CuRVWander

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...

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 a...

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 an...

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...