Farewell First-Half Volunteers

When we were asked to fill a volunteer position at Big Bend it was always a November 1st to March 31st commitment.  We thought that was the arrangement for all the volunteers but recently some of our new friends started talking about getting ready to leave.  Leave?  What leave?  It is still two months away.

They were just as perplexed about our reaction to their leaving talk as we were to them talking about something we did not think would be a discussion for weeks to come.  Their response was; "what, you are not leaving at the end of January?"  "Nope.  Why, are you?"

Turns out that there is a mid-season turnover of volunteer jobs.  Not all of them, but almost.  A whole new crop of volunteers has showed up and are in the midst of the two week orientation/training program as I write.  Next week will be the big switch when the current volunteers will extract themselves from their in-park housing and the new volunteers will move in.  Quite a production.

We have since had a volunteer awards banquet, a pot-luck prepared by the full-time staff.  Most of us were able to get together and socialize a little before getting dispersed to the four winds.  Each volunteer or pair of volunteers were recognized for their hours of service.  Cyndee and I being the rookies (and youngsters) of the bunch were given a shout-out for our combined service hours at the Grand Canyon and Big Bend, 450 hours.  From there the hour count jumped dramatically, we heard 2,000 then 5,000 then several more above that and finally one guy that had been volunteering for 18 years had racked up 11,000 hours.  Wow.

The banquet was held at the headquarters building in the community room and was an organized affair with a schedule, program and the obligatory PowerPoint presentation sync'd to music.  It was nice but not totally sufficient.  A week later there was a spontaneous effort by the volunteers themselves to get together one last time for pizza at our favorite pizza place in Terlingua, Long Draw Pizza.

It was a pretty short notice affair so folks in some of the more far flung stations couldn't make it but it was still a pretty good turn-out.

The owner of Long Draw Pizza detests the use of cell phones in her establishment.  But she was busy making pizzas so we all snuck out our phones for a couple of quick photos.  This shot takes in the whole place.  My back is to the wall and the other end of the table represents the seating area.

If you have been reading along this blog you may remember a post awhile back where I explained Long Draw Pizza.  It is not big, and fancy is a word that would never be used, but they hand-make a darn good pizza.  Our little party filled the place up and our order consumed all the oven space they have.  And that was fine, all the time it took to make and cook those pizzas was time well used talking about everybody's experiences in Big Bend and next adventure.

A couple that we had made friends with were unable to join us for pizza night but we really wanted to get with them one last time before they took off so we made a dinner date with them for a later night at The Starlight Theatre Restaurant in Terlingua.  They drove the 26 miles from Persimmon Gap to where we are in Panther Junction and then we all loaded up in Big Gulp and drove the next 26 miles to Terlingua.

The Starlight is a local hot spot.  It has had a number of lives dating back to the late 1800's, one of which until recently was a "theatre" (live music, concerts, cowboy poetry and such) in a building with no roof.  That is how it got its name.  But someone finally came along (in fact, the ranger we now work for) and put a roof on and added a kitchen and bar.  It has what passes as fine dining for around here and has thrived ever since.

The Starlight Theatre Restaurant and Bar.  When the sun gets a little lower this porch will be chock-full of people.

Inside the Starlight.  Stage and impressive mural at far end.

For our Sunday evening meal we just about had the place to ourselves.  But it is very different on other nights.  A very popular time is Monday night when you can get two burger plates for the price of one.  And when a burger can run as much as $20 you better believe people take advantage of the discount.

Our dinner companions are like us, this is their first year as full-timing volunteers.  We enjoyed comparing notes and sharing connections for future opportunities.  One thing they have done that we will not be doing is live in Costa Rica for a few years.  They thought Costa Rica was going to be a great, economical place to retire but the cost shot up rapidly in the short time they were there.  They decided to re-tool to be full-time RV'ers in the U.S. and are enjoying the new lifestyle.

We have a whole slug of new emails and phone numbers for keeping up with our new compadres.  Chances are pretty good that we will cross paths with some of them in future volunteer gigs.  So long, for now.