Getting Into Victoria Campground-Life Routine

We are in our seventh 4-day shift (with four days off between shifts) and settling into a routine.  Both of us are wondering what we have gotten ourselves into.  We are feeling the full effect of 15.5 hour days in the gatehouse with no option for either of us to leave the park at any time during the four days on duty.  It pretty much takes the entire four days off to do everything that needs to be done so that you can be on duty for the next four days.  We are working on streamlining this operation so that we can have some fun-time on our days off.

When we took this campground everyone that had been around for awhile told us how lucky we were to get such a "good" campground.  Lots of families they said, nice people they said, rarely any problems they said.  Let us tell you, it was anything but for our first six shifts.  People were rude, mean-spirited, obnoxious, cheaters and swindlers.  The parade of society's ills seemed endless and we were on the verge of turning in our park keys and terminating the contract.  Of all the campgrounds we have done and thousands of campers we have met none were even close to as a miserable bunch as these people coming to Victoria Campground on Lake Allatoona.

Plus there was the crush of back-to-back holidays.  We had two weeks of spring break, Easter and Mother's Day.  The campground was essentially booked full for a month and a half.  And if being fully booked wasn't enough, almost every camper was a local, coming 10 miles or less.  This means that they all had family come stay with them and then visitors each day they were camping.  This COE location has the highest number of people allowed per site of anywhere we have worked at 8 people per site.  Sometimes our registered population would approach 400, that's way too many for this little campground.

We hope we don't jinx it by saying something but our last shift, the Memorial Holiday, was a completely different experience.  People were nice, friendly, patient, pleasant to talk to, everything opposite of what we had been gutting out in previous weeks.  If it stays like this things will be pretty good except for the hours.

This post was pretty much a belly-aching session but it is true to our experience.  We hope that things keep looking up and we have more fun things to write about in the next posts.

Learning the Ropes - New Surroundings

We've been getting to know our new campground and its residents, which right now is just us and some critters.  We have about 10 more days before the park opens to the public and it is quiet and serene in here behind locked gates.  The campground has 75 improved campsites but there are only 72 that are available to campers.  The closed-to-the-public campsites are the ones used to house contractors for the campground and day use area that is adjacent to the campground.

As one would expect, we have a large number of squirrels making these thick woods their home.  But we have spotted one squirrel in particular that is distinctly identifiable.  He, or maybe it is a she, almost has no tail.

With it being so easy to identify, we have named it.  Stumpy is a frequent visitor to the cast-off area under the bird feeders.  And it looks like he needs to be, in addition to a highly abbreviated tale he is one skinny squirrel.

This is a lake campground and as such we have a number of campsites that are at water's edge.  One evening I was doing a little walking therapy for my still healing broken heel.  As I stepped out of the interior sites to the lake's edge I was greeted to a sunset I haven't seen since we were in Texas this past summer.

Also while at this spot I was hearing some pretty loud screeching sounds.  It did not take long to find the source - two ospreys were soaring above and then diving down to the water to snatch up fish.  They were then carrying the fish to a nest, a really big nest, and dropping them in to waiting chicks in a tree just above my head.  It is not my best bird of prey shot but I was able to get one of them on the wing when it got high enough to catch some of the fading light.

And while I'm on the subject of birds, I had gone to the back of the camper to get our bicycles out of their cover and off the rack so we could do a little riding.  As I unzipped the top of the cover it exposed Cyndee's bike and her handle bar basket.  To my surprise there was a well formed nest in the basket and a clutch of eggs.

Carolina Wren nest and eggs in Cyndee's bicycle basket.

Somehow a little wren had found its way into one of the drain holes in the bottom of the cover, hopped all the way up to the top where the basket is and had done this countless times to build the nest and eventually lay the eggs.  Whew, makes me tired just writing about it.  Needless to say that there will not be any bicycle riding until those chicks are grown and gone.  I just zipped the cover back up and walked away.

With us being so close to the grand baby now, it is also convenient for them to come to us.  Not to mention there is a really nice playground and sandy beach.  So we had a visit and after a hard afternoon on the climbing panels and slides we took a moment to relax and watch Daniel Tiger.

Since I mentioned watching TV I guess I should say that we found a hole in the sky and were able to put a dish on a pole.  It took about 130 feet of coax cable to get the signal from the dish to the receiver but we now have satellite service.  We are also owners of a second dish, pole mounting kit and SWiM LNB.  I have no idea where we are going to carry all that stuff when we leave here.  I've got until the end of October to figure it out so I'll just let my thoughts simmer on this for awhile.

But at the moment there are more pressing matters.  We have been having some unauthorized feeding at the bird feeders during the night.  In addition to our seed feeders we also put out a suet cake.  The seed feeders are "smart" and will close when the wrong pressure is placed on the perch.  But the suet cake is in a simple wire frame.  Normally one of these cakes will last a couple of weeks but we have been replacing the cake daily for the past three days.  It is definitely happening in the wee hours of the morning but we do not know what it is that is doing it.  It could be deer, we have about a half dozen that frequent our campsite or maybe it is a nocturnal tree dwelling animal, we don't know but we are going to find out.

My DSLR camera has a time-lapse feature on it and I set it up on a tripod on top of the dining table, aimed out our heavily tinted window at the bird feeders.  Not an ideal set up but it should be good enough to identify the culprit.  I programmed the camera to take a 3-shot burst every five minutes all night long.  The next morning a quick review of the nearly 500 pictures told the story of what was happening to our suet cakes.

Not an ideal setup for low light photography but good enough to answer our question.

The pictures were barely discernible, despite using the highest powered setting for low light there was almost no image to see.  After the first scan through the pictures there were a handful that were obvious that something was there.  These were loaded into my PaintShop Pro software and I used all the buttons I could for image enhancement.  Slowly a shape emerged and then distinctive alternating black and white rings on a tail.  We had a raccoon.  And he was not quick about his work either.  He showed up in shots starting at 2:00 am and kept showing up until 5:00 am.  So that is the end of our suet cake feeding.  We'll withhold it for a month or so and see if the raccoon moves on.

Training has started.  We drive about 20 miles to the main office that sits adjacent to the top of the dam in Cartersville, GA.  From 8:00am to 4:00pm (for five days) we are going through the 130 page operations manual line by line.  It is mind numbing and disturbing at the same time.  Mind numbing because each thing on its own is so simple, disturbing because there are so many things that we have no idea how anyone could be expected to remember everything.  We have been doing campground hosting for almost five years at a variety of agencies but never have we seen a campground operation with so many "moving parts".  There are so many steps to checking somebody in that it is a wonder you can get the process complete before their stay expires.

There will be one day between our last day of training and the opening of the park.  It's about to happen.

New Position on Lake Allatoona

It is done.  We have moved from Cooper's Furnace Day Use Area (as volunteer gate attendants) to Victoria Campground (as contractor park attendants).  It will be a couple of weeks before the campground is open to the public so we are just cooling our jets until our five day training session starts next week.

This campground is operated by two sets of hosts.  Our co-hosts are a really nice couple that live in a town west of the campground, almost all the way over to the place where we spent the winter in Carrollton, GA.  They will be living in their motor home in the campground while on duty and driving home (about an hour away) on their days off.  This will be their 8th year as park attendants at this campground so we will have some good, solid experience to draw on as we get through our first few days on duty and learn the routine.

The host's campsites are on either side of the entrance to the campground, flanking the gatehouse.  They are marked as A and B.  We are in the B-site and it is deep (about an 80' driveway) and densely wooded.

PAC (Park Attendant Contractor) Site B.
Nestled deep into some thick woods with lots of space between it and any other camp site.

The sky is not even remotely visible (except in the opposite direction) so there will be no satellite signal making its way to our roof mounted satellite dish.  We are going to have to go to plan B for site B.  The same can be said for cell phone connections.  Even as populated as this place is, cell towers are not close enough to be of much use.  Most of the time our phones are displaying a signal strength of one bar and 1X.  No 3G or LTE at all.  Having a voice connection is not possible and transmitting data is ultra slow or non-existent.  Our jetpack is useless at this point.

Luckily there is a commercial wifi signal blasting our way from the marina across the road.  They offer unlimited data at three speeds.  We are going to try the 6 mbs and see if it is good enough to stream video so that we will have some way to get local news and weather while waiting for the solution to our satellite connection.  We found a satellite dish installer but the closest one is more than an hour away, near our old house in Johns Creek.  Business must be good because he is booked solid.  He has agreed to come out to our location "after hours" in about a week barring no unforeseen difficulties with his existing schedule.  The wifi speed we chose is going to run us $50/month but in addition to being able to do our email, banking, bill paying and streaming video, we will also be able to configure our phones for VoIP (phone calls through the internet).  If the wifi signal holds up we should be pretty well set for our communication needs.

We have a few days to explore our new surroundings before training starts on Thursday of next week (that will be March 16, 2017) so that is just what we are going to do plus get in some time with the grand baby.  She is now only thirty minutes away, it is no longer a major production or diesel guzzling operation, we can just drop in on a whim.  Not sure how our daughter and son-in-law feel about that but we are sure liking it.

Fly in the Ointment

While enjoying our time at Cooper's Furnace Day Use Area our volunteer coordinator's job has changed and now she is the contract liaison for all the campgrounds on Lake Allatoona.  Every since her job change she has been after us to bid on jobs that have come open due to medical issues (most of us campground hosts are old folks and unfortunately medical issues are common).  From our interview for the day use area job she knew that we had been trained in the use of the national reservation system and she was seeing an opportunity to get someone that would need minimal training at this late stage in the process.

We gave in and agreed to place a bid but that meant creating a company, registering the company with Dunn & Bradstreet and cross-registering with the Department of Defense (which is who the Corps of Engineers report to).  The red tape was horrific and took weeks to get certified but we got it done.  In the end we spent a chunk of money to meet everybody's requirements.  Our insurance company about had a cow when they found out that our camper and truck was going to used by someone that was a contractor.  We were required to raise our coverage limits which in turn raised our premium by several hundred dollars.  And on top of that happy news, we are now going to have to file taxes in two states, our home state of Texas and Georgia.

But it is done now and we have submitted a bid to be contract park attendants at Victoria Campground on Lake Allatoona and have been accepted.  We'll stay where we are a few more days until all the paperwork clears the final checks.  For now we have opened Cooper's Furnace and are enjoying light duty.

We are scheduled for a week of training in mid-March and have been given the green light to move into our new park as early as March 10.  The move will be a short one, relocating from the bottom of the dam to a campground about 7 miles up the river channel that forms the lake.  But that is the "as the crow flies" mileage.  To get our cabin on wheels to the new campground it will be a bout a 20 mile meander on arterial roads that feed the neighborhood roads that lead to the campground.

Lake Allatoona is a long, narrow, winding lake.  Our current position,
is Cooper's Furnace, below the dam.  We'll be moving up the lake to
Victoria Campground in a few days.

And that brings up something that is very different about any campground that we have ever hosted, this place is smack in the middle of a densely populated suburb of a metropolitan area.  Our address is associated with the town of Woodstock, GA.  Once upon a time it was a quaint little place that primarily supported a farming community.  But the growth in and around Atlanta since the late 1980's has reached well north of this place.  There are subdivisions pressed right up against the campground property and we share this stretch of shoreline with a COE day use park and a private marina that also has housing on its property.  You would think that that would be a good thing for services like over-the-air TV signals and cell phone signals but noooo.... once again we are in a "dead zone".  It is going to take some work to get connected.

This will be our campground.  Two loops, each with a bath
house and dump station and a total of 75 campsites.

But on the plus side we are within minutes of any kind of shopping and entertainment one would want.  One exception - the local Sonic Drive In is closed for remodeling and probably won't be reopened until after we are gone.  Oh well, it won't be so easy to fall off the diet wagon.