Work, Flagstaff and Party

Yesterday was a full day of work in the AM, a trip to Flagstaff in the afternoon and a local party at night. The strangest part of the day came on our trip back from Flagstaff at about 6 PM when we passed through a stretch of road about halfway between Flagstaff and Happy Jack and had a light layer of SNOW on the ground. Sheesh, this is May 30! We had a small storm before we left for Flagstaff (.04") and then we ran into the big storm on the way there. It rained buckets the entire time we were at the Verizon store, went to Sam's Club and headed home. The total rainfall for the day at our site was only .10" though, so Flagstaff had the brunt of the rain. Our high again today was 74 and our low was 39.

We knew there was a party taking place in our banquet room. A local business owner - the owner of the store in Clint's Well - was having a huge party for his daughter who was graduating from NAU (Northern Arizona University). He spared no expense. The party was catered and with an open bar. He invited everybody, including campers and all of our staff. Here are some pictures of the party starting with the side entrance to the banquet room, aptly named "Jack's Place":

Then we have a picture of the party itself with balloons everywhere and lots of people:

The busy open bar (tended by Judy and Ola, our staff bartenders - Judy's husband is the guitar player for our weekend entertainment):

Finally, a picture of some of the staff enjoying themselves - Jaimee (the former flight attendant and front desk co-worker), Josie and Karen and Bernie who are both staff workers in our restaurant:

It was a good time for all.

There was also a gathering - I wouldn't necessarily call it a party - of a large church group in our Ramada. They were all sitting around a huge campfire at the Ramada.

All in all a busy and fun Saturday...

Back to Work & Winslow

What a difference a week makes. The lodge traffic was at a normal pace - so we're told - and that made for a pleasant morning behind the front desk. Our shift started at 7 and we were back at the trailer by 1:15. The day was mostly beautiful with some clouds forming in the afternoon and storms forming as they have been just about every day. We had no rain though and the temps were 74 (high) and 36 (low).

Josie had decided that she would like to check out the town of Winslow which is about 45 miles from here. She wanted to have a picture "standing on the corner" in Winslow Arizona. Well, here it is:

Of course, this is the tourist spot in Winslow for just this thing. A statue of a young man holding his guitar stands there and you can see where his shoulders are "polished" as a result of all the people leaning on his shoulder. Notice the couple embracing in the window upstairs. The whole facade is a fake wall - not a building. The main souvenir store is across the street where Bob stood to take the picture. That little corner is about all there is in the whole town. The Arizona Highways TV show did a special segment not too long ago about the The Turquoise Room that is a superb restaurant, located in the La Posada Hotel. It's strange that the only other eateries in Winslow are pizza, chicken and fast food places. The whole town sits on the old Route 66 and pretty much died when Interstate 40 was built.

We stopped by our post office to mail some letters on the way back. A real indication of the remoteness of the lodge is evident in this picture:

This little 10' by 12' building stands between the gas station and small restaurant at the Clint's Well location just down the road from us. The post office is open 10 AM to 1 PM Mon-Fri, and 10 AM to Noon on Sat. All it has are some PO boxes and a mail slot to drop letters. The postal clerk is the wife of one of our staff members and he goes to have lunch with her everyday at about noon and he takes our mail and brings back mail for the lodge. I hope nothing happens to him.

Another AM shift today and we need to go to Flagstaff after work in order to take care of more phone business. Verizon has messed up our last bill and we need to visit the store to get it fixed. What ever happened to customer service?

Later...

Doctors Day

Eventually we will switch our doctors to a Flagstaff location but we both have final procedures either scheduled or to be scheduled with our Phoenix doctors. Josie has a Colonoscopy scheduled on June 3 with her doctor and she had to pick up a prescription and some samples of medicine she takes. Bob had to visit his Gastroenterologist (mouthful) to get his Colonoscopy scheduled - for June 24. This is the first one for Josie but Bob has had them every two years for a long time. It was an otherwise uneventful morning. We stopped at a Home Depot on the way out of town so Josie could buy two tomato plants to plant at our site in Happy Jack. We hope they do well in the cooler climate. We'll see.

We arrived back at the site at about 3:30 and Josie immediately began preparing her tomato's and the garden for planting. We missed an earlier storm that dumped .04" of rain.

Today is back to work. We have the 7 to 1 shift today and the restaurant is open beginning today through Sunday. All that means for us is that we also take the payments for the restaurant patrons. We don't expect near the crowds though as last weekend so it should be calm. Just looking out at the campground, it appears that many of the seasonal renters are here already. Today should be indicative of what a normal period should be like.

More later...

Day at the Old Space

Once again we forgot to bring something that will require us to revisit the old space again. This time we forgot the storage space key which is on the truck keychain and we drove the Jeep this time. Keys were on the list of things to bring, but we only brought the shed key and mailbox key (to check for mail that hasn't been forwarded). Anyway, there isn't much left to empty in the shed.

Here is a shot of our empty space with the shed on the left:

The shed looks pretty small in the picture but it contains lots of shelves and cabinets.

Today we will do our early doctors appointments and head home early in the afternoon. We saw where there is a chance of storms in our northern area today and we also heard that the monsoon will arrive early this year. We'll be glad when we finish the work here in the hot Valley, although it's not as hot as it's going to get this summer.

Later...

Better Pace

We can really tell that the holiday weekend is over. Although we had a fairly steady flow of people, we didn't have near the hectic pace of Monday. Several people stayed the extra day to avoid the traffic rush and the dump station was active, but the line to dump never exceeded two rigs. We did have a problem at the resort in the afternoon when a water valve broke somewhere in the line and they had to shut down the water for a couple hours. That impacted the dump business as people could only dump during that time using their own on-board water. We also had to turn away some people from filling their water tanks.

We went two miles down the road to the Long Valley Cafe at Clints Well to have dinner. We each had the meat loaf - Josie the sandwich, and Bob the meal. They give large portions and the food is very good. This is the same place that was mentioned in an earlier post that has the Friday all you can eat fish fry.

It was a beautiful, clear day and the temps were 69 (high) and 37 (low) with no rain.

Today dawned with not a cloud in the sky and and slightly warmer than yesterday. Our water pressure is very bad this AM, probably a result of the repair yesterday. We hope that it gets fixed while we are gone. Our plan for the two days off includes another trip to Surprise to try to finish emptying the shed and going to a couple doctors appointments.

This time we will have the camera - just in case.....

Mass Memorial Day Exit

What an incredibly busy day on Memorial Day. Both of us were on duty by 7 AM and the exodus began about 7:05. We had about 60 of the 95 sites checking out. Most of those checking out go out without stopping at the front desk but some came in to make reservations for future trips back and some came in to extend. All the comments we received were very positive, a change from last year, and it made all of us on the staff feel good.

It is hard to realize how many people boon dock in the forest until a holiday weekend ends. The dump station was non stop all day. Last year they had 150 dumps and I'm sure that we exceeded that this year. We gave out tickets for the "dumpers" to use so we could eliminate the chance for people to sneak through without paying. Our General Manager was at the dump station collecting tickets. We were so busy with the dump station that at one point we had 15 rigs lined up to use it. The General Manager started allowing the dumpers to use the vacated spaces in the front of the resort to dump. Bob wanted to take a picture of the dump line but did not have enough time to get the camera. Happy Jack Lodge is obviously the only game in town for dumping.

We had a steady stream of kids coming in to buy candy and ice cream. The adults were buying gloves to use for dumping and lots of chemicals and other RV items. We had a dilemma in the showers when a guest came in and indicated that there were people coming into the shower area full of mud and messing up the entire area. Josie and I went over and asked everybody to leave their shoes at the door. Josie ended up mopping the woman's showers and Bob did the men's.

Bob was done his shift by 3 PM, but Josie got roped into cleaning up mouse poop in the storage areas. She was done by a little after 3:30 PM. We were happy to see our portion of the day end. We both did some miscellaneous fire fighting in other areas between front desk duties. We had one other person sharing the front desk duties.

The resort was very quiet and hardly any people were around by 5 PM. Josie and Bob went to the laundry facilities and finally got caught up on our laundry pile.

We had a small storm late in the afternoon (.02" rain) but the day was generally very nice - 67 (high) and 40 (low).

The schedule today is for us to be starting at 8 and ending at 1. Our days off are Wed and Thu and our plan is to return to Surprise to complete our clean out of the old space and take care of a couple doctor appointments.

Later...

Sunny Day and Pace Continues

Yesterday was a late shift day for us. Our start time was 1:00 so we spent the AM relaxing in the trailer and watching about the first half of the Indy 500. There's a TV in the lodge store that was tuned to the race so we got to see the end. During the Dancing With the Stars show a couple years ago we got to really like Helio Castroneves, who won the competition that year, and were happy he won the race.

We were pleasantly surprised during the afternoon when some friends, Lois and Carl Lillagore, came by to chat for a while. They have a cabin in Munds Park, AZ, that is about 1 hour from here. We wished we had more time to spend with them but the pace was still hectic. We will get together with them another time when we aren't so busy at work. It was good to see them.

The afternoon also saw a bunch of people coming in from camping trips in the woods to buy showers. They were muddy from head to toe and caused a panic with the lodge management because they were walking into the shower area with all their muddy shoes and boots. We were sent to the showers to control the mob and make sure they took off their shoes before entering. Nonetheless, Josie and Bob both had to mop the showers after they left. Our mopping duties didn't end there though, as we both ended our shift by mopping the floor in the store. Josie spent a good portion of her shift helping the housekeeping people clean cabins. We finally got off at 8:40 and were in bed by 9:15. We'll be happy to see some normal traffic - hopefully beginning on Tuesday.

We got up to bright, sunny skies today and will work the 7-3 shift. The weather yesterday was great - 67 (high) and 43 (low) with no rain.

Later...

Full Swing, a Party and Hail

We were scheduled for the first shift on Saturday - 7 to 1. Josie had been up and down all night with what appears to be the flu so she stayed home to mend and not take a chance on spreading whatever she had. It was a hectic morning at the lodge. The store did a high volume, as expected, and we had several more check-ins to totally fill the resort. Here are a couple of shots of the activities of the day that Bob took after he got off work at 1 PM:

Starting with the playground that is right outside our site.

I mentioned in an earlier post that the Ramada was rented for the day. A woman had about 90 guests to celebrate her 50Th birthday. She went around inviting everybody in sight to the party that was catered and it was excellent. Notice all the ATV's that people used to come to the party.

The resort opened up the pony rides for the weekend. People can ride for 1/2 hour, full hour or a half day ride through the trails.

Everybody was enjoying the day until about 5:30 when the skies turned black and the wind started to blow. With activities in full swing, the storm arrived and we had hail, lightening thunder and finally a huge downpour. Here are shots of the playground after the hail storm and our poor glider that has suffered enough already.

All in all it was a fun day. Josie started to feel better in the afternoon and was able to eat a bowl of chicken noodle soup that was the only food she ate during the day. Today we have the late shift since we switched with the other couple. They have to leave early to go to some concert in Phoenix tonight.

That's about all for now - the weather yesterday was 62 (high), 47 (low) and .65" rain. Today is sunny - so far...

Real Test and More Rain

The rain just kept coming yesterday and it's still raining this AM. We had .91 inches of rain and the temperatures were 49 degrees (low) and 57 degrees (high). Reminds us of Washington. The nice part about this rain though is there is no wind and no thunder and lightening. We need the rain anyway.

As expected, the crowd started arriving early yesterday as Josie and Bob were on duty by 7 AM. Most of the people checking in were already paid so that helped. We sold a lot of water to people stopping on their way to boon dock in the forest where they had no hookups. The other thing we sold tons of in the store were ponchos. We managed to get through our shift with a minimum of problems and returned to our rig by 1:30. It was very entertaining for us to watch people set up their camps with the steady rain. I'm sure it wasn't fun for them though. Here is a shot of the tent area where we will probably have a lot of no shows as a result of the rain.

The restaurant opened for the weekend and we tried it for dinner. It is quite a menu for a small restaurant. Part of our duties for the day were to help clean up the restaurant (sanitize everything) for the opening. It was sparkling clean for dinner. The banquet room in the rear of the lodge was also open and they had a country guitar singer for entertainment and a cash bar that was very popular. Patrons in the restaurant could walk back there and get pitchers of beer or wine and bring it into the main eating area to have with dinner. It was a fun atmosphere.

Today will also be busy but we expect most of the business to be store goods. The Ramada is also opening today and one of the guests has about 90 people expected. It will be interesting to see how things go with this continuing rain.

Stay tuned...

Storm and 2nd Day off

We kicked off our day with the breakfast at our hotel in Surprise It actually was a pretty good continental breakfast that the hotel provides to all its guests. The hotel was the Days Inn & Suites in Surprise and actually was an excellent place to stay. It only cost us $54 for the night and it compares very favorably with Best Western hotels that we normally look for. Our room was a suite with a living room area, mini kitchen and all amenities (Coffee pot, hair dryer, microwave, fridge, etc.). We had to take a trip to the east side of Phoenix to pick up Josie's last paycheck from Phoenix Flower Shop. Get this - the payroll department didn't know it was her last check so they did not include her three days of accrued vacation. They will issue another check and mail it to her.

We decided that we would have to come back again for one day to finish up our shed emptying project. There were just too many files and office stuff to sort through and we loaded the truck with large pieces to bring back. The chest freezer of course, and also our remaining patio furniture consisting of a small two person glider and glass top, adjustable table and Ottoman. That left little room for the rest of the boxes.

After loading everything and hitting the road about 4:30 PM, we ran into a vicious storm just before we turned onto the freeway. A huge gust of wind that usually precedes these AZ storms just picked up our glider and glass top table, along with a ladder that was in the truck, and planted it not too gently in the middle of the road. It was a good thing that it didn't happen on the freeway as it would have probably caused a serious accident. Anyway, we immediately pulled over and grabbed everything as quickly as we could. The table was destroyed and the glider appeared to be ok as was the aluminum ladder. With the wind still whipping, we took about six bungee cords and repacked the rear of the truck. We had a steady downpour for almost the entire trip. It turns out that Happy Jack had about a quarter of an inch of rain for the day.

We finally made it home at about 7 PM and unloaded everything from the truck and sat down to watch TV until bedtime.

Today starts the big weekend so we are sure to have some exciting things happening. Here's hoping that everything goes smoothly.

Our "Friday" and First Day Off

An attempt was made to write this post last night in our hotel room in Surprise but the finale of American Idol stopped that in its tracks. We are big fans of that show and were happy to see Kris Allen win.

Our second day on solo on Tuesday was a fairly easy day. Bob worked the AM shift until 2 PM and Josie did the late shift and worked 12 noon to 6 PM. This is probably the calm before the storm because beginning Friday the holiday weekend mob will begin to arrive. The resort is nearly booked solid with only a couple small RV spaces yet available ( 32' length and under rigs), two cabins left (out of 12) and only two tent sites remaining (out of 15). The Ramada is even booked for Saturday by a couple already on site - they are having a party with about 90 people invited. Although most of the work on Friday will be check-ins, we expect the store to be super busy. Also, the restaurant opens Thursday night for dinner and will be open Thu - Sun for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Both of us will be working the AM shift together on Fri - Sun, so we are thankful for these two days off now.

We made a list of things we needed to bring to Surprise on Wednesday. Unfortunately, we didn't look at it on Wed AM and we forgot the camera. Oh well. We left early on Wed - about 5:30 AM - and we saw 4 elk, in four different places, along the stretch of the forest road between the lodge and the freeway in Camp Verde. They were standing just off the road and it reminded us to drive carefully along these roads at all times. Elk seem to be everywhere in the early morning hours.

Our first stop was at a Denny's restaurant for breakfast off the freeway. Our plan was to go to the Verizon store in Surprise and do our "phone thing" to turn in our useless new phones that we got before going to Happy Jack and re-activate our old ones so we ride out the old contract, which expires on June 7. See, you are allowed to upgrade your phones within two months of the end of your contract, with a new 2 year contract, which we did. We discovered that we missed the 30 day return window by about a week and that we had to stay with the new contract and new phones. A phone call to the corporate customer service people, explaining our situation with no service in the new area resulted in an acceptable compromise. We are having our Verizon service "suspended" for up to six months, while we are in Happy Jack, and will not have to pay any charges. After we leave Happy Jack - which could be before six months - we are to notify them to start up the service again. This suspension will begin on Friday the 22nd after we leave Surprise, so anyone trying to call our present phone numbers after today will not get through to us. We will notify everybody of our new, Alltel number, as soon as we can.

We discovered that the shed emptying project was a lot bigger than anticipated. Everything was separated into 4 areas outside - Trash, Goodwill, storage and 'take to Happy Jack'. We brought the truck to Surprise knowing that we would need the extra room to haul things. We averaged 12.8 MPG on the trip here - all downhill. So, we did get all the trash hauled to the dumpster and a full load hauled to Goodwill. This AM we will haul the storage stuff to our storage facility in Surprise. Finally, most of the rest will be loaded and hauled to Happy Jack. Most of what needs to be hauled to Happy Jack is stuff that needs to be shredded which would take too long to do here. It appears that we will need to make one more trip though. There are some file drawers we are leaving in the shed because those files need to be sorted and either stored or shredded and we don't have the time on this trip to do that. We would also like to get back to Happy Jack early enough to at least enjoy a little rest before the big weekend.

That's about it for now...

First Day Solo

Yesterday's weather was almost a repeat of Sunday. Our high was 79 and the low was 43. There was also a trace of rain as several storms barely touched our location. We keep watching the forecast in the Phoenix area and are glad we're here. That was the only thing we didn't like about living there - the hot summers.

Josie and Bob also had their first day of work off training. Bob was in the lodge at 7:45 AM and opened with Chi Chi. He turned all the lights on, turned the open sign on, put out the flag, watered the plants in the lodge, set up the till and fired up the computers. It was a successful first day as he did many transactions without help as Chi Chi had to leave to perform other duties.

Josie arrived at 12 noon to begin her shift and Bob left at 1:45 to end his. Our shifts overlap a little bit this week. Next week's schedule has Josie and Bob working together on the same shift which is much better. Josie also had a smooth afternoon working with Gracie and they had to close together. They had a few problems balancing the till at the end of the day but it was only off a small amount so they closed out anyway at about 6:30 PM. Bob borrowed a local book from the lodge that details about 30 hiking trails in the area so he could copy the info while Josie was at work. There are some beautiful trails in this forest area that we hope to hike on some days off in the future.

We have the same schedule today with our first days off coming on Wed and Thu. Our plan is to go back down to Surprise and empty our shed on the old space. We also have a small chest freezer in the shed that we will bring back and use at the trailer. Since good grocery shopping is at least 40 miles away, it will come in handy for us to stock up on our frozen foods.

That's about it for now.....

Last Training Day and eMail Problems

Yesterday we had a high temperature of 81 degrees and a low of 40 degrees. We also had .01 inches of rain as a lone, big dark cloud passed over with a single clap of thunder and a brief downpour. We are told that when the monsoon arrives in June that there will be some vicious storms with hail and wind and lots of spectacular lightening. Not looking forward to those although they provide some relief in the humid part of summer.

Our last training day was uneventful. We were in the lodge at 7:45 AM to learn the opening procedures and worked until about 2:00 PM. We had to return to the lodge at 5:45 to learn closing procedures. Here is a picture of Josie finishing off her lunch.



Yes, that's a Corona she just polished off. Bob had one also and it sure was refreshing.
We walked around the entire campground to get a better knowledge of the sites for when people call for reservations. Some of the sites are smaller and for rigs under 35' and the rest are big for larger rigs. Some have better views than others and some back directly to the national forest.

Here are some shots from our trailer - the second one looks down to the dump station that was very busy today. Sundays are always good for "dump" business as most people that have boondocked in the forest somewhere nearby have to empty their tanks before heading for home.




Bob was devastated yesterday after work when he found that he STILL was unable to get emails here. After a THIRD call to Cox Communications and a third password, he finally got connected to email. The problem is that the only two emails he received were from last Thursday and he learned that all emails from Thursday to yesterday at about 4 PM are gone forever. Stupid Cox never activated his virtual email account, for which he is being charged $7.95 per month! Any emails sent during that period were returned to sender as undeliverable. Cox tried to ease the pain by providing 2 free months of service. The fact is that Bob created another email account - same as the old except it is hotmail.com - and it's free. Bob will use the Cox free time to get off their system asap.

Today we start our first day as regular employees. Bob has the early shift - 8 to 2 - and Josie has the late shift - 12 to 6. There is a two hour overlap and we will be changing around from early to late on different days.

That's about it for now...

Getting the Knack

I didn't mention yesterday that the low temperature here was 40 degrees in the AM and we had a high of 80. Perfect weather for sleeping and getting outside.

I also didn't mention that Bob has been without email since we arrived. When we cancelled our Cox service in Surprise before we left, Bob had to set up a Cox email virtual account - at $7.95/Mo - in order to continue using his cox.com email address. Everything was a "go" according to Cox, but Bob could not sign on as the error message kept appearing that "the user name or password is wrong". Since we have been so busy with other things, we only had a chance to contact Cox twice to get help with them saying that the account just hasn't been activated yet. What? They need more than three days to activate an account? Finally, an individual last night renewed the effort to activate the account, gave Bob a new password, and said it "should" be active by tomorrow PM (today). What ever happened to customer service? Bob changed Josie's email from cox.com to hotmail.com about 9 months ago and her emails are coming through as usual. Bob should have changed his at that time but didn't because of so many contacts. Bob will change to a new email as soon as we get settled and everything is working properly now.

Our second day at the job went pretty smooth. We both have the point of sale system down pretty good but still need a little work on the reservations system. The system is a little bit complicated as a result of reservations for cabins, rv sites and storage sites of different lengths. Today should be better.

Bob also had a couple outside duties to take care of. A girl and her father walked into the office holding the soccer ball that is tied to a poll (Tetherball?), and he went out with a ladder to re tie the rope and ball. Next, a woman walked in with a cold water knob in her hand and said it came off while they were using the shower, shooting water everywhere, and this was there first time ever camping in their new trailer and didn't know what to do. Bob went to the rig and was able to reattach the knob but couldn't get the knob to totally shut off the water. We have a mobile rv service that occasionally comes to the lodge to do repairs and they happened to be on site today so Bob sent them over to help later in the day. Josie also went to the cabins that were just vacated and did some minor housekeeping - replacing towels, coffee, TP, etc. Interesting day.

We have to be at the lodge at 8 AM today to learn opening procedures and again at 8 PM to learn closing procedures. That means our day today will be split into two shifts with some time off in between.

Later....

Arrived!

We left Surprise on Thursday at about 12:15 PM. Our trip to Happy Jack Lodge took us 3 hours and we averaged 6.8 MPG on the truck. Of course the trip up here was mostly uphill and there were many long, steady climbs to get here.


We checked in, met our co workers in the lodge, and set up our rig on the Camp Host Site 1 - there are three Camp Host sites located in the campground and we were the last of the camp hosts to arrive. Following are pictures of our site:

It was while setting up that our early frustration set in and the reason we have not posted anything until now. First, we discovered that we had no signal for our cell phones. Next, we discovered that we had no signal for the Verizon Data card - no internet. Bob did take the laptop to the lodge and did log on to their wi-fi, but that is not a solution for our internet use over the next 4-6 months. Our co-workers (Jose and Jaime) were very helpful in providing numbers for Verizon Wireless and describing the situation with the local cell tower. It turns out that the tower, located only about 1/2 mile away, is being leased by the lodge owners from Alltel. As you know, Verizon now owns Alltel so we should have a connection with no further expense. Not true. After discussions with Verizon on the lodge phone, it was agreed that Bob should visit the Verizon store in Flagstaff on Friday AM to resolve the problem.

Since the tower is a leased tower, and not owned by Verizon, and since there are still acquisition and merger "holes" in the network, we can only get service using Alltel phones and Data Cards. Sheesh! We arrived in Flagstaff at 8 AM on Friday, the Verizon/Alltel store didn't open until 10 AM. To make a long story short, we spent three hours at the store, walked out with a new prepaid Alltel phone, and an Alltel Data Card. We will return our Verizon phones and data card to the Verizon store in Surprise on our next day off - we have to go there to clean out the shed at the old place - and cancel the Verizon contract which is still in the cancellation timeframe. We upgraded to the Verizon phones and data card on May 1 and we have 30 days to return those. Sound confusing? There's more, but we will fill you in on the rest as it happens.

Anyway, we are going to enjoy our jobs and the people we work with. We spent 5 hours of training at the front desk with Jaime, Jose (also called Chi Chi), and Gracie. Jaime and Chi Chi are here for the summer from El Mirage, AZ where they have a home and a son that is a police officer in Phoenix and sitting their home. Gracie is here from Wisconsin via Texas and is a divorcee traveling with her two cats. Our schedule calls for 5 more hours of training today and tomorrow and beginning with 7-8 hour solo shifts on Monday.

We had a wonderful dinner last night at the Long Valley Cafe in Clints Well in Happy Jack about 4 miles away. They have a fish fry every Friday night with all you can eat shrimp or fish with fries and cole slaw for $7.95. Great deal and great food.

The lodge campground is almost full for the weekend and is totally booked for the holiday weekend next week.

This is already a long post so we'll save some for tomorrow.

Til then....

Almost Ready

Only 1 day to go before we leave for Happy Jack.

Yesterday was Josie's last day at work at the flower shop and she is now (temporarily) unemployed. It was a normal, hectic Mother's Day workweek for her as she averaged about 11 hours per day, every day for the last 8 days. Her manager and coworkers gave her a nice farewell with a "You'll Be Missed" balloon and a box of candy as a farewell gift.

Bob spent the majority of the week going back and forth between the storage unit and Goodwill trying to minimize our possessions. It was a losing battle though without Josie's input on which direction certain items should go. It appears now that the storage unit will be kept - at least for the near term - until both of us can spend full time sorting through the "junk". Bob did bring all the containers of clothes back to the shed so we can sort through those today and at least get our closets filled with the clothes we will need at the new location.

Also, today will be full of errands -returning modems to Cox, Doctor office visits, hair appointments and food shopping. We're definetly looking forward to moving on, and taking "Our SuiteTime".

The next post will, hopefully, be tomorrow PM after we arrive at our destination.

Till then....

Counting Down

Only 8 days to go before we leave for Happy Jack.

Josie is in the middle of her marathon work schedule at her shop preparing for the Mother's Day rush. She is working every day from 7AM to 6PM. Add on the 50 minute commute each way, and you can understand why she is tired at the end of each day. Fortunately, this all ends with our new adventure.

Bob played his last round of golf for awhile (?) yesterday. He played, as always, with his brother George, and close family friend Carl. Bob will miss the golf outings and the time spent with those guys. The golf went a long way towards stabilizing his weight, which rises rapidly without exercise.

We have a lot of sorting and organizing to do before we leave. Trying to figure out what we can keep and what goes to Goodwill is the tough part. Our available space will determine that.

Our neighbors, Dick & Carole Cole, have left for Michigan yesterday and we miss them. We also communicated our plans to Steve Dobbs (lives in Kentucky), the owner of our space, and he was very gracious in wishing us success in our adventure. He is also trying to sell this space as his wife has serious health problems.

Following is a picture of the site we are leaving here at Happy Trails.

Until next time........