Closing Camp for WINTER

Last Day - Sep 7, 2011 (Drain pipes, clean everything, board up or lock buildings, "deep clean" firepits, and throw out natural ground cover on the bare spots (made from pine needles and cones)

 

Our Pot Gut ground squirrels hibernated in July...so only the skinny bushy tails were around for August.  We would love to hibernate, but it's time to begin a new JOB SEARCH. 



One of our last campers had a "Log Cabin" tent.  With the torches it made a fascinating sight.

JOB APPLICATIONS - How? Why? Why not?

Why not apply?  Just as other hosts had told us, applications did not work for us (at first).  It was much better to call...and best to visit in person about openings.  We applied at Workamper.com over a year ago and never heard a whisper.   And it was a great application!  We did run into some of their employees in a rock shop just outside Bryce Canyon.  They said they loved being Workampers and said to join the mailing list online.  We did, and still nothing.   The same thing happened with our online ap to Recreation Resource Management at Host Jobs .  If you want to see the online ap click here.  But when Bob CALLED he was able to talk to the Area Manager in Florida and find out everything we wanted to know about working in the campgrounds they managed.  The problem was...they had no current openings.
Why apply?  We found applications (written just the right way) really DO work...if you make a friendly call first.  Take lots of notes, listening carefully to what the position requires, and then specifically, enthusiastically write on your ap how your qualifications match the requirements.  Leave out all of the details of your life and experiences that don't match the job so your comments will be concise and your message clear:  YOU are the best person for the job!
How?  The next posts will detail how we got each job offer...and were we ever surprised by the number of offers.  It's well advertised that we baby boomers are flooding the market with our efforts to get that wonderful spot for our rig in the out-of-doors.  And it's true...you almost have to "douse yourself in gasoline and set yourself on fire" to get the attention of those filling campground positions.  They are SWAMPED with applications.  If you ever want to hire me to apply for you, just let me know.  We've been told our applications garnered a job offer for every opening in Florida.  Funny.

What's the FARTHEST anyone has traveled to visit Redman?

Captain White arrived August 18, 2011, from Afghanistan.  He was on leave before taking command of a few hundred of America's Best.  So what did we do to celebrate our reunion?  We let him (and his wife) make us dinner at our host site.  He sure did bring a lot of treats for someone who doesn't eat sweets.

We love you Captain White.  Oh, and thanks for leaving the war to take me on a hike...and then the grandkids on a nature romp along the river.  We love you!....the most!

We will be praying for you, Captain White.  It has to be tough knowing your life is in danger every minute of the day.

Favorite things about 1st Camp Host Job?

 #1 - Having a premium natural playland for the grandkids to visit.  It's a natural school...with plenty of wood for building (from felled trees) and all of the flowers and water and paths and rocks for creative play.  Did I mention mud?






And what about smores?  How did they ever become an essential campfire ritual?  And Sunday was incredibly special as we attended the Brighton Branch of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  We overdosed on love from the members and The Spirit from the Lord.

 

Trails go to nearby lakes and ski runs

 

Ski Resorts are on either side of Redman...Paka is at Solitude



Are GUEST Hosts "legal" ??

Granddaughters as Guest Hosts

Guest hosting is FUN...as long as you get permission.  (Our Area Managers approved all of our parttime hosts.)  This pair of hosts lasted about an hour... before they discovered exploring and animal spotting was much more fun for them.  But Bob's Mom, "GG", was 100% dedicated.  She came all of the way from State College, Pennsylvania to take the job.   She was so good at greeting our visitors that she made fast friends.  We loved her input, as her ideas made things like money collection and handling noisy campers so much easier.  GG also let us share her 90th birthday! 



GG's Birthday Banner (made by the Goebel great-grands) on the back of our RV




GG with some of the Fam at Redman

Junior Camp Hosts

 

Job Duties of a Camp Host

First, saturate yourself with the beauty.  This is the entrance view for Redman Campground.

  
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Keep a clean host site.  It's so tempting to pile up your "tools

of the trade" under and around your RV or trailer.  Don't do it!

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Learn all you can about your inventory--know which sites would match a given camper's specific needs.  This site is a double (for groups of up to 16 people) with an extensive trail system behind it....leading to magical forest, stream and meadow adventures.  You also need to know it has great parking for a large RV or trailer.

  

Taking photos of Camp Sites

Site 25 - All-time favorite, by the Creek



You also will probably paint tables, clean out fire pits, remove ashes and garbage from stoves and/or grills and pick up all trash (anything not "natural")...oh, and of course clean the Potties.

A fun job is taking photos for Recreation.com and ReserveAmerica.com so they can post them online to inform campers of what they are reserving.  The best duty, though is to meet and greet campers.  They are so very enjoyable!  In the above picture I'm sharing some of my favorite necklaces with our wonderful campers.  We're grateful for every visitor!  Please stop by our host site and chat.    :]

Finally, no matter how trashed someone leaves their camp site....don't forget to smell the roses. 

(These are at our entrance gate....totally natural, of course.)

Visitors WELCOME....!!




A regular visitor to our Camp Host Site

 

Here's a young Mom Moose, who brought her baby by our camper window regularly.  Maybe because it was her first calf, she let campers get close.  (Never a good idea!)

A surprise benefit of our job was family can visit and even camp (free).  So our fashionable newest grandbaby even joined us.  Wonderful!  On one visit she forgot her bottle, so I found a new glove (from when I taught chemistry) for the nipple and Grandpa (known as Paka by the grandkids) donated an empty Coke bottle.  The contraption worked!  Ah.....this is roughing it.

How do you "Balance" Family-Work-Play?

This cool tent that Grandpa found amazed us. We'd never seen one. You can see it by using the Amazon link. Type in key words: Truck Tents for Camping.

Our eldest daughter was about to have a baby girl, and I was determined to be there with her. There were complications. We were the only ones at our campground. How could we leave the camp unattended? And then there's the matter of one baby boy whom I couldn't bear to be separated from. We were best friends. A more than wise person told us, you are wasting your time trying to find the perfect balance. He had a scripture to back his words up: "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all things shall be added according to that which is just." No worries, just prayers and following The Lord to get those priorities right. You can see by the pictures mom and baby were fine, and I got to be there to take all of the pictures and make movies.... and my little toddling friend came to visit often. Hurray! http://www.amazon.com/?_encoding=UTF8&tag=c0886-20

Snow drifts in July? Oh, certainly...in Utah's Mountains

These pictures still give me CHILLS. We were supposed to open, and being new to the campground, we didn't realize there were TWO more camp sites. They were so buried in snow we still couldn't see where the tables might be. The stick in this picture is my tough shovel handle. It held up much better than my leather gloves, and I was grateful for it. There really were tables in these drifts. The one in the second picture scared me. . . as there was a sizable cave under it . . . and I convinced myself it was a bear's den. (Three recent bear sightings in the Brighton Ski Area, just barely up the road, stoked my imagination.) I was sure if I dug any deeper, my shovel would part the hair of a big black bear.
The picture at the top of this post is the same site a month later. No bear. But we were required to pass out pamphlets and lecture campers about bears because of the sightings. The flower-lined trail leads to Brighton Ski Resort. We learned this site is a favorite because of its wild "back yard" that extends to a large "secret" tent site.

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!

Do Hosts have to Work Hard? Only if you want to...

The first thing to do was to dig a path to the camp sites and the bathrooms (5 modern flushers and 2 pit models). It was impossible to get traction with the Kaboda unless you dug down to the roadbed, which tore it up and required a lot of work later to get the road base back where it belonged. No bike riding here to visit the sites! Our area manager (who managed this very campground the previous 4 years) kept saying it was just terrible!...meaning all of the damage from the record snowfall. The wood cage was crushed, tables broken, branches and logs criss-crossed all over the sites. But we didn't know any better and just did as much as we could with our huge can-do attitude.
In the second picture Bob is digging out the host site...and the third picture
shows how the host site normally looked in June. Each scoop picked up gravel with the snow, which I later tried to put back where it belonged (after the melt). Not knowing where the sewer connection was, it got sheared off during a "plowing" run.
The bathroom picture was also taken in June. We found the "snowless" pictures online months later, so we really didn't know what the park looked like, where the tables and firepits were, or even where some of the camp sites might be. It was quite the adventure...and just when we thought we had moved enough snow to open (surprise!) the runoff flooded everything. Even when we drained a site and bailed the firepit, it would fill right back up because the ground was 100% saturated. I found a toy hammerhead shark under one picnic table that sat in a "lake". How ironic....as I'd made it my daily task to try to save this drowning site because I'd met the sweet couple who had it reserved for their family. The opening was delayed until Bob's birthday, July 7th.

The final picture shows my special project. The Kaboda couldn't go into the actual campsites, so I'd take my big shovel and probe for the tables and firepits. Once found, I'd do my "Drift Buster" thing and heave snow into any available bare space. If there wasn't one, I'd clear a table and stack blocks of snow on top where it would quickly melt on the dark surfaces. It was Science! I thought you just needed to increase the surface area and the snow would disappear. On the larger drifts, every day I'd slice off chunks along the edges: "Glacier Calving". We thought we had it made, when a bigger challenge showed up: Mega Runoff! Now my task was to dig more drainage channels because July 7th was coming fast. The site reserved for the darling older couple (who came early to check out their group site) was literally still a lake. I decided to put the hammerhead shark back under their table to float in the flotsom. Nature had won, of course. I learned the hard way that with 100% saturation, the sites would fill right back up with water by the next day. Then we found out the water tested bad, which was another problem caused by the excessive runoff. There was too much coliform bacteria to let anyone drink it. The dirt roads were washing out in a serious way by now. Help!

2nd Assignment - Dig out Redman Campground (Utah)

Happily buried under drifts of snow, Redman Campground was supposed to open for Memorial Day. The problem wasn't just record snow, but record downed trees. They seemed to have fallen in great numbers across every picnic table and fire ring in the park. But we weren't at all sure where the picnic tables even were... so we started digging for them--Eileen with a squared-end shovel and Bob with the front-loader.
Eileen was on the road to Solitude looking for the bridge that led into the lower end of the campground. We soon discovered it had been washed out by runoff. We couldn't imagine how the park would ever open. We were new at this, so we were totally in the "can-do" mode. We kicked our bodies into a mega-work mode.... and we were surprised at how good it felt to work that hard.

The last picture is of the "trail" behind bathroom #3 (of 7) that was supposed to go to our neighbor down-canyon, Solitude Ski Resort. Several trees (one HUGE) had fallen across the trail, so our trail was out of commission.