Camp Host Volunteer Orientation. Well, Sort Of.

We arrived at our new volunteer position a couple of weeks early.  The repairs to our camper that we went to the factory in Kansas for were not as severe as anticipated and completed much quicker than allowed for.  We had planned for the worse and hoped for the best, we definitely got the best.  But getting to Chattahoochee Bend early was an adjustment for us and the park.

With a couple days to ourselves we used the time to scrape off 2,000 miles of bugs and road grime.

In an earlier post it was mentioned that the park staff were all new.  Of the seven-person staff (this includes park management, administrative and maintenance), the longest service time was six months, and that was the administrative assistant.  Everybody else had been here only 2 weeks to two months.  The park manager was one of the two-week term people and the assistant manager's position was vacant.  She (the park manager) was on duty as the sole ranger in the park, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day until they could fill the assistant manager position.

We have been volunteering for two years now, two summers on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, a winter in Big Bend National Park in Texas and a winter at Fort Frederica National Monument on St. Simons Island, Georgia.  Even though it was always the same agency, we learned quickly that each park had its own culture and ways of doing things.  We had to be very alert to the nuances of how each manager ran "their" park so as not to inadvertently offend someones sensitivities.  At CBSP we were getting to watch the culture being established.  This newly hired park manager was coming from a private park system (multiple Girl Scout Parks in Tennessee), this was her first venture in state government employment so she was learning the limits of her control and putting her fingerprint on the operation at the same time.

This set of conditions kind of left us hanging the first few days.  Since this is our first state park we are not sure if we are seeing the normal orientation process or not, we expect not.  The volunteer's handbook has some ambiguous language that pretty much lets each park decide what is required of a camp host.  In our park's case we were told that we were to assist campers during the day and check in late arrivals between the office's closing time of 5pm and the park gate closing of 10pm.  For our type of volunteer job (living on-site camp host) we have to contribute a combined 32 hours per week.  When we asked what our off-duty days are, we were looked at like we had two heads.  I don't think that anyone had even considered that we would not be available all day every day.  After a bit of stammering around the answer finally came that we need to be on duty every weekend (Fri, Sat, Sun) and holidays.

We were also told; "By the way, you have to clean your campground loop's bath house and mow, trim and leaf blow the 40 acres it sits on."  I guess we will be contributing more than 32 hours a week.

The other campground host, for campground #2, a tent only campground, is a seasoned veteran of CBSP.  This is his third summer and he has been here for about a month this season, he knows the park by its previous management and he spent some time with us giving us an orientation from his point of view.  By his account he was working about 10 hours a day, 7 days a week.  His only time out of the park was a bi-weekly trip to the grocery store, leaving at sun-up so he could be back before 10am, his usual bathroom cleaning time.  We're not liking how this work schedule seems to be shaping up.  We'll give it some time and see how it really works out.

That being said, mid-week morning the maintenance supervisor shows up with a zero-turn mower and says; "You need to mow.  We'll come get the mower back in the morning."  No how do you do, good morning or anything else.  Just a command to mow.  I told him; "Okay, but somebody is going to have to train me how to operate this piece of machinery."  His training consisted of standing in front of me and moving his arms back and forth to demonstrate how to make the mower "go" and turn.  No explanation of how the start locks worked, no discussion on the safety controls, no discussion of the operating limits, just here you go, you'll figure it out.  I stopped him before he left again, asking about safety equipment - hearing protection, hard toe boots, safety glasses, gloves?  Again I get the look as if I have two heads.  He reluctantly coughed up a pair of gloves, thank goodness I had all the other stuff myself.

Getting my bearings on operating a commercial-grade zero-turn mower.

With all the rain the grass is wet and the ground is wet.  Georgia red clay can be slick on the surface with a firm base beneath.  A combination that can be as treacherous as black ice.  Mowing a flat surface is easy enough but it gets pretty hairy as soon as a slope is encountered.  A thousand pounds of man and machine can quickly slide into a turnover or get stuck.  My first adventure in mowing with a commercial grade zero-turn mower was an all day endeavor with only two extractions by tow rope.

Something else mentioned in an earlier post was that we would be allowed to have bird feeders.  We have been carrying around two giant seed feeders and two hummingbird feeders for the last two years and were only able to put them out last winter while at St Simons Island where the only thing they attracted were undersized deer.  But we're getting action here in the mid-west Georgia woods.  Goldfinches, blue birds, chipping sparrows, morning dove, brown thrashers, woodpeckers and our favorite, hummingbirds.

Ruby throated females constantly accost each other.
We have 8 feeding stations and 20 birds.  It makes for lots of drama at the bird feeder.

Cyndee got the above photo while sitting under the awning, looking out over our "yard".  We both enjoyed a pleasant, and what has been a rare, rain-free evening.  For the first time in a long time we are going to get to see the sun set.  The layout of this park and our position in the loop should set us up for a good look at it.  And it did.

View out our kitchen window.

What a great way to end the day and a blog post.

Exploring Chattahoochee Bend State Park

Here in the first days of April we have been getting oriented to our new home for the next several months.  Chattahoochee Bend State Park (CBSP) is a name that is descriptive of the park's location.  Situated alongside the Chattahoochee River, the park encompasses a large horseshoe-shaped "bend" in the river to the southwest of Atlanta, near where the river becomes the border between Georgia and Alabama.

Within the bend and five and a half miles down the river is the park, a total of 2,900 acres.  At the apex of the bend is a haul-out for people paddling the river.  There are platform campsites for an overnight stay in these piney woods that were once part of a managed forest operated by Georgia Pacific or one of its kind.  If you are of a mind to, these back country campsites are available as a hike-in too.  For backpackers it is an easy, flat 5.5 mile walk (one way).

The bend in Chattahoochee Bend State Park

While the "bend" is relatively remote, accessible only by paddling the river or hiking the 5+ miles in, the rest of the park can mostly be gotten to by the comfort of your vehicle.  There are two trail head parking lots, a visitor center, a day use area with picnic tables and grills, a boat ramp, and three campgrounds.

Picnic alongside the Chattahoochee River in CBSP's day use area.

Fourteen miles of trails.  Bring Fido, dogs are welcome, on a leash.

Observation tower at about 1 mile on the 5.5 mile river trail.

Central to the park is the canoeing/kayaking.

But like the month preceding our arrival at CBSP, we have had more rain than sun.  Getting out and exploring the park has been hit and miss.  Sometimes we have just decided we'll have to be wet and do it anyway.  And that is exactly what our son and his girlfriend did one weekend.  It had been raining for days on end, the river was swollen to the point it was touching the bottom limbs of trees lining its banks.  Even the locals seemed to be hunting someplace dry to hang out for awhile.

This turtle had had enough of the drowned woods.

Better traction on pavement.

The park has a full compliment of rental equipment for your float trip.  We got a two-person kayak, paddles and life vests and headed for a boat ramp that was about 10 miles away by road.  Putting in at River Park boat ramp typically gives paddlers about 5 hours of river time to get to the boat ramp in CBSP.

A chilly and wet day in April for a paddle trip down the "Hooch".  We'll leave it to the twenty-somethings, us old folks are going back to our cabin on wheels in the woods and wait for the call to pick them up.

The river was so swollen and cold that Mom had a little trouble with putting her youngest afloat on it.  It was going to be a long 5 hours for her waiting for that call to come get them.  We cruised on back to the campground, dried off and made a pot of tea.

I guess that we got warm and comfortable because the next thing we knew there was the sound of a phone ringing and it was dark because our eyes were closed.  It was the phone call we had been waiting on but had we really been asleep in our recliners for several hours?  The nap-induced fog in our brains cleared quickly and we realized that it had been just two hours since dropping them off.  Had something gone wrong?  Were they hung up somewhere on the river?  The answer to both was, no.  They were calling from the boat ramp in the park.  We asked if they had put a motor on that kayak but they said that the river was so swift that they never even had to put a paddle in the water until they needed to pull into the ramp.  The water was simply moving that fast.

As the day wore on the rain eased up and the temperature moderated a little.  Might as well hike out to the observation tower and see what it is like.  To get there we take the river trail.  This trail meanders in and out of the woods parallel to the river, crossing several small creeks using really well-built foot bridges.  On our third bridge we stopped in the middle to look up the creek at a what we thought was a jumble of tree limbs and forest litter clogging the creek.  But on closer inspection it became clear that we were looking at a beaver dam.

From this distance it is hard to see, but that is a sizable beaver dam up there.

When things dry out a little better it will be worth the walk to come back here and wade through the brush to see if we can lay an eye on the lodge and estimate how many acres this beaver has flooded.

After slogging our way through the mud to the tower we were disappointed to find it taped off and closed due to a bad section of railing on the first level.  At least it was continuing to clear for our walk back to camp.

The return to camp saw a nearly clear sky and a sun getting low in the west.  With everything soaking wet the added heat almost had everything appearing to be steaming.  Normally that kind of humidity is miserable but today it brought a real treat.

This rainbow was actually down in the woods.
I was standing in the door of the camper and my head was higher than the top of the rainbow.

Nice way to end the day, and a blog post.

A Push South and Our Home for the Summer

I know I am sounding like a broken record but, it is a wet morning at our Arkansas campsite.  Once again we expect to dodge rain on our drive today.  But today it looks unlikely that we will stay dry, the rain coverage is pretty heavy between Tennessee and northern Alabama.

Normally when we are coming east on I-40 and make the transition south to I-20 on Highway 78 between Memphis and Birmingham, the timing works out for an overnight stay at a favorite campground in Tupelo, Mississippi.  But yesterday's destination of Village Creek State Park in Arkansas put us a little farther along than normal, we'll be skipping Tupelo this trip.  Besides, we are really getting anxious to get back to the Atlanta area and see the grandbaby.  Anniston, Alabama, just east of Birmingham, will be our goal for today.

Anniston has a Camping World Store that also operates a campground about a block away.  This place is convenient, just off I-20 and right on our route.  We'll spend a little more time driving than we prefer, taking about 6 or 7 hours but this will put us within less than 2 hours of our Atlanta area destination.

We are going to arrive in Georgia almost two weeks ahead of the scheduled start date for our next camp host position at Chattahoochee Bend State Park.  Once we got to Anniston and got parked and set up we started looking at our options of somewhere to stay until our engagement started.  But after a lengthy session on-line we did not find anything that was desirable.  We thought we should give our new park a call and see if they had any campsites available for the time leading up to the start of our assignment.  We expected that the hosts we are replacing would still be occupying the host site and that we would take a spot in the campground and just plan on hitching up and going to the dump station a few times since the campsites have no sewer connection.

To our surprise, when we got in touch with our new park they told us that the hosts we were replacing had left early and that we could just come and begin work immediately.  We weren't sure we were ready to start work yet, we are kind of enjoying this dinking around and really wanted to spend time with the grandbaby before getting tied down again.  But the offer of a full hook up site at no cost was too great.  We took the offer to begin early and told them we would be in the next day.

The drive from Anniston to Chatt Bend SP is less than two hours.  It is a meander through the woods of Alabama and Georgia on their narrow, winding back roads.  For a change, it is a beautiful, bright day and we pull into the visitor center parking lot before noon.

We had met a couple people in the office on a visit to scout the place out just before leaving for Kansas.  But now introductions were in earnest and as each person was introduced we learned that of the seven people on staff only two of them had been on the job more than a few weeks.  We were coming in with more park operations experience than the majority of the paid staff!  This should be interesting.

From the visitor center to the two campgrounds is about three miles of twisting, hilly road.  The turns so sharp and the hills small but so steep as to be blind at the crest of every one.  Glad I don't have to pull the trailer in and out of here every day.  We are assigned campground number 1, the RV campground, and I make the turn in.  The camp host site is the very first one past the entrance, just at the opening to the campground loop.  The loop has 26 sites, including the camp host site, we pull into number 101 and set up housekeeping.

Of all the campsites we have had as volunteers, this has got to be the best one by a wide margin.  First, it's huge!  Then the electric power is clean, water is soft and sewer flows great.  Our door does not face the road, we actually get to look out over a "yard" with nothing but woods beyond that.  Our site comes complete with a cartport and lockable tool and supply shed.  We also have a perfectly clean shot at the southwesterly sky, our dish locks on to its three satellites with little effort.

This being a state park means that they are not quite as fanatical about not interacting with nature.  They have planted lawn grasses around the campsites and have no problem with us putting our seed bird feeders or hummingbird feeders out.  We're thrilled.

We'll meet the host for campground 2 later.  For now we are going to soak in this dry weather and great setup.

Hidden Gem

It is not raining but everything is wet and cold on this March morning in Branson, Mo.  The cold is preferred on a travel day as engine and transmission temperatures stay in a much more preferred range.  Wear and tear is greatly reduced when high temperatures can be avoided.  Only a little ways out of Branson and things dry out, specifically the roads, but temperatures stay cool and the skies gray.

Cyndee started looking for possible places along our route to pull in for the night but was not finding anything we really wanted to do.  They were mostly commercial campgrounds in and around Memphis so they were either Elvis or Mississippi River themed.  The Elvis ones were right in the city and a little too cramped for our equipment and we had stayed on the Mississippi one once before.  It was nice but with all the rain we expected it to be just one big mud pit.

It was not directly on our path but Cyndee found an Arkansas state park, not too far from Memphis.  Village Creek State Park was a little out of the way, north of I-40, but it was a big park that had modern RV facilities.  Especially nice were the level pull-thru sites.  Even though we are here for just one night I unhitched and leveled the rig as if we were in for a long stay.

It was a pretty good drive to get to the park from I-40 and then another good drive to get back to the RV campground.  This place is big.  But, wow, what a nice place.  Our campsite was on a small bluff overlooking a lake.  Even with winter-bare trees and gray skies it was pretty.

Nothing like having a campground to yourself.

Arkansas knows how to build an RV campground.  Concrete pad for the RV and picnic table, a grill and fire pit, lantern pole, and gravel apron (no mud when raining).

This place is real gem hidden out in the woods.  To bad we are here for only one night.  We would both like to see it again in a season other than winter.

Slow Train Through the Ozarks

It is a soggy morning after last night's rain.  We have to thread our way between mud puddles to get out of the campground.  Some of the camp sights that border the little river that runs along one edge of the campground are beginning to flood.  Glad we are in the section that is at least twenty feet higher.

Today's adventure centers on a scenic railway ride followed by a late afternoon meal of all you can eat ribs at Famous Dave's BBQ.  I think we have only had BBQ three times since arriving at St. Simons Island 5 months ago, we are both overdue for some 'Que.

Our train will do an out-and-back, going south into Arkansas, reversing and returning on the same track.  Timing of the departure and return is coordinated to use the scenic section of rail so as not to hinder freight trains on this active line.  When it is all said and done, we'll cover 40 miles that include winding through wooded mountains, river crossings, tunnels and high trestles.

 

         

There is an engine on each end of the train, one built in 1951 and the other in 1962.  There are seven cars between the engines, a couple of which are much earlier vintage.  There are three domed cars, two coming from the Kansas City Zephyr (1952) and one from the Twin-City Zephyr (1947).  A dining car, actually what Amtrak called a Buffet Lounge (1951), a 48-seat diner from the Denver Zephyr (1956) and two coaches; one a 60-seat lounge from Texas Pacific Railroad (1949) and the other a 1939 Budd Lounge Observation from the Atlantic Coast Line "Champion" train.

The scenic train  had only been operating a few days on the day we got on.  It operates seasonally from March to December and they were still getting the moth balls cleaned out.  A crowd was gathering at the depot, tickets in hand, pushing forward to assure they were the first to get on board so they could snag one of the domed car seats. 

The Old Branson Scenic Railway Depot Sits Alongside the Gleaming New Conference Center and Hotel

Our strategy was different, we were going to avoid the clamor of the crowds and go to the Texas Pacific Railroad lounge car.  The seats would be large and comfortable and we would be able to switch from one side to the other, depending on where the best view was.

We started out with the TPR car to ourselves but were soon joined by the overflow that the domed cars could not take.

The train eased out of the station and it only took a couple of minutes before we were into the beautiful countryside.  The train continued its easy pace while our conductor narrated the geography, geology and history of what we were seeing slip past our windows.

If you are a train buff then trestles and tunnels are prized experiences when riding the rail.  We got to go over a couple of nice high trestles and one long, pitch dark, tight fit tunnel.  many times a scenic will stop and let the camera buffs get out and take a picture of the train on the trestle or coming out of a tunnel.  But this train was not one of those.  I don't think their schedule would allow for it.

We're back in town and it has been a good while since breakfast.  We're going to make a bee-line for Famous Dave's down on the Promenade and get into those ribs.

What kind of tourist destination would this be if it did not have an outlet mall?  Branson has one of course.  And Cyndee is not going to let that get past us so we head over to see their line up of stores.



With That New Grandbaby Waiting On Us Back in Georgia, Cyndee Hit the Jackpot with Finding the Oshkosh Store.

Dining and shopping done we make our way back to the camper to prepare for a departure first thing tomorrow.  After a check with the weather it looks like we'll be dodging storms again.

Branson, MO - Not Just for Old People

We texted with friends in Texas about going to visit Branson and one of them replied; "What do you want to go to Branson for?  It's for old people."  I'm not sure where our friend got his information from but I do know it was not from first-hand experience as he had only been on a vacation once in his life and we were with him when it went down at the beginning of the 1980's.  And it was just a day at Six Flags Over Texas.

We knew where we wanted to go today based on our scouting expedition in yesterday's afternoon rain.  There was a main drag in the old, original part of downtown.  It had the obligatory ice cream and fudge shops but it also had an incredible general store, Dick's 5 & 10.  This place was amazing, to begin with it was huge, but even being huge the isles were narrow and every square inch of the place was crammed full of so many things that your head needed to be on a swivel to take it all in.  Many parts of the store were locked in a time gone by, housewares, toys, board games and nick-knacks from the 50's and 60's.  The rest of the store was a collage of necessities, dry goods and tourist memorabilia.

Branson, MO Old Downtown
Dick's 5 & 10 on the right where the red car is parked.

Lunch was just up the street at a restaurant called The Farmhouse.  Plenty of good, home-style comfort food here.  We don't remember what our main course was but we both can't forget the blackberry cobbler and apple dumpling for desert.

Just up the street from Dick's 5 & 10 is The Farmhouse Restaurant

Rolling out of The Farmhouse we go in the only direction our over-filled stomachs will let us, down the street toward Branson Landing and its river boardwalk.

Branson Landing Boardwalk.
Dancing Waters show every half hour with balls of fire coming out of the black cylinders accompanied by music.

 Branson Landing is a relatively new mixed use development with upscale shops at street level and ritzy living accommodations rising four or more stories above.  Between the development and the river/lake is a boardwalk with common areas for small events.

Cyndee with a small fraction of the Branson Landing development as a backdrop.

Branson Landing is a shiny new nickel for this mountain town.

I had no more than taken the above picture and put the camera in the backpack when a Bald Eagle appeared directly above.  It glided just above rooftop level, following the length of the street and disappeared into the trees.  I kept watching for it with camera ready for the rest of our stay but we never saw it again.

We have kept most of our activity isolated to the old downtown and the landing area, which are adjacent to each other and all within walking distance of a single parking place.  But there is so much more here.  The town extends for many miles, wondering through the hills and mountains of the Ozarks.  In addition to the dozens of theaters, there are numerous outdoor attractions such as go-cart tracks, water parks, golf courses, and hiking adventures.  One place in particular, the Shepherd of the Hills, has a monster zip line, over a mile long and starts from an elevated structure (170' high) called Inspiration Tower.  Even with school still in session we saw plenty of young families taking in what Branson had to offer.  So much for Branson being for "old people."

The weather is closing in late in the afternoon so we head back to the camper and batten down the hatches for the evening.

A Wiggle Through Super Cell Thunderstorms

We have a little break in the weather.  We are going to make a break for Branson and keep our fingers crossed that we can slip between the super-cells that are popping up all over the place.

We departing Springfield and heading south into gently rolling hills that soon meld into long, steep grades.  It was not like we were crossing the continental divide, there were no switch-backs or emergency exits for runaway trucks.  But it is still mountain driving.  Even though the roads are pretty straight, the descents and climbs are numerous, I am going to go through a lot of fuel for just a two hour drive.

Well before noon we were pulling into our campground, but not before being taken down a rabbit trail by the GPS.  The GPS had us turn down a road that started out looking good but it soon got narrower and narrower with steep little hills that had sharp crests.  If one of these crests were to have been just a little sharper the trailer would have high-centered.  I pulled over at a wide spot in the road (which turned out to be someone's front yard) and asked a gentleman mowing his lawn if I was headed in the right direction for the campground.  He was not sure about where the campground was but he was positive that I could not get over the next hill without dragging the trailer and pretty sure I could not turn around where the road dead-ended just a short distance further.  We executed a 20-point turn right where we were and went back out to the main highway to find the proper route.

Turkey Creek RV Village is a campground in the Escapees Club network.  We get a full hook-up sight, sometimes with cable and access to WIFI via the TengoInternet pay as you go system, all for a fee of half or less than comparable campgrounds and amenities.  The campground is also available to club members for stays spanning months.  The rates are very attractive but you have to factor in your use of electricity because it is metered and charged separately.  We are going to be here for only a few days so we're just paying the nightly all in one rate.

The park has some miles on it but it is kept well.  We are here in March, well before the high season starts and the office is open only a couple of hours a few days a week.  We have to check ourselves in and take the site we arranged for over the phone, a pull-thru with an open look to the southern sky so our sat dish can get a good lock on a signal.  We are in the midst of season change and we want to keep an eye on the volatile weather.

Things are pretty soggy around here.  Any sightseeing done today will have to be done by driving around with the windshield wipers going.  And that's just what we'll do.  We'll scout out our plan of attack for tomorrow.

Gotta Git While the Gittin' is Good

Another weekend has passed.  We have been monitoring the weather and road reports almost hourly the whole weekend and it looks like it will be safe to head south Monday.  But it is going to be touchy, there is another giant storm building in Canada and predicted to push all the way to the Gulf.  We are going to go for it.  We are leaving post haste and going to see if we can outrun the new storm.

Our intermediate goal is to get to Branson, MO for a few days of play before reporting to our next camp host gig.  The four years that we lived in Oklahoma we were within an easy days drive of Branson but regretted that we never made it over to enjoy what it had to offer.  In those four years I was traveling 200 nights a year for work and we grew our family from the two of us to four.  Most of those four years are a blur of a memory for both of us.  So we have decided to remove that regret and see what Branson is all about, even if it is out of season.

With storms in front of us and storms behind us we start south.  The GPS and every other mapping software we have wants to take us east through Kansas City, then turning south for Springfield, MO.  I want nothing to do with I-70 to KC.  It is rough, hard jarring and heavily tolled once you get near the city.  We get the good old road atlas out and manually map our own route straight south out of Junction City through the corn and wheat fields of Kansas.  The roads got narrow from time to time but overall it was a very pleasant ride.  We made a good choice of routes.

As we approached Springfield we could see that we were catching up with the storms in front of us.  We decided not to dive into shafts of rain and hail we could easily see.  Springfield would have to be it for today.  More precisely, we got a site at Stafford RV Park in Stafford, MO, about 25 minutes north east of Springfield.  The campground was right off of I-44, a one-man operation.  The one man was the owner, manager, camp host, handy man and janitor.  No pavement here, we had to straddle mud ruts and were instructed to get one of the "high" sites so that the expected night's rain would not leave us in a miniature lake.  Here in the flat-graded campground high is a relative term.  Mere inches separated high from low.

We got unhitched and hooked up just in time to step inside before the sky opened up.  We spent the evening dry and cozy with good, strong cell signals and researched tomorrow's weather.  It looked like the storms behind us were going to over run the storms in front of us tomorrow.  We are going to have to hang here a day or so.

Turns out our campground is sandwiched between I-44 and the old Route 66 "Mother Road".  We get to put another notch in our Route 66 belt as we have never been on this section of it before.  It also works out to be the best way to get into Springfield, which we learn is the headquarters city of Bass Pro Shops.  We figure to go into Springfield after breakfast and visit Bass Pro then scout out a place for lunch and cruise Springfield for awhile. 

In Springfield all signs lead to Bass Pro, it was easy to find.  Even without the signs it would have been easy, the place was massive.  It looked like they were two city blocks long and a full city block deep.  there was parking for thousands.  This place even had its own conference center!  Inside was even more amazing.  I estimate the ceiling height reached forty feet in the center open area of the building with tiered levels of shopping departments, museums and restaurants along the walls.  Yep, I said museums and restaurants.  And everywhere you looked were nature scenes, just incredible taxidermy and wildlife modeling.  It was not unreasonable to have the urge to get a pair of binoculars to get a better look at the ones higher up.  I can't imagine how many millions of dollars they have in their nature scenes.

We definitely were not going to see all of this place in the couple of hours we thought we would.  Heck, we spent that long in the gun and bow museums alone.

Many hours later we were in Bass Pro overload.  We had not seen the whole place but we had seen all that we were going to.  I'm not sure but I think we hit a Sonic Drive In on the way home and called it a day.  It looks like we may be able to travel tomorrow.  It should be less than two hours to Branson but we will have to wait until later in the morning to leave to give the last of the weather time to clear out.  No more flatlander driving from here on, we'll be negotiating the mountains of the Ozarks.

Light at the End of the Tunnel and a Shock

Talk has turned to completion of all the repairs that have been taken on and we can begin planning our departure day.  But what a difference a day makes.  We have gone from sub-freezing night time temperatures to the Lion of March rearing its head, spawning a powerful mix of thunderstorms and freezing rain.  Our first opportunity to head south appears it will be blocked by what both the local and national weathermen are calling a "significant and potentially dangerous group of storms stretching from coast to coast."

The last thing to finish before we could go is the repositioning and re-cabling of the interior dome emitter for our cell phone booster.  Even with express shipping it took a number of days to custom fabricate the cable and get it to us and then the fishing of the new cable through its route to the new termination point turned out to be a challenge for the service specialist.  But I have to give him credit, he stayed at it and exhibited an enormous amount of patience to get the job done.  However this was at least a couple more days of work at a labor rate of a minimum of $95/hr and the thought of paying the repair bill is looming large in my mind.  I have called the credit card company to give them advance warning of a significant charge, possibly five figures, in the next 48 hours.

It has been a couple of days now and it is a Thursday.  The repairs are winding up and they are telling us we will be ready to go at the end of the day.  The weatherman's predictions are coming to be, multi-car pile ups, eighteen wheelers blown off the road, flooded roads and all directly in the path we need to take.  There is no route south that looks like a good idea to take.  But New Horizons to the rescue again.  They said; "No problem, just stay hooked up here until the weather clears."  They just wanted us to move from in front of the service center around to where the factory does delivery of its new rigs to their owners.  This also put us parked next to our customer lounge companions with the decapitated roof.  They too were finishing up.  It had been six weeks for them and they couldn't wait to get back in their own rig and on their way.  Cyndee and I can't imagine, we had only been getting through this repair thing for two weeks, they were at three times that!  Their first direction of travel was to be west on I-70 to Denver and then Colorado Springs.  The roads were clear in that direction, they would be getting out of here before us.

It's Friday morning, time to pay the damages.  The sky is brilliant blue and last night's cold snap has my breath visible two feet in front of me as I make the walk to the billing department.  Even with the sting of the cold my gait shows no sign of hurry.  My hand on the door, I pause, my head and shoulders drop.  I take a deep breath and tell myself; "Aahh, it's only money" and go inside.

The clerk sees me and starts looking in her folders to get the invoice out but comes up empty handed.  She asks me to wait while she checked with Ken the service manager to see if he had not finished the paperwork yet.  In a couple of minutes Ken appeared and waived me over.  I approached and jokingly asked if the bill was so big that they ran out of paper.  He chuckled and replied; "Nah, there is no bill because there will be no charge."  I stood there, slack-jawed, stunned.  "Wait, what?"  "Yeah" he said; "Let's call it even for the inconvenience you have had."  Still stunned I was hard pressed to even express a simple thank you.  Eventually I had the urge to jump on him and give him a big ol' wet kiss but thought better of it before acting.  Instead I just kept saying thanks and thinking maybe I should go before he had second thoughts.  The return to the rig was very different than my departure, there was a skip in my step and I have no recollection of the cold.  I guess that is my reaction to shock.

And the Repairs Continue

Yesterday's post left off with a huge sigh of relief.  No beastly killer mold growing in the walls of the rig.  But there was still the water damage to the cedar lined closet, all of which had been stripped out along with wood trim, shelving, sliding full-length mirrored doors and carpet.  Everything would have to be rebuilt.  Plus, we had a few minor things that had come up in the year since we were last at the factory that we wanted fixed.  And none of this was in our warranty, it expired almost a year ago.  I could see the dollar signs piling up.

We have spanned a weekend now.  It was a cold and dreary stretch, sitting on the asphalt apron to the maintenance building.  We did a little shopping for food and took advantage of being close to a Redbox and checked out a couple of Blu-ray movies.  According to the weather man, next week promises to be a little more spring-like.

Come Monday they were back at it.  One of the fixes I wanted done, an issue with antenna placement of my cell phone amplifier, needed a lot of new cabling to route to the new mounting location of the internal dome emitter.  This is not something that anybody has on-hand, the OEM of the amplifier has to custom make the cable and ship it to us.  This added a couple of days to our time in Junction City.

About mid-week we got that break in the weather that was promised and Cyndee and I struck out to see what there was to see in the surrounding area.  We had heard that there was a Wizard of Oz museum a couple of towns away in the direction of Kansas City.  We gave that a try.

Wamego, like Dorothy's house, is in a wind-blown wheat field, miles from anything else.  Some of the buildings on the main street were built post-civil war up to about the 1920's. 

The building that the museum was in looked as if it used to be a couple of old mercantile stores that had the wall separating them knocked out.  Whatever it used to be, it was far from that now.

We weren't quite sure what to expect on the inside.  It could have easily been a bunch of plastic reproduction junk.  But it definitely was not.  There was display after display of articles used in the movie as well as oodles of memorabilia from the 1940's. 

The life size model of each of the characters was especially well done.

A not so close-up of the wicked witch and her flying monkey.

The scarecrow was the one that looked as if it was about to talk to you.

While many pieces in the museum are original from the movie or era, the lion suite is not.
But it is a very well done reproduction.

We would not have come all the way across the country just to go to this museum but it was a great way to spend the day since we were already in the area.

Wamego is a pretty small town and dining options are limited.  But half-way back to Junction City is Manhattan, KS, home of KSU and lots of college town eatery options.

Finally, a day that was more than just magazines, TV and practicing the art of staying warm.

What a Relief

The customer lounge at New Horizons' factory and service center is comfortable enough.  They have gone out of their way to make it as homey as possible. Overstuffed couches and love seats, end tables with fabric shaded lamps, stacks of magazines and books and one recliner that everyone tries to be the first in each morning to claim for the day.  The people in the lounge with us are mostly brief encounters with couples in for ordering/designing their rig or those dropping off or picking up their rig from the service center.  But then there are those like us, fulltimers in for service, "homeless" during the day while getting repairs or upgrades installed.  We also saw a few couples that were in for the couple of days it took to "move".  They were moving out of their existing RV into their just-built mondo-condo on wheels.  No kidding, these rigs were gigantic.  The shortest one being 42' with five slide-outs.  I don't know where they find campgrounds they can fit in.

There was one couple that was there before we arrived, you could tell by the zombiefied look on their faces that they had been around for more than a day or two.  In visiting with them over our first days we discovered that they had been making the daily trip to the lounge for a month!  My first reaction was, oh no, this place drags it feet on getting repair work done and runs up labor charges over weeks and weeks of piddling around.  I wanted to get my rig and leave but it was too late, the interior was being stripped out as these thoughts were crossing my mind.  But my fears, well some of them, were soon put to rest when the couple explained that they had a major flaw in the roof of their rig.  Something about a laminating machine and an improperly formulated batch of adhesive.  It turns out that they were one of two rigs built with this problem.  But fixing this problem is not a matter of replacing the exterior portion of the roof.  Rather, they had to literally decapitate the entire top of the rig, from end cap to end cap.  All those appliances (air conditioners, vent fans, skylights, lighting, antennas, sat dish, duct work, miles of wiring) and the roof/ceiling they were attached to had to be severed from rest of the rig.  There was no getting this rig back each night for them to stay in.  Instead, New Horizons provided them a loaner rig for the entire time it took to replace the roof.  They had use of a trade-in Montana 5th Wheel.  Nothing up to par with a New Horizon Majestic but a heck of a lot better than a motel room.

Around the end of the second day the service manager came to get us.  He wanted to show us what they had found now that the cedar lining of the closet was stripped out as well as the framing and carpet for the closet.  I was dreading what we were going to be shown.  We knew that it had been wet off and on for months and had envisioned thick mats of black mold and delaminated sub-floor plywood.  But to our immense relief Ken showed us pristine side walls and like-new sub-flooring.  The interior walls are constructed of a foam core laminate, the structural framing is aluminum and the sub-floor is exterior grade.  Woo-hoo!  Our little mobile cabin is not a respiratory killer on wheels.  Months of worry just melted away.

Camp New Horizons

Upon our arrival at the factory we were warmly greeted at reception and Ken, the service manager came out to say hello and direct us to where we were to put our rig.  Knowing the work that would have to be done and that it would require essentially gutting the whole interior of the closet and part of the bedroom, we expected that we would have to find living accommodations at a local hotel for the duration of the work.  But to our surprise, and financial relief, Ken said that they would get us hooked up to services and we could stay in our rig while they did the repairs.  The caveat being that we would have to vacate the premises each morning by 7:00 and stay out until 3:00 in the afternoon.

Vacating the premises included disconnecting from power and water, pulling in the slides and putting the satellite dish in travel position so that the rig could be moved inside a dry, heated building for them to do their day's work.  It's still winter here, temperatures dropping into the 20's at night.  Every afternoon they would get their fork truck and pull it back outside again for us to have until the next morning.  We would have to get to it right away and get our heat turned on before all the warmth of being in the building all day was sucked out of it.

Pushed into the building every morning, pulled out every evening.
Life at camp New Horizons.

Another requirement was that we had to clear out all of our belongings from the closet, which was to be completely gutted and stripped down to the framework.  Getting everything out of the closet was a chore in itself but finding a place to put all that stuff was the real work.  Our couch, which spans the width of the end of the living room, was stacked to the ceiling with clothes and stuff that I did not even know we had.  That closet holds more than I thought.  And I think Cyndee is thinking a trip to Goodwill is in our future.

The bulk of our days were spent in the customer lounge watching local (Wichita, KS) TV, getting months-worth of APP and software updates done on three computers, two tablets, two Kindles and two smart phones and catching up on web surfing we have not been able to do for the past five months. 

Not much sight-seeing to do around Junction City, KS while the ground is still frozen but we did get out one cold, blustery day to tour Fort Riley, its museums and the officer's quarters that once housed George Custer.  Impressive as it was, we'll have to go back again when it's warmer because there was much more to see if being outside is tolerable.

U.S. Calvary Museum, Fort Riley, KS

We Have Not Fallen Off the Face of the Earth.

I know, I know it has been awhile since the last addition to our full-timing journal.  From the moment we left St. Simons Island in March we have either been driving or unable to get connected.  And then there is the lazy factor, even the times when I could, briefly, get connected I just didn't get to doing the writing thing.

However, Cyndee has been gently encouraging me to get back to writing and chronicling our travels and volunteering adventures.  My last journal entry was just as we were preparing to leave our visitor center host position at Ft Frederica National Monument and our campsite on St Simons Island, GA.  Living among the moss draped oaks and pre-revolutionary war history was a hoot.  Our supervisor ranger was a delight to work with.  The fort is a very small operation and we got to know every single staff member, all seven of them.  With the exception of our supervisor, I have never seen so much office drama in such a small staff in all my years.  That includes my 35 years working for 5 industry giants in 3 states and 5 cities.  Even though all of our volunteer positions for the past two years have been with the National Park System, the culture from park to park couldn't be more different.  And now we are moving to a Georgia State Park, yet another culture we'll have to figure out.

But first we have to get to the factory in Kansas where our rig was built.  A leak we discovered upon arrival in St. Simons may have caused extensive damage, in the form of mold and wood rot, in between the walls and flooring of our master closet and bedroom.  It's a solid 1,000 miles from St. Simons to Junction City, KS., at least by the route we are taking.  We are going to avoid the interstate highways, not that there are that many to use between coastal Georgia and central Kansas.  Since I don't know the cause of the failure of the trailer brakes I prefer to stay on state and county roads where the speeds are lower and access to service seems to be closer.  Plus we find that traffic is far more docile which makes it easier to take in the scenery that is usually better.

Even though we are just leaving Georgia for a short time there is still some angst about being out of reach of the new grandbaby.  They change so much every day in the first year and neither Cyndee or I wanted to miss any of it.  While we may not have taken many pictures of our St. Simons adventure, we do have lots and lots of baby pictures.

A month without holding this little bundle of joy is going to be tough to do.

We have roughly a month until our next assignment starts, our expectations are that the repairs will not take that long but it is still winter time where we are headed and our travel time and route will be influenced by Mother Nature.  In the two weeks leading up to our planned departure date there were significant ice storms all across our planned route.  We were researching road conditions right up until the night before our departure and had to make the decision to only go a short distance our first day because ice was still on roads all the way down into Tennessee and Arkansas.  But they were improving each day so we are just going to get up to the ice-line and move north with the thaw each day.

As it turns out, that strategy worked pretty well.  We drove a comfortable distance each day and found a campground that was thawed out and open for business.  We spent the better part of a week getting to the factory but pulled in on our scheduled arrival day.