Almost Sold Out

We came within just a few rooms of selling out at the lodge last night. Since it's the holiday weekend for Labor Day and the last big weekend of the season, it was probably what we should have expected. It's been relatively slow for the last week or so, so we were kept "jumping" for a change. There are only a couple more events at the lodge that will create a near sell out condition for us at work. This is the time where we get a little anxious to move on as the RV park is already losing some of their seasonal workers due to a slow down in their business. The first of the departing workers is scheduled for early next week.

August was a stellar month at the lodge. We finished the month with 250 more guests than the same period last year. That's averaging almost 10 more guests each night of the month versus last year. The biggest difference for us is the fact that our daily tour bus from Caravan Tours has eliminated the nightly trip to the Bar-J Chuckwagon which they included each night last year on their tour schedule. That means that all of those people from the tours are forced to "hang out" at the lodge and that creates a lot more work for us. They are always asking for help to locate a spot to have dinner, call for a cab to go somewhere, or just sit around the lobby asking questions and taking away from our normal duties. I guess it can be argued that their requests are part of our job, which is true, but last year we didn't have all those distractions to deal with while handling all the requests of the other guests. As I said before, the busier we get, the faster the time goes by at work, so we shouldn't complain.

We had an unusual happening at work last night. At about 5:30 PM, a Jackson police officer came in with an elderly gentleman from Montana and asked us if we could get a room for this man. It turns out that this individual is in the early stages of Alzheimers disease and the police picked him up at some location where his truck broke down. Evidently, he put regular gas in his diesel truck and the engine quit. We checked him into a room for a few days while the police locate family and have someone come to rescue him. Our concern is that he will walk out of his room during the night without any knowledge of where he is or where he is going. It's sad to see the effects of this disease on a person and we all felt sorry for him.

There are some new wildfires reported in Idaho and we expect more smoke and haze to arrive sometime soon. We hope it doesn't get too bad as we have more outside activities planned before the end of our last month. We'll keep our fingers crossed...