Mail

When we left AZ on the 7th of May, we had our mail held for us at the Pioneer RV Park. We didn't have any valid forwarding address, so nothing was sent to us since that date. Our mail finally caught up with us yesterday and we had one month's mail in our mailbox at the Moose post office. We changed our address to the Pioneer Park with all of our creditors, magazines, Doctors, etc., and have pretty much eliminated our Florida mail forwarding service. We will keep that address for awhile to make sure everything has been changed. At any rate, we spent last night catching up with one month's worth of mail.

The weather made a sudden change last night. As we were leaving work at 5:30 PM, a thunderstorm came through that had some heavy hail and some strong winds. We have had some terrific weather the last week as the mornings were crystal clear with blue skies and warm temperatures. The pattern is changing, and thunderstorms are in the forecast for the next couple of days, at least.

Two more days to go before our "weekend". The work takes a lot out of us each day - so far - and we are hoping that we get used to the pace and the schedule and can get into the flow without being so tired at the end of each day. It's like any other new job, I guess, and by the time we get to the end of the summer, we will most likely wish we could stay and continue. There are lots of fun times ahead before that happens though...

Getting Into Summer

We are now, and have been for about a week, into a stretch of beautiful weather. The skies are blue and the views of the mountains are spectacular. The snow on the mountains is beginning to run-off and the river is rising. We can tell the water is rising as there is a stream behind our site that now has water where it had been completely dry since we arrived. It has been so nice that we take our lunch outside. This is a shot from the table outside where we had our lunch yesterday:

It doesn't get much better than that.

We are slowly getting into the routine of our job but it is definitely a fast pace. They didn't miss the description of our duties at all. As I mentioned before, the only real negative is that we don't get more free time. Working the day shift is new to us in this area and we are sorry that we will not have the same free time we had before. The better pay kind of offsets that factor, but it is an adjustment we are trying to make.

Our third work day of our week is today and we are already looking forward to our next day off which will be Thursday...

First Barbecue

We set another seasonal sales record yesterday by doing $11.2K in business. We have been surpassing last years sales every single day so far this year. Our Visitor Center is the busiest of any in the Grand Teton System. The work is still super-fast paced and the jury is still out on whether or not it is our cup of tea. Time will tell.

Following work, our co-workers - Bill and Mary - held their first "neighborhood" barbecue of the season. They will hold several over the summer, and this one really was good in that it enabled all of us to get to know each other better. Each person, or couple, was asked to bring an item that could be shared while they provided the hot dogs.  Here are a few shots of our gathering:

You can see how the campground is situated in the forest and how spacious all the sites are. That is me standing in the background talking to one of our "new" neighbors. He (Bob) - from West Virginia -  happens to be next to our site and owns a 2016 DRV Mobile Suites so we had a lot to talk about.

The barbecue broke up at around 8:30 and a great time was had by all...

Lunch With Friend

Our morning was spent relaxing while going through some old papers and trying to better organize our fifth wheel. We received a message from our friend Donna at the Virginian Lodge and we decided to meet her for lunch to get caught up on all our activities. The plan was to meet at The Lift - a favorite restaurant of ours located at the bottom of the Sno-King chair lift in Jackson. As we were leaving our campground, we finally saw some antelope up close and took this shot:

We met at 11:30 and the restaurant was closed. Evidently, they got caught up in the shortage of employees in Jackson and they are only open for dinner at this time.

We shifted the lunch to Cutty's which is where we went last week, but always a favorite. It was great seeing Donna again and we were brought up to date on all the happenings at the Lodge. As has become my bad habit of forgetting to take pictures at these gatherings, I did it again.

The rest of our final day off this week was spent at the RV. Josie had to do some laundry and I paid some bills and did some computer work. She caught me relaxing outside reading the paper after she finished the laundry:

It's back to work today on our real schedule and we will work every day through Wednesday. There is a barbecue scheduled at one of our co-workers' rig following work tonight. Josie made some deviled eggs to take and we expect to see our entire staff there tonight. I hope I don't forget to get some shots of the affair...

Laid Back Day

We talked about taking a hike yesterday, but as the morning progressed, we thought of other things that we needed to take care of on our first of two days off. We got the outside of our site set up for the summer except that we needed clips for the picnic table cloth which we had to go into town to purchase. As soon as we pulled out of the campground onto the main road, we spotted this bull moose running across the field toward the campground:

It looks similar to the one that we took pictures of behind our RV a few days ago. It could be the same bull.

Our trip into town didn't last long as we stopped at a couple stores and then drove to Hoback Junction south of town to see if there were any changes. Everything looked pretty much as we remembered, so the drive was just a reminder.

We also drove through the campground at the Virginian Lodge to see who was there and we ran into Jim Triplett, our friend and former Administrative Manager, who has returned to work as a workamper this summer. He closed up their new home in St George, UT and had some friends that will watch over the place while he is gone this summer. It was good to see him and to visit for a short time.

We may still do a hike today, but there are some housekeeping chores we need to do around the RV. So far, there are no wildlife sightings for the day...

Into The Routine

First, I wanted to show a picture of what we see on our drive to work each day:

Pretty tough view, huh.

This shot was taken from the balcony at Dornan's following work where we met with another couple from work - Bill and Mary - and had some wine and a pizza. That is the Snake River in the photo:

We have been seeing lots of antelope in the fields but can't get close enough to get good shots. Maybe we will someday soon. Our watch for Moose at the campground is constant and we heard from our neighbor that there was a cow moose lying under the trees behind her RV yesterday. As I was writing this entry this morning, I captured this shot of a deer walking along behind our RV:

It is truly amazing how many animals there are in this area and in our backyard. We expect to have many, many more shots this summer.

Today begins our first real weekend and we have been talking about taking our first hike. We'll see if that occurs today or tomorrow (?). Whatever we decide, it is sure nice to have two straight days off from work...

Marching Along

We really miss having the extra time every day to do things when we started work at 3 PM. This schedule of working all the daytime hours is very different and not as enjoyable. The job is stressful and we hope to adjust to the schedule and to the pace. The super pay is making it easier to accomplish that. An example is yesterday. We got up very early and went to work by 8:45 and didn't have time to go to the store before work to get some milk that we needed for our breakfast. The store is in Jackson, and time just didn't allow for the trip. Anyway, adjustments will be made so that we can get the full benefit of our schedule.

Following work, we went into Jackson to get the groceries we needed that we forgot to get on our day off on Monday. Josie took these shots to remind everybody of the wonderful town and one of the unique features - the Antler Arches:

Today will put us on our regular working schedule. It is the final day of our work week, and we will have Thursdays and Fridays off for the rest of the summer. I'm sure we will be looking forward to those days and doing the things that we enjoy doing most in this area...