Pandemic Summer (not) on the Road

 June, July and August, a pandemic summer spent in semi-isolation on an "island" called Volunteer Village.  We are in about a 40 acre compound comprised of 10 well-spaced campsites, a meeting room/weather shelter with full kitchen and everything you need to prepare a banquet, a screened-in pavilion with BBQ pit, and a garage/shop loaded with power tools and grounds maintenance equipment.  In fact, that has been the big thing to do all summer, mow The Village.  All this behind a secure gate about a half-mile away.

Being where we are, staying isolated does not take a lot of effort but like everyone else, it takes a lot of patience to go from day to day with little to no variety in our routine.  We did pick up one of the summer routine jobs as a volunteer though.  One night a week we are radio dispatchers and help-line operators.  With the campgrounds open there are rangers on duty until 10:00pm and we are their radio dispatchers from the time everybody else goes home at 4:30 until 10:00.  We have the front desk, which has been closed to the public since March, all to ourselves.  Answering the radio calls from the rangers is usually pretty dry stuff but taking calls from the public on the help-line can be, shall we say, entertaining.  Even though it has happened several times I am always shocked at the callers that ask me where they are and how do they get to campground so-and-so from there.  Do they think we have a geo-tracker on them or can triangulate their phone??

I think the break in activity for volunteer work came just right for a personal project.  Our daughter and son-in-law bought a travel trailer last fall and what they thought was going to be okay for parking turned out to be problematic. 

Our daughter's family travel trailer parked with us while parking pad being built.

There is a spot adjacent to their driveway that is the perfect size for parking the travel trailer and leaving the driveway free to use for day-to-day activity.  The problem was that when weight was placed on this spot it turned into a bog.  The trailer, over time, nearly sank to it's axels.  When I backed my truck up to it to take it to our campsite in The Village, it did sink to the axel on one side.  Thank goodness my other wheel was still on concrete. This little parking area was going to need some sculpting and soil improvement, i.e. lots of gravel.

The trailer sat on our campsite several weeks while waiting for an equipment rental company to open.  Once they did we jumped on renting a Bobcat and got busy reworking the grade.

Bobcat loaded and ready to go to work.

Getting the approach to the parking pad prepped.

At first we thought a Bobcat might be a little over-kill for the job but once the grading started it was clear that the Bobcat was a minimum requirement. 

I don't have any "after" pictures but it was a good job and we got the travel trailer home to its owners.  They got it plugged in and while the kids explored our daughter was installing all the custom things she had been accumulating for making the trailer serve them for the way they camp.

They're already making reservations for Jekyll Island and Red Top Mountain for the fall.

Other than a couple of the above spurts of things to do this summer there really was not much to do.  The bulk of our time was trying to manage the thermal gain of our 5th wheel.  The full length of our 37' is broadside to the sun.  We get full sun from the time it comes up until it sets.  Even with our two 15,000btu air conditioners the temperature rises to an uncomfortable level in mid-afternoon.  We have devised a strategy for fan placement that improves circulation and helps it feel like it is a little cooler as long as you don't do anything exerting.

Our original plan for our stay at Allatoona Lake Volunteer Village was to winter over and hang out until our grandson's first birthday in March.  Being exposed to full sun all day long was a great thing, we only ran heat during the day on the coldest days.  But March came and so did the lock-down.  Our opportunities for a summer volunteer position at high elevation, and cool summer temps, evaporated.  We stayed put (thankfully the COE did not shut down its volunteer operation) and are bemoaning the heat.  But not begrudging, we have a place to stay, many fulltimers are seriously scrambling to find someplace to stay.