A Jumble of Stuff
Training, training and more training. We are getting down to the nuts and bolts of how to operate a visitor center now. You have to know how to open, operate and close a register that is used for all national park fees like entrance fees, backcountry fees, river fees and such. Then you have to know how to open, operate and close a register for the Big Bend Natural History Association (BBNHA). This register is used for the sale of all the books, maps, posters, patches and all the other trinkets. On top of that we have to operate a brand new computerized system for issuing backcountry permits and lastly there is one more computer to operate for internal communications, a thing called a daily report and for getting a national park-issued "official" weather forecast for each climate zone of the park.
A few posts back I mentioned that when we moved in and set up our rig that the lot was very sloped and that one set of wheels of the rig was about 18" off the ground. We spent our first weekend on the verge of sea-sick because of all the swaying in the wind. On Monday morning we made mention of this to our volunteer coordinator but were not given much encouragement that anything could be done about it soon. Maybe the crew that did this kind of work would get a break in their schedule in two or three months. Looks like we will be needing to develop some sea-legs.
After finishing up a day of training we step out of the community room on the back of the headquarters building into the employee parking lot. I've got Big Gulp backed in to his parking spot and as Cyndee and I walk towards our respective doors something moving under the rear bumper caught my eye.
We are definitely back in horns, thorns, fangs and stinger country. Tarantulas are everywhere around here. Driving down the road is an exercise in weaving and quick lane changes to avoid crushing one of these guys about every 10 car lengths.
Over the weekend we had a knock at the door. It was three little girls, two nine-year-olds and one seven-year-old. They were the kids of a couple of the border patrol guys that live a few doors down from us. These girls had come up with a little entrepreneurial endeavor to generate funds to buy a puppy. It seems that they had been catching tarantulas from under their house, putting them in a bug cage and charging people 25 cents per look into the cage. Cyndee thinks that every kid should have a dog, she bought two dollars worth of looks.
The visit by the kids also confirmed a question we had about whether there would be any trick-or-treaters for Halloween. Well alright, I have my excuse for buying large quantities of peanut butter cups.
On our way to class on the second morning Cyndee and I are met by our volunteer coordinator and a man she introduced to us as the chief of roads and trails. It seems that they had a glitch in their scheduling and that they had a one day window of opportunity to work on leveling our site. "Great," I replied; "what day is it? We'll plan to get the rig all packed up and moved off the lot on whatever day it is." The reply was; "Right now."
And just like that, Cyndee was headed for class and I was headed back to the camper. Luckily we had not spent much time getting configured for being in one spot for a long time. We thought there might be a possibility of moving to a different site so we had held off on putting out all the pictures and knick-knacks. The wheel covers had not been put on and we had not put out our artificial grass mat either so packing up and putting in the slides went quickly and smoothly. Hitching up was not bad either. The remote control for the landing gear is a huge help. From inside the cab of the truck I can change the height of the kingpin with the push of a button. It makes for a much easier and faster hitching than getting in and out of the truck to manually operate the landing gear from the control box on the side of the camper.
I pulled our little house on wheels off the lot and started wiggling into a wide spot in the road just a little ways down the street. I was able to get loaded up, hitched and off the lot in under an hour. Granted, I did not do everything one has to do for a full-on travel day. While I put the satellite dish down, I did not lock the shower door or put the travel bars in the closet or pantry doors or take in the fruit and other things we had out on the kitchen counter. It was not road ready but it was plenty good enough for the few hundred feet I was going.
No one from the road crew had showed up by the time I was clear of the lot. All I could do at this point was to lock the truck and start walking to headquarters and get back into training.
Lunch time rolled around and Cyndee and I both walked to the rig. We had not packed a lunch, our plan for the day was to have lunch in the camper. We still did but it was on battery power and with all slides collapsed in. About all we could do was squeeze over to the fridge and grab fixings for a sandwich which we ate on a picnic table that happened to be beside the building we were parked in front of.
While Cyndee was organizing lunch I walked over to our lot to see how things were going. I looked at all the dirt and knew that several truck-loads had been brought in and spread into a long driveway. When I asked, the guy that had stopped eating his lunch to come talk to me said that there was somewhere 16 and 20 cubic yards of fill! I knew this lot was sloped, but that is a heck of a lot of fill.
The fill had been watered down and they were planning to hit it with the compactor after lunch. We should be ready to move back on the lot by the time training is over for the day. We walked back to headquarters in the climbing heat anticipating a night without worry if the bough will break.
Good as gold when we got home. The lot was prepped, cactus had been cleared, dead trees had been removed, live trees had been trimmed. All we had to do was back in and re-connect everything. Once that was done, I snapped a few shots of our new RV pad.
A few posts back I mentioned that when we moved in and set up our rig that the lot was very sloped and that one set of wheels of the rig was about 18" off the ground. We spent our first weekend on the verge of sea-sick because of all the swaying in the wind. On Monday morning we made mention of this to our volunteer coordinator but were not given much encouragement that anything could be done about it soon. Maybe the crew that did this kind of work would get a break in their schedule in two or three months. Looks like we will be needing to develop some sea-legs.
After finishing up a day of training we step out of the community room on the back of the headquarters building into the employee parking lot. I've got Big Gulp backed in to his parking spot and as Cyndee and I walk towards our respective doors something moving under the rear bumper caught my eye.
We are definitely back in horns, thorns, fangs and stinger country. Tarantulas are everywhere around here. Driving down the road is an exercise in weaving and quick lane changes to avoid crushing one of these guys about every 10 car lengths.
Over the weekend we had a knock at the door. It was three little girls, two nine-year-olds and one seven-year-old. They were the kids of a couple of the border patrol guys that live a few doors down from us. These girls had come up with a little entrepreneurial endeavor to generate funds to buy a puppy. It seems that they had been catching tarantulas from under their house, putting them in a bug cage and charging people 25 cents per look into the cage. Cyndee thinks that every kid should have a dog, she bought two dollars worth of looks.
The visit by the kids also confirmed a question we had about whether there would be any trick-or-treaters for Halloween. Well alright, I have my excuse for buying large quantities of peanut butter cups.
On our way to class on the second morning Cyndee and I are met by our volunteer coordinator and a man she introduced to us as the chief of roads and trails. It seems that they had a glitch in their scheduling and that they had a one day window of opportunity to work on leveling our site. "Great," I replied; "what day is it? We'll plan to get the rig all packed up and moved off the lot on whatever day it is." The reply was; "Right now."
And just like that, Cyndee was headed for class and I was headed back to the camper. Luckily we had not spent much time getting configured for being in one spot for a long time. We thought there might be a possibility of moving to a different site so we had held off on putting out all the pictures and knick-knacks. The wheel covers had not been put on and we had not put out our artificial grass mat either so packing up and putting in the slides went quickly and smoothly. Hitching up was not bad either. The remote control for the landing gear is a huge help. From inside the cab of the truck I can change the height of the kingpin with the push of a button. It makes for a much easier and faster hitching than getting in and out of the truck to manually operate the landing gear from the control box on the side of the camper.
I pulled our little house on wheels off the lot and started wiggling into a wide spot in the road just a little ways down the street. I was able to get loaded up, hitched and off the lot in under an hour. Granted, I did not do everything one has to do for a full-on travel day. While I put the satellite dish down, I did not lock the shower door or put the travel bars in the closet or pantry doors or take in the fruit and other things we had out on the kitchen counter. It was not road ready but it was plenty good enough for the few hundred feet I was going.
No one from the road crew had showed up by the time I was clear of the lot. All I could do at this point was to lock the truck and start walking to headquarters and get back into training.
Lunch time rolled around and Cyndee and I both walked to the rig. We had not packed a lunch, our plan for the day was to have lunch in the camper. We still did but it was on battery power and with all slides collapsed in. About all we could do was squeeze over to the fridge and grab fixings for a sandwich which we ate on a picnic table that happened to be beside the building we were parked in front of.
While Cyndee was organizing lunch I walked over to our lot to see how things were going. I looked at all the dirt and knew that several truck-loads had been brought in and spread into a long driveway. When I asked, the guy that had stopped eating his lunch to come talk to me said that there was somewhere 16 and 20 cubic yards of fill! I knew this lot was sloped, but that is a heck of a lot of fill.
The fill had been watered down and they were planning to hit it with the compactor after lunch. We should be ready to move back on the lot by the time training is over for the day. We walked back to headquarters in the climbing heat anticipating a night without worry if the bough will break.
Good as gold when we got home. The lot was prepped, cactus had been cleared, dead trees had been removed, live trees had been trimmed. All we had to do was back in and re-connect everything. Once that was done, I snapped a few shots of our new RV pad.
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| Just a few hours ago there was a huge stack of bricks and boards under this one jack and the tires on this side were a full 18" off the grounds. |
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| Before the pad was laid down there was vegetation crowded right up against the rig, all the way to the roofline. |
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| With the lot level we were ready to set up long-term house keeping. Awning is out, grass mat is down and Cyndee's geranium is on the picnic table. |
The remainder of the week's training passes without much fanfare. We'll have another weekend to ourselves and then two days of on-the-job-training (OJT) with our supervising ranger. We'll be making real transactions with real park visitors come Monday.
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