Busy Day and Strawberry Festival

It was an unbelievably busy day at the lodge for our morning shift. There were non stop people coming in for all kinds of goods - RV stuff, candy for the kids, directions to trails, changes to accommodations and new reservations for future trips. The hayride was again in operation for the day and it was full for every trip around the resort.

We heard about the annual Strawberry Festival in Pine, Az. After our shift ended at 1 PM, we drove to Pine which is about 20 miles from the lodge. It was a typical small town festival with arts, crafts and lots of food. Following are a couple pictures of the event.



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We did the strawberry Sunday thing at the community center where they were selling flats of strawberries, strawberry shortcake, strawberry floats, chocolate covered strawberries, you name it. The problem for us was that we wanted strawberry shortcake but had to settle for the Sunday since they ran out of shortcake. Oh, well.

Today is the only late shift for us during the week. We start at 12 noon but need to make a run to Lowe's in Prescott first. We'll tell you about that later.....

Weekend Kickoff

The resort started early filling up yesterday. It seemed like everybody that checked in had 2 or 3 kids in tow. All the tent sites were taken, most of the cabins were filled and the RV spaces were all booked. The morning was filled with kids coming into the store and checking out mitts, bats, baseballs, gloves, footballs, basketballs and buying candy. It was a fun day for all, and it was only Friday! We also started our "hayride" for the kids. You can see from the shot below that the wagon was a little light on "hay".

The wagon actually contains a huge bench for everybody to sit on. It works. Along with all the kids that arrived with each family were a bunch of dogs. We had to go remind our cabin tenants that dogs were absolutely not allowed in the cabins. The people staying in the cabins said they had kennels to keep the dogs in all night and they would be outside. Brrr!

It does appear though we are going to warm up a bit. It only went down to 49 this morning. That was after yesterday's low of 32 (poor tomato plants). We did make 69 yesterday for a high and expect it to be warmer today.

We do the morning shift again today and expect a steady flow of people in the store. We shouldn't have many arrivals since the resort is nearly full already...

Lazy Day

The weather rut continued with a high of only 66 and a cool low of 39 yesterday. The low was already beaten at 5:30 this morning when the temperature read 32! Sheesh. Let's hope these cold mornings don't kill the tomato plants.

We spent the whole day just relaxing and emptying a couple boxes we brought up from Surprise. We will end up giving away a lot more stuff to Goodwill as we don't have the room in the fifth wheel. Bob put out the hummingbird feeder on the back window (below) and we watched as two hummingbirds came in the afternoon. Of course, they don't come when you have the camera ready.

Today begins our work week again with the morning shift. It should be a fairly busy day with people coming up for the weekend. We know of one family reunion that has most of the cabins and tent sites reserved. Two of the tenters came in last night as we watched them set up camp. It's fun watching how different people set up camp different ways. It's the same with RVer's.

It will also be interesting to see how the site problem was resolved that was mentioned in the post on Tuesday...

Rim Road

Yesterday was the first chance we had to use one of our days off for a local adventure. We headed out to County Road 300, better known as the Rim Road, at about 10:30. The road begins at US highway 87 about 10 miles from our lodge location. We had heard about several vistas along the road that provided spectacular views of the valley and the Mogollon Rim itself. They were right on! Following are some pictures we took along the way:

The first is a view of the rim up close and taken toward the west.

Another shot taken a little further down the road and facing southeast. This one shows the jagged edges of the Rim.

Another of Josie standing close to the edge - a lot closer than Bob would get.

It was hard deciding which pictures of the many that were taken should be included in the blog but here is one more from another vista point on the Rim.

All along the road were areas of charred trees where you could tell forest fires had roared through in years past. The Forest Service was conducting a controlled burn not too far from where we were yesterday in order too minimize that kind of damage in the future. In addition to the spectacular views from the road, we came across some other interesting things. If you can believe it, there was a battle that took place on top of this rim on July 17, 1882 - called the "Battle of Big Dry Wash". It's difficult to read the story of the battle from this picture because the sun was creating a shadow but the net of the battle was that there were some Apaches that attacked a troop of soldiers and Indian scouts and two soldiers were killed and about twenty Apaches were killed.

Then, along the side of the road about halfway through our trip we spotted this hedgehog cactus in full bloom. Unbelievable! We were at an elevation of about 7400 feet and with the cold weather at this elevation this cactus was thriving. We saw no other cactus of any kind on the rest of the trip.

Finally, after about 42 miles of travel on the Rim Road we came to the end. The road came out on US highway 260 at Christopher Creek about 20 miles east of Payson. This is a shot of the highway just before we got to it at about 3:30.

By this time we were ready for some food. Our original thought was to stop at the McDonald's in Payson for a burger and coffee, but saw a Mexican restaurant as we drove into town - El Rancho. Well, El Rancho was El Bad-O. It was the worse Mexican food we have ever had. The only good thing about it was the margarita we had. That wasn't the best either. First thought is the best.

All in all a good day and a fun adventure. We expect to take many more of these on our days off. Today is probably going to be a "stay at home and do some organizing" day in the fifth wheel...

Weather Rut and Mice

We had the same weather pattern yesterday as we have had for a week now. There have been 5 straight days with highs in the mid 60's and lows in the high 30's and low 40's. The most remarkable thing is that we have had 7 straight days of high wind gusts at 23 MPH or higher. The weather forecasts are all saying that this pattern will continue, at least for the next week. The seasonal people that are here are saying it should be in the 80's by now.

We were greeted at the lodge yesterday morning with a strong odor of a dead animal. We cracked open the windows, turned on the fans and began a search of the lodge. Bob found a small mouse in a trap in a far corner of the lodge but that little thing could not have caused this much odor - could it? As you recall, we set several traps after mouse poop was discovered several weeks ago. Anyway, either the smell will disappear on its own or something else will be discovered. It could very well be a situation similar to what my brother, George, had in his home. While trying to sell his home a strong, dead animal smell appeared and lasted for a couple weeks until it finally went away. He couldn't even show the home because of the strong odor. There was a dead animal in his attic that could not be seen until a search of his attic revealed the thing. We hope this is not the case here.

Today is our first off day and our plan is take the forest road 300 along the rim. We are told that there are some spectacular views along the road so maybe we can get some shots today.

Later...

Where's Summer?

We appear to be in a rut weather wise. The days seem to repeat themselves with 65 (high) and 38 (low) ranges and 24 MPH winds. The Valley is also in a cool down which is nice for them as the temps will soon begin climbing to the 110 range and stay there for months. The maximum temps for this area should be in the high 70's and low 80's for the summer. Bring it on!

Our morning shift was as slow as we have seen it since we started. We did have a couple situations to deal with that were new for us. There was a problem with the dumping station. An individual came in after paying for his dumping and indicated that the dump was clogged and nothing was going in. We got on the radio to maintenance to get them over to check on it. Yep, it was clogged and would take a while to clear so they asked if site 1,2 or 3 was open for people to go dump in the meantime. Our system showed that site #2 was open. It turns out that someone, unauthorized according to our records, was set up in the site and not present at his rig. The seasonal person who was supposed to be in site #1 was gone, and there was no sign that he was using the space. The rig in space 2 was different from the one supposed to be in space 1 so they are different individuals. Anyway, we used the (temporarily) vacant space 1 and we need to sort this out this morning.

After work, we had a liesurly afternoon and had a good salmon dinner with baked potato and watched some TV before going to bed.

This is our final shift this morning before our two days off. At this point we are undecided how we will spend the two days. We are leaning toward taking a drive on some of these forest roads to check them out. That would be fun. We'll see...

Schedule Switch

We arrived at the lodge, ready for work, at 6:45 AM yesterday. Our coworker, who was to work the PM shift was there and informed us that there was a schedule change and we were to be on the afternoon shift starting at 12 noon. See, our schedule gets printed out every two weeks and begins on Mondays, the day after pay day. We always make copies of the schedule the day it is published and every worker gets a copy. It turns out that late Saturday the General Manager made a schedule change, posted the new schedule, and only the afternoon workers on Saturday got to see the new schedule. Nobody told the AM crew about the changes. So we had the morning to ourselves now. What do we do? Laundry. UGH!

We started work on time at 12 noon and relieved the other team according to the new schedule. It turns out that Sunday was the only time change on our schedule and was made because the other team had to leave town early to start their two days off. Anyway, Bob did get a few shots of the lodge that haven't been seen yet. Below is a shot of our front desk area and store taken from the loft in the lodge:

Here is a picture of our loft area. This is the wi-fi hot spot and is used as a lounge area and area for people to use their laptops:

Finally, here is a shot taken from our front desk area out into the store. This is our view every day:

As you can see, the store is very large and has a very good selection of all kinds of clothing, candy, groceries, toiletries, beverages, etc. It does an excellent business.

We're still in a cool and windy cycle. Yesterday was 65 (high) and 37 (low) with a high wind gust of 24 MPH. It is suppose to start warming up and calming down today. We hope so...