Flood inThe Florida Keys! Weather Report

October 17, 2011, brings another 24 hours of rain. Our RV is sinking in the quick sand, as Bob inspects our neighbor's new half-acre lake. We've got our rocking camp chairs set up under the Gumbo Limbo Trees, but there's no using them today. We've been watching NOAA radar images for days. Bahia Honda Key has been lit up in dark orange bands... Scary enough to stay home from church and skip the 7-mile bridge ride in a cross wind! The storm is just getting some real muscle when Bob says to grab our $1,200 Sony HDR-DX550 camera and wade out to take some footage. I don't know.... It's mighty wet out there....   Handycams don't like soakings.

Our host carts leave wakes?

 

Cars aren't supposed to leave a wake!

Here's a link to the NOAA Radar for The Keys: http://radar.weather.gov/radar_lite.php?rid=byx&product=NCR&loop=yes

Do Camp Hosts ever get DISCOURAGED? Sure...

We ended up moving TONS of snow. And sometimes (briefly) we'd stand in the middle of a drift and wonder where on earth we were going to put it. But ask any host: "Do you love your job?" We've never heard an answer that didn't sound like "YES". Maybe it's the reward of overcoming challenges, or the vast variety of experiences you have, or the wonderful people you meet... It's just a very rewarding job. I'll admit: I was happily surprised by it all. Soon we were feeling like true keepers of the forest. I started hanging up signs about the types of flowers that could be found and telling why we shouldn't pick them. We loved making the park as beautiful as it could possibly be.... especially once the snow melted. Wow.... there were green things growing under the snow. How long had that been going on?

It was the week of opening, and we still hadn't found all of the fire rings under the snow. Bob had a great idea: Get out the metal detector!

Our first REAL job as Campground Managers

The call came June 4, 2011, while we were camping at Deer Creek Resevoir near Heber, Utah. We were to report to Spruces Campground immediately to help remove snow and get the park ready for visitors. They gave us this fun John Deere Gator to navigate the snow banks. And Bob jumped on the Kaboda (front-end loader/back hoe) to see if he could budge the frozen remains of our record snowfall. You can see our rig behind Bob, in the pine trees and aspens. We sold would from this site up until 10 pm... or later. One night a camper woke us up to report she couldn't blow up her air matress. As Bob always says, "We're here to help." I got out my b once the snow was cleared from the roads...and had a great time checking our assigned sites on the nice paved roads. We became expert in cleaning bathrooms, firepits, and in blowing roads and pads clear of even pine needles. The moose and deer appeared as the snow melted. It was paradise.