around.  We’re still not putting in many hours, it’s been too wet for the guys to do much and it’s silly to open the booth when we’ve no business.

Today brought a change though.  Last night was graduation night for Ogden schools and today was last day of school, meaning it was skip (or ditch) day.  It was cloudy and cool this morning but when I went to work at the booth at noon it started warming up and getting a bit of sunshine.  The students started pouring in.  I took in $500 today.  Around 5:00 P.M., the end of my shift, the clouds came back and it started raining again.  Tomorrow morning we have a 20% chance of rain with 60% chance in the afternoon.  60% chance of rain on Saturday.  So much for Memorial Weekend.  I open the booth tomorrow morning at 7:00 and expect to be totally bored most of my shift.

The city of Huntsville opened their tollbooth today and most of the kids coming in expected to get into our park without paying our $10.00 because they paid the $3.00 toll at the booth before they got to ours.  We’re going to be dealing with this the whole season.

Exciting news for Thom and I… I sent an email to the gal in charge of “hiring” volunteers at the Oregon Coast National Wildlife Refuge Complexes and told her we’re interested in volunteering for the summer of 2011.  She said they do have an opening at Cape Meares National Wildlife Refuge and wants our resume and references from the BLM and AL&L.  They’d want us from late April to early August.  I’ve updated the resume and will call the references I want to use to make sure it’s okay with them to use them as references.

Tomorrow after work I’m going to put together the ad for the Motorhome and post it on KSL Classifieds… maybe even Craig’s list.  We still have a couple of things to finish up on it, but we need to get the ball rolling right now on selling it.

In closing, two shots of the Western Tanager that comes to visit down at the booth.  Taken 2 days ago.  This first one shows the beautiful yellow front.

And this second one shows the lovely black, yellow, and white wing & tail.

Ya’ll stay healthy ‘n happy!

Toodles.

I last worked on Thursday, the 20th, took in one day use fee ($10) and we’ve kept the booth closed since then.  Friday was our regular day off and today we were told not to report to work due to rainy weather, we got snow today.  Tomorrow will be a “we’ll see what the weather does” day.  I’m supposed to work noon to 5:00 p.m., but if we get rain and no guests, I won’t work.  I have to admit, we were pretty much counting on having a paycheck for at least half of this month through mid September.  It won’t kill us to not have one, but we do have a bill or two we’d like to zero out!

One of the hosts here has a son who is really into dutch oven cooking.  He likes to cook for the whole crew here at least once a year.  We were told yesterday to bring an appetite because he was making a stew.  He made a chicken stew and pineapple upside down cake in dutch ovens for 12 of us.  It was pretty good.  I had taken a whole chicken out of the freezer yesterday to thaw for dinner today (before we were told someone was cooking for us), luckily it was still half frozen today so I can wait until tomorrow to cook it.

Our good friend Linda, the USFS Law Enforcement Officer, dropped by today.  She was invited for dinner.  It was so good to talk to her again.  It’s been since last year that we’ve seen her.  Wish we could take her south with us when we go back to AZ.

I hope we stay closed tomorrow or at least on Monday (which is supposed to storm ‘n rain).  My son, Mike, is off work both days and I’d love to go down the hill to spend time with him, Tiff and Coen.

We live close (very close) to 4 other couples.  It stands to reason we won’t mesh well with all of them… would be nice, but ain’t gonna happen.  We’re doing pretty good though.  We only have 1 couple that is “always right”, so we just let them be.

Tonight the low is supposed to get down to below than 30F.  Is it any wonder I’m feeling a bit depressed?  Happy Spring/Summer!

With luck we’ll get better weather soon and cheer up.

In the meantime, stay healthy ‘n happy!

Toodles!

It seems the month of May is going to be a cool, wet month, just like last year.  Yesterday we didn’t open the booth, and today we opened the booth but only sold 1 boat pass.  Sue had me close the booth at 4:00 p.m. instead of staying open until 10 p.m.  5 hours (in my case 4 hrs) alone in a booth waiting for people to come in to register for picnic or boat passes and not getting a single one is a wee bit boring.  The weather is supposed to stay this way thru the weekend so we don’t anticipate much business.

The other day (in really nice weather), I took a good long walk around the marina, and down to the park.  In one of the trees by the marina I found a Yellow Warbler.  They are so bouncy, it’s hard to catch them still long enough to get a shot, but I got lucky.

We have lots of gulls here.  In the parking lot by the Swimming Beach there were 3 Ringbill Gull males and 1 female.  The males were being very vocal with open wings, etc, trying to catch the attention of the female.  Here’s a shot of the 3 males squawking and the female pretending to ignore.

The female finally chose her male, separated him from the “herd” and regurgitated a fish to feed him.  Here’s a shot of them with the fish in the male’s beak.

Isn’t nature fun?!!

Yesterday I was at the computer in the trailer and noticed movement in the tree right outside the window.  I looked out and there was a sparrow of a different kind out there.  I grabbed my camera and went to the window to get shots.  I didn’t see the sparrow again, but I did see lots of flashes of color.  There were 2 male Western Tanagers out there scoping out the hummingbird feeder (Tanagers are nectar feeders).  I managed to get a couple of shots before Thom walked around the back of the trailer and scared them away.

We’re supposed to get rain tomorrow and rain or snow thru the weekend, so don’t anticipate being very busy.  Our hours will probably be cut short, but we can’t blame them for not working us when we’re not really needed.

Have I mentioned that the road into our park took some heavy winter damage this last winter?  The town of Huntsville’s mayor has decided they don’t have the money to fix the road, but it really needs to be fixed, so they will put up a toll booth about 1/4 mile in front of our booth and charge a $3 toll for everyone coming into our park.  We charge $10 for the use of the park and $10 for boat launch.  We anticipate a tremendous decrease in business due to the road toll.   The US Forest Service Lawyers and our Company’s lawyers are busy trying to get the town to do away with the toll, but nothing has been worked out and Memorial Weekend is coming up… which is when they want to open the toll booth.  We’ll see what happens.

Time for me to get things ready to go to work at 7 tomorrow morn.

Ya’ll stay healthy ‘n happy.

Toodles!

I really intended to get in here and write a post earlier this evening, but I got distracted and didn’t make it.

We’re getting into the groove here and waking up on time, getting on the move on time, etc.

My second day at the booth brought in more money… had a couple of season passes for boat launches… plus more picnickers on a lovely spring day.  It’s been cool and not real conducive to water play so we are pretty much breaking even.

Today they told us not to go to work, but put in for 2 hours.  Of course, that doesn’t feel right to us, so Thom put in about 3 hours of work.  Tomorrow is supposed to be rainy as well, so I don’t know what we’ll be instructed to do.

We finally have water here.  The Forest Service put in new water lines.  Sue let everyone do a load or two of laundry as needed.  We didn’t do any because tomorrow is the day we have the laundry facilities.  It’s only been 1-1/2 weeks since our last laundry day, so we only need about 1/2 day to get it done.

I have some fun photos to share… seagull mating ritual, and one of the most beautiful birds in the west… but they’ll have to wait until tomorrow or Thurs.  Sorry.  I just can’t seem to keep up lately.

Ya’ll stay happy ‘n healthy.

Toodles

… in the booth.  There are 3 shifts in the booth at the entrance to Cemetery Point, 7 a.m. - 12 noon, 12 noon - 5 p.m., & 5 p.m. - 10 p.m.  My first day manning the booth was the 12 - 5 shift.  We have people coming in to launch their boats at the boat ramp, and we have people coming in to use the day use area (picnic/swimming/fishing).  To use the boat ramp costs $10, to use the day use area costs $10.  If they want to use both… launch a boat then come back and use the picnic are, it is $10 for each use.

The water is still cold for swimming, skiing, etc, so we didn’t expect much business.  We got more than expected.  We’ve had pretty cool, wet weather this month and yesterday and today we had warmer temps with calm to moderate winds.  We brought in enough to at least pay for manning the booth.

We had some people come in who made me wonder about my fellow humans, but I’ll save those stories for when they become the norm (I understand that will happen here).  It was good that I got a mild sampling of what I will see the rest of the season.

Tomorrow my shift is the 1st one, 7 a.m. - noon.  That’s the shift that sees most of the boaters and fewer swimmers/picnickers.

Thom’s work starts at 7 a.m. every morning, to clean bathrooms, BBQ’s, park area, etc.  He’s assigned 6 hours a day, so puts in 5 hours in the mornings, then saves the last hour to do a couple of bathroom checks/cleanings during the evening.  When we get busier and have oodles ‘n bunches of people in here, we will both be assigned more hours to work because the booth will need 2 or even 3 people working (me) and the bathrooms and park will need several passes to keep clean and usable (Thom).

So far I like it.  I mostly like the people we work and live with.  I’m sure we’ll have our moments of wishing we could either kill someone or get the heck outta here, but that’s normal whenever you work with others.

If I don’t report in tomorrow, it may be Tuesday before I’m back.  We have Monday off and I intend to take advantage of it.

Ya’ll stay healthy ‘n happy.

Toodles!

… to write about, but I thought it was time to catch up again.  The weather is still playing tag between lousy and almost nice.  Today was nice enough for me to sit outside in shirt sleeves and watch the birds on the lake.  I guess we’re acclimating because the temp only got up to about 62F.  With just a little breeze, it’s nice sitting in the sun.

Today we had our info meeting to get ready to open on Saturday.  We ladies don’t start work until Saturday, but the guys started today cleaning up the park and getting it ready for the day use people.

When we visited Mike, Tiff and Coen on Mother’s day, Coen had a cold.  Tuesday morning I woke up with a sore throat and it’s just gotten worse since then.  I’ve always stayed pretty healthy until this year.  I came down with a cold in Feb. and now again.  If I caught this one from Coen, it was worth it.  I’m having a hard time functioning for now though.  With plugged up sinuses and fever I don’t feel like doing much of anything.  Tomorrow is supposed to be a fairly nice day.  Temps in the 60’s and low winds, lots of sunshine.  Another perfect day for me to sit in the sun and bake the cold away.

We are still without water here and they are saying it will be into next week before we have any.  We need to do laundry again, so we may just fill our water tank and use our own washer dryer with the diesel generator running.  One of the gals went down the valley today to do laundry at a laundromat.

I saw our first Broadtail Hummingbird today so I put out my nectar feeder.  He’s buzzed it a time or two, but hasn’t landed to drink yet.

I’m wearing down and don’t really have anything to say, so I’ll close and try to get back in a day or two.

Ya’ll stay healthy ‘n happy!

Tah!

We’re still waiting to open and get to work… and we’re still waiting for the weather to quit spitting snow and rain on us.  It’s been downright cold again.  I have to admit, yesterday was a wonderful day in Roy with my son, his wife, Tiffany and their son (MY grandson), Coen.  Here he is being Soccer Boy, he loves playing with balls and since Tiff is a soccer player he’s learned very well.

It was warm enough for us to sit outside on the patio, play in the grass with Coen and Willow, our dog, and have a wonderful BBQ Mike and Tiff cooked up (Shish-ka-bobs).  At the end of the afternoon the sun went away and the clouds and cold breeze took over again, but we sure enjoyed the time we had in the warmth of the sun.

Saturday we went down to clean the carpets on the Motorhome and do a bit of sprucing up.  Today we went back down to vacuum the carpets.  Except for one spot it turned out really good.  I did some spot cleaning on that one spot (about 6″ x 1-1/2′) and it looks like it’s come up okay.  We still have a bit more to do, but I wouldn’t be embarrassed to show it now.

We had our “kick-off the season” meeting this afternoon.  Management is still candy-coating reality for the new-comers, but I really can’t blame them, they’d be looking for replacements if they told the down and dirty truth.

It looks like we go on the payroll this coming Wednesday and open the park Saturday.  Thom will be out cleaning up blown down branches and trash and I will be in training Wednesday - Friday.

Last Friday, the day I got pics of the Black-bellied Plover, I was told there was a Bald Eagle sitting in a tree just around the corner.  Thom and I grabbed cameras, hopped in the car and drove down to see if he was still there.  Come to find out, it’s a short walk from here, so in the future I’ll be walking there and not burning gas.  The eagle wasn’t there, but there was a pair of Osprey just starting a nest on a telephone/power pole.  Here’s a shot of the two of them, female on the bottom, male above her.

This is the male flying back after I spooked him by walking closer.

We had some pretty stiff winds last night and this morning and as we drove past the nest site, we noticed the nest has pretty much blown away.  When we drove back by several hours later, it didn’t look like they are attempting to rebuild a nest there.  Hopefully they are rebuilding nearby and we’ll still get to watch them fish and fly by.  We saw the female sitting on the pole every time we drove by today.  I’ll keep you posted on what they are up to.  They are such beautiful birds!

Time to get ready for bed.  I’ve a Dr’s Appt tomorrow (just a checkup) and have to get up early.

Ya’ll stay healthy and happy!

Toodles!

Today has been a pretty nice day with warmer temps and very light winds.  The temp is in the low 50’s, so it’s comfortable outside with a jacket on.

Earlier I was outside with Willow when I saw a fairly large bird in the field across the road from our trailer.  At first I thought it was a Kildeer, but when I got closer I realized it was much bigger than a Kildeer and was black & white (not a Magpie).  I managed to get a few pictures of him, but he wouldn’t let me get very close.  Thank heavens for the zoom lens.  After I uploaded the pics to my computer I looked him up in my bird book.  He is a Black-bellied Plover.  They are very rare in this neck of the woods, they usually migrate down from the Arctic by way of the Great Lakes.  They have been seen here in Northern Utah, but not very often.  I guess I got lucky.  There was also a pair of Kildeer looking for a nest site out in the field near him, so I got a few shots of them too.

Black Bellied Plover with a Kildeer behind him (out of focus Kildeer)

Kildeer

After chasing the Plover and Kildeers around the field I decided to go down to the beach and get some pics of the Bank Swallows nests.

Single nest

My last shot for the day is a picture of Powder Mountain where there is still plenty of snow for the skiers to play on, fresh snow even.

Willow’s bladder seems to fill up at the same time I’m blogging, so I better go take her out.

Ya’ll stay healthy ‘n happy!

Toodles.