I have no internet service at the trailer yet, so I have to go to the employee dining room to get online right now. It is hard to write in a public space like that, so for now, here is a peak at my new hometown:
Life on the road
We’re Not In Kansas Anymore
We left Wichita on our way to the Grand Canyon this morning. We had planned on going about 330 miles, and stopping early to rest up. We were making good time, so we stopped in Liberal, Kansas to visit the museum there that is dedicated to the movie, The Wizard of Oz. After taking the tour there, and getting our picture taken on the Yellow Brick Road, we stopped at a restaurant west of town to get a late lunch.
The two stops took about two hours, but we were still making good time. A few miles out of Liberal, a man passed us in a pick up truck, and honked his horn and motioned for us to pull over. We had had a flat tire on the trailer, and didn’t even know it!
Our Good Samaritan, Dave Christopher, said he was an insurance adjuster, and just happened to have a telephone book in his truck! How many times will that ever happen? Here is a picture of Dave and Jim:
When my cellphone wouldn’t work because it had no signal, he let us use his phone to call Guymon Tire Service. They sent out a service truck to change the tire.
Raul arrived in about 20 minutes and got right to work. He got us back on the road really fast, and only charged $50.
We stopped in Guymon, Oklahoma at Guymon Tire and bought a new tire for the spare.The whole episode only set us back $167. Not so bad, it could have been worse.
We finally made it to our destination for tonight, Dalhart, Texas. We pulled into the Corral RV Park about 6:30 p.m. The park is level and quiet, and only cost us $19 for a pull through site big enough to park a semi truck and trailer, and it even has cable TV. We hope to be in Albequerque, New Mexico tomorrow night. 
Where I Have Been
The last time I wrote anything here was when we had just crossed over the Mississippi River and were stopped for the night in Little Rock, Arkansas. Here is a picture of our trailer home following us down the road: 
We traveled more than 1000 miles in three days, pulling our home behind us. We usually don’t like to go that far so quickly. The main reason why is we get so tired doing it. But, we had to get to USI RV Park in Wichita for a temporary job, so we did.
Here is a picture of the flooding in Arkansas along I-40. I am sure the water is up even more than this because it has rained some more since we went through there.
I like to stop at all the welcome centers for the states we go through. The one in Oklahoma was nice. 
They gave us free coffee, and Jim took my picture with the Indian guy there:
The Oklahoma countryside is mostly flat. They have a lot of cows there. We even saw a herd of buffalo but I was not quick enough with my camera to get a picture of them.
We went out I-40 west to I-35 north, to Wichita.
The Kansas welcome center is more than 20 miles inside the state line. 
I told Jim they want to be sure you’re really coming to Kansas before they welcome you to their state. There was a McDonald’s restaurant there, but they didn’t give us anything free to eat or drink, just a map of Kansas so we could find our way out of there when we got ready to leave.
The Kansas countryside in early spring is much like that in Oklahoma, only a little greener.
We have enjoyed our stay in Kansas, but we are leaving tomorrow, because we got the telephone call we have been waiting for from the National Park Service at the Grand Canyon. We will get there sometime Saturday, and start working a day or two later. We are really excited about our new jobs.
We’re Traveling Again
Jim and I left Unicoi State Park on Sunday, headed for Wichita, Kansas. Yes, we are still waiting to hear the final word about our jobs at the Grand Canyon, but we can’t sit around waiting until we run out of money, so we arranged to work as temporaries at a campground in Kansas while we wait. Doing this is a win-win situation for everyone involved–the campground needed someone ASAP, we needed to be working, it will put us half-way to Arizona when we do finally get hired, and we will be making a little money while we wait. What a great deal. Oh, yeah, it also gets us halfway there before the price of diesel fuel goes up any more.
When I started planning the trip to Arizona, I figured our travel budget as if we were paying $4.89 per gallon of fuel. It is not that high, yet, so we are way ahead in the budget.
On Saturday, the price of diesel fuel in Helen, Georgia was $4.05 per gallon. When we passed by the same gas station on Sunday when we left there, it was $4.10 per gallon. At the Ingle’s Grocery Store in Cleveland, Georgia, it was $3.96 per gallon if you paid with an Ingle’s gift card (which saves you 3 cents per gallon).
On Sunday, in Douglasville, Georgia, at the station near my mother’s house, diesel was $4.27 per gallon!!! We drove right on by. In Bremen, near the Alabama border, it was $3.99 per gallon. We filled up there.
Today, in Jasper, Alabama, fuel was $3.93 per gallon, and in Olive Branch, Mississippi, it was $3.92 per gallon. While these prices are insane, they are nowhere near the price I figured our budget on. We may just have some money left when we arrive in Wichita.
Sunday was a frantically busy day. We woke up in north Georgia, packed up the trailer, and drove 130 miles to Carrollton to spend the night at a campground there. We took the trailer off the hitch, then drove 35 miles back to Douglasville, where we had to go and check our post office box, go to the bank, get our hair cut at Becky’s shop. Then Jim, Becky and I met Emily, Tommy, and Spencer at Longhorn Steaks for a yummy scrummy dinner. Spencer’s birthday was on April 10th, he turned 6 this year. He has now decided he likes steak, which is a good thing. He posed for me to take some pictures. When he saw this one, he said, “I look like an ice cream cone!” (that’s his Mommy, Emily, my youngest daughter with him). 
After dinner, we ran by my mother’s to say good bye to her before we left town. We finally got back to the trailer around 10:30 p.m. What a day!
I checked the Weather Channel online before we left to see if the route we planned to take had any flooding, and found that the Mississippi River at Memphis was at 37 feet this morning, 
and will continue to rise until at least Saturday, if there is no more rain. Flood stage at Memphis is 34 feet. I took a couple of pictures when we crossed over the Mighty Mississippi this afternoon, the water was high, but I-40 is a high road so it was not flooded.
We got as far as Little Rock today, which is a long way for us to go in one day. We’ll arrive in Wichita tomorrow afternoon. I have never been to Kansas, so I can’t wait to see it. Don’t have a clue what to expect, but I will post some pictures tomorrow. See ya later!
When Dreams Come True
You know that sound you hear sometimes in movies, that sounds sort of like a needle being dragged abruptly across an old vinyl record? The one they use just before they suddenly stop the action and back up to an earlier point in time? Well, imagine that you are hearing that sound right about now! And then back up to here.
On February 6th, when I wrote that we had decided to go to work at a campground in Missouri, and told you all about how beautiful the place was, and we were really looking forward to going there, and yayaya, inside my little brain I was really thinking, Missouri, eh. Blah. Not blah to that campground, just blah to Missouri. Then last week I wrote about how I was just not getting the things done I needed to get done before we leave. I am just not that enthusiastic about going there because I want to be somewhere else.
Since I was 12 years old, I have dreamed about working and living at the Grand Canyon in Arizona. Even before I knew that jobs could be had that would actually let you live inside of the national park, even before I knew how to go about applying for one of those jobs, I have longed to go there. Back then, when I was a kid, and had never seen a travel trailer, I used to daydream about going out there in a pick-up truck with a camper shell on it, because that was all I knew existed.
After Jim and I started living our full-time RV lifestyle eight years ago, and I had to start looking for a job for us every six months or so, I stumbled across a website called USAJobs.com. At first, I only searched for jobs, just to see what was available, because I did not think they had temporary seasonal jobs. I thought if we went to work for a national park, we would be tied to it for the long-term, and I could not ever get Jim to agree to that sort of job.
Well, about five years ago, when I was searching for jobs yet again, I came across a full-time RV’ers forum where someone mentioned that they had worked a seasonal job at a national park. So, off I went to the USAJobs site to look again. Oh. My. God! They did have temporary seasonal jobs, and lots of them, at all of the national parks out west. And so I started applying for any of the jobs I thought I could do.
One thing about our government, they do not make it easy to search. The job titles usually don’t have anything at all to do with what you think they might actually be. So, it was very time consuming, because I had to read all of the job descriptions and decide if the encrypted jargon equaled something I could do, or that I could convince them I could do.
Four years ago, I started filling out applications. Office Automation Assistant, Information Receptionist, Visitor Use Assistant, Volunteer Coordinator, even Laborer and Assistant Recreation Assistant (??). For four long years, I have dutifully filled in all the blanks, answered the questions written in secret code, and pushed the send button, to never hear from them again. Until last week.
On Monday of last week, a guy named Bob called me to offer me a job as a temporary seasonal Visitor Use Assistant at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. The job has a very good rate of pay, it is for six months, it includes a full hook up campsite in the employee housing section, and it accrues annual leave. But, I had to decline the offer. I told Bob I really hated to turn this down, but that we also needed a job for my husband and he had not heard a word about his application.
I ended up talking to Bob for about half an hour, getting tips and information about how to apply so that both of our applications would get noticed. I ended the conversation with him by saying, “I am going to think really positive and say that I will see you out there next year.”
After I hung up the phone, I was depressed for a couple of days. I could not believe that after all that hard work, I had to turn down the job I had dreamed of all my life. So, I was sitting there minding my own pity-party business on Friday, when the phone rang again, and it was a different guy, Alan, asking for Jim. Alan offered him a temporary seasonal job in maintenance at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Jim said, “I really hate to say no, but my wife just turned down a job a couple of days ago. To which the caller replied, “What job was it? Who did she talk to? What is her name? I’m going to call Bob and see if the job is still available.”
So, Jim hung up, and a short time later, Bob called me back, and asked if I was still interested in that job. “Heck, Yeah!” was my reply. So, I interviewed with him over the phone, and he said he would call my references, and get back in touch with me.
Today, Bob called and told me my references checked out, and gave me a tentative job offer. Shortly after we hung up, Al called Jim and also gave him a tentative job offer. Now we are waiting for the package to arrive in the mail to fill out for a background check. But I truly believe, in my heart, in my little girl dreams, that I will be wearing that Smokey The Bear uniform in just a few weeks.
Sometimes the stars do line up just right.
Out On The Town
The FabGrandpa and I crawled out of the woods last weekend and went down to the big city to spend the night with Becky. This is the view from her balcony:
She lives in a high-rise condo (with no guest room, as noted earlier) right on Peacthree Street in downtown Atlanta. She took us out to dinner at The Vortex, an ecclectic place with posters of biker chicks on the wall and loud rock music blaring from a juke-box. 
It says right on the menu that The Vortex is an “Idiot Free Zone” and that they are not politically correct. They had great cheeseburgers (I had mine sans bun). It was a fabulous place to start the evening. Here are Jim and Becky at The Vortex:
After that, we drive over to Blind Willie’s. It is billed as Atlanta’s finest blues bar, and I agree. 
I love the slogan on their website “It Ain’t Easy Bein’ Sleazy”, but I did not find the place to be sleazy. When we got there, the place was packed, so we had to share a table with some young guys. 
They were quite friendly, even bought a round of drinks for the whole table. We stayed there through one set, then sashayed down the block to 10 High.
Now, Becky had been telling us about this great karaoke bar she has been going to, and we have been thinking to ourselves that we could not believe she would like karaoke. Jim and Becky pictured here post Jaeger Bombs at 10 High:
But let me tell you, this was not your father’s karaoke bar! At 10 High, there is a live heavy metal band, Metal-some. Our niece Emily, Becky, and me at 10 High:
The people who sing karaoke are on stage with the band, with back-up singers, and it is dang good! I have never seen anything quite like it. 
Well, I have seen movies with night club scenes where you had to work your way through a sea of people to get to the bar, but I have never been in a place like that until Saturday night.
So, yeah, after a night of bar hopping, we were up bright and early on Sunday afternoon, going down to Dekalb Farmer’s Market to eat lunch and do some shopping. I stocked up on herbs and spices:
I love that place, it is like no other place I have ever been. Part farmer’s market, part grocery store, part cafeteria.
They sell no paper goods, cleaning products, or sodas. But you can get gluten free flours, all kinds of vegetables, and herbs and spices in huge containers cheap. There is a fish market, a butcher shop, a deli, a bakery, and a dairy section. 
I always spend too much money, but how can you resist the swiss chard, the kohlrabi, the gulf shrimp, the fresh mozzarella cheese, the basil, the—well, the everything! I got out of there for under a hundred bucks, but I got so much stuff.
Now we are back in the woods, but eating such elegant foods you wouldn’t know it unless you looked out the window. Last night we had bruschetta, with fresh mozzarella and basil. 
Tonight it will be sauteed shrimp and swiss chard with gluten free quinoa spaghetti. I can hardly wait.
A Day In The Life Of A Volunteer Camp Host
So, just what is it that a volunteer camp host does? And why do we do it? Here at Unicoi State Park in north Georgia, we are required to work 24 hours per week. The things we do vary from week to week, depending on what they need done. 
Most often, we do the normal campground duties, like cleaning out fire rings at the camp sites. We are amazed at the number of people who burn their trash in their fire rings. It is hard to believe that they enjoy the aroma of burning plastic. We wind up cleaning out all the leftover paper and plastic debris, so that the next person who uses that site won’t get toxic fumes in their wieners and marshmallows.
We also pick up all the trash left behind. All of this rubbish came from one site. I know to some people it doesn’t look like a lot, but if everyone left this little bit behind and it wasn’t picked up, the campground would soon look like a dump. And no, those cigarette butts don’t break down and disappear. They are still just as ugly to see next year when you come back if someone doesn’t pick them up. And what about all those little bare feet running around next summer? If they stepped on those bottle caps it could ruin a nice vacation.
One of the camp hosts does a site check twice a day to document which sites are occupied and by whom. We give this information to the front desk at the lodge, so when they have new arrivals they will know which campsites are available, and so that they will know where each guest is camping in case they need to contact them.
The is always a project list of little things that need to be done. Here, Jim is attaching colored reflectors to the sign posts so that campers will know what color campsites are available on each road in the campground. The sites are color coded to designate what utilities are available and/or how long a of a camper will fit into the site.
In the camp store, called The Trading Post, there is always something to be done. Keeping the t-shirts folded and neatly stacked, stocking shelves, and sweeping the floor are things that need to be done every day.
The volunteers who are assigned to the trading post also ring up sales, give out trail maps and hiking information, and directions to other points of interest in the area. We meet a lot of people who come in for the day or to camp with us over the weekend.
The park hosts a huge arts and crafts show every year. The show takes place in a couple of weeks. Getting ready for it means a lot of very important, but little, tasks need to be done. We stuff envelopes, make name tags, and prepare parking passes for the show.
Although not a part of our official duties, we like to help guests when they need a hand. This young couple, Brian and Jude and their cute little dog, Russ, hiked down the mountain from Anna Ruby Falls, a 5 mile trip one way. It was getting late in the day, so Jim and I drove them back up to their car at the top of the mountain. They are a very interesting couple–she is from England and he is from Atlanta. They are getting married soon, and going to the Phillipines where she is going to teach in a British school there. Cool!
We do a lot here, but the Georgia State Parks give us a lot of perks, too. In addition to that spiffy black hat Jim gets to wear, and a certificate good for five free nights of camping at any Georgia State Park, we get a very nice full hook up site. We use the Toro cart to get around the park while we are on duty.
We get to use the laundry facilities free of charge to wash our clothes, and we get a 50% discount at the lodge restaurant, where the buffet features fried trout every night of the week. And, oooh, that dessert bar is quite yummy, too.
Best of all, we get to work with all the nice people who are on the paid staff. This is Scott and Ellen. Ellen is the person we go to with any questions, and who assigns the jobs we do. We have already signed up to come back next winter. They have five camp host spots here, so if anyone wants to come, let me know, and I’ll send the info on how to sign up. Oh, and did I mention that we get to live in this beautiful place for a few months, where most people only get to visit for a day or two?
And The Winner Is…
Jim and I have been looking for our next job since before Thanksgiving. It is not an easy task, let me tell you. We first have to decide where we want to go, then decide on a second choice of place to go. Then we look at all the places where campground jobs are posted that we know of:
Workamper News, a magazine to which we have a subscription
Coolworks a website dedicated to cool seasonal jobs
Happy Vagabonds, another website that has listings for jobs in campgrounds
Work@KOA, which is exactly what it sounds like
There are many more, but these are the main ones I use. Anyway, this year, we wanted to go to Arizona or Colorado, but it has not worked out that way. None of the job offers we got had enough money attached to even consider. So, even though it was our second choice, after everything has been said and done, we have decided to go to work at Water’s Edge Campground at Table Rock Lake in Kimberling, Missouri.
We have never been to Missouri, except to drive through it once when we were making a delivery to Cedar Rapids, Iowa back when we were driving for a living. But, from the pictures of this place, it looks beautiful. And, my friend Wanda says she has been there and it is very lovely. Now, I have to get online and find out where all the farms are so I can start planning my days off!
