High Winds and Reflection

The big story for today's entry is not about yesterday, but about last night and this morning. We have had a few thunderstorms over the last couple days but last night the winds moved in. Boy, did they ever! We rocked and rolled most of the night and woke up to a continuation of winds that were in the 50-70 MPH range. The damage caused to many of the rigs in our Workamping area was pretty severe. I went out this morning and took some shots of the damage and I saw at least 3 awnings down plus furniture, patio mats and grills blown over. I have 2 of the shots below. The first is of the awning lost by the neighbor directly across from us:

All that is left of his awning is the white bar you see on the ground. Part of his awning fabric is wrapped around the picnic table, and the rest is in front of the rig that is next to ours. The next one is what is left of the topper awning on the rig that is 3 locations down from ours:

So far, we have been very fortunate - there is no damage to our fifth wheel.

Yesterday also was the end of our first week of working our new jobs. It is too soon to make any final decisions about the jobs and how they compare to our expectations. I will say that Josie is not happy with standing around so much with nothing to do but "watch the clock and try to look busy". My week was the total opposite. My schedule had me getting off work at 11:30 PM after closing each night. My co-worker on the shift, Karen, was to assist me in closing out the operation and the earliest we finished was 11:45, but most nights it was well after midnight before we got out of work. We have been so busy on our job at the front desk that Karen couldn't even take her dinner break last night. It is non stop check-ins, reservations, phone calls from guests and new reservations. The work isn't so bad, but I'm having a hard time understanding why they schedule a new person (myself) to train to close out when they have several people available to do that that have been here for many years. I think I know the answer. Nobody wants the stress, responsibility and the long hours involved for that job. Like I said, we'll wait and see what happens in the next week.

We will definitely plan some interesting outings on our days off, once we get started. It is nice to just relax a little bit this morning...

Hangin' Out and Work Day

Yesterday morning was spent doing things around home and just hangin' out. One of the problems we discovered here is the reliability of the WiFi. Sometimes we can get connected to the Internet almost immediately, and other times we can't get connected at all. I try to connect the same way each time and if it doesn't connect, I just use the data card I have from Alltel that we acquired before going to Happy Jack. Internet connection has become as necessary as food and water.

It is a stark contrast between Josie's job and mine. She is getting concerned because she stands around a lot in the gift shop and it makes for a long day. I barely have a chance to even look at the clock on my job. We both wish there was a better balance between the activity levels. Maybe the balance will come. It is always an unknown when you accept these jobs whether you will be busy or bored.

One thing that is turning out to be an OK thing is our shift schedule. We are getting used to the late shift and think it might work out for as long as we are here. We are happy to have several hours of free time every day before starting our shift. As it turns out, we get to bed around 1 AM and get up around 9:30 AM which still gives us our 8 hours sleep every night. Today, we will try to locate the local post office along with paying a visit to the Walmart Super Store to pick up a few things. One more day and we get to play...

Visit to Buffalo Bill Dam

Our spare time yesterday before going to work was spent taking a local trip to one of the famous attractions in the area. The Buffalo Bill Dam is only 6 miles from town on the highway to Yellowstone and was close enough for us to visit in the few hours we had. The terrain changes dramatically once you leave the town. After going through a few short tunnels that were carved into the mountains, you come out to the Visitor Center at the dam. The parking lot is about a 200 yard walk to the Visitor Center which sits on top of the dam:

This was the tallest dam in the world at one time when it was built in 1905 to create the Buffalo Bill Reservoir. There was a picture in the Visitor Center of the nation's Capital building superimposed on the dam and the dam was taller. The picture below is taken from the top of the dam looking down to the Shoshone River:

( It was very difficult for me to get close to the railing on top of this dam because of my fear of heights.) There were 25' added to the height of this dam in 1993 making the height a total of 353 feet.

We traveled a little further down the highway along the reservoir to see the beauty of this area with all the mountains surrounding the water:

There were beautiful homes along the other side of the road, on huge properties, that had "drop dead" views of the mountains and reservoir. Below is a picture of one of these homes:

We then turned back toward home and stopped along the way after passing through the tunnels again to try to get a shot of the dam from the front:

You can see a part of the dam in the upper center of the picture. There is a better place to get this kind of shot, but we didn't have the time to walk to the location. We will be returning to this site again, I'm sure.

We got back in plenty of time to have some lunch and get ready for work. It was another very, very busy day, and it appears that there will never be a slow day as long as we are here. The time goes by faster for us when we're busy but Josie is not yet quite as busy in the gift shop as I am at the front desk. Josie got off at 11 PM and I left work at about 11:45.

Today will probably be a day that we just hang out at home and get some things done here before going to work. Two more days and then we can visit some more interesting local attractions. We will be planning our trips to Yellowstone soon, so stay tuned...

A Walk Through Downtown

We're trying to establish some kind of routine to compensate for our different working schedule. Yesterday, we got up around 9 AM and after breakfast decided to take a walk from our space to downtown - about 1 block . The downtown area itself is probably 5 blocks long and is lined with all kinds of specialty shops, galleries and other shops selling "Old West" items of every description. Below is a shot of the downtown area as it appears just outside our Village complex:

One of the interesting tourist locations is the Irma Hotel that was built by Buffalo Bill in 1902 and was a place where Buffalo Bill used to stay and he also had an office:

There is a wild west gunfight held Monday thru Saturday at 6 PM outside of the hotel that draws huge crowds. We'll have to go to one of those before we leave the area.

The walk was very invigorating and we got home about 2 PM and it gave us time to get ready for work at 3:30. We both worked a full shift and got home at midnight. Our initial reaction to working these new hours is positive. First of all, we don't get to sit around and watch TV and eat snacks before going to bed. We both have already lost some weight just because we are busy at work and we don't spend enough time at home to pick and snack on junk food. The "lunch" hour we get at around 7 PM is plenty of time to eat a good meal, and we go to bed within an hour of getting off work. We will eat breakfast when we get up, which has been around 9:00 AM, and then go somewhere interesting before going back to work at 3:30 PM. So far, so good...

Very Different Environment

My first full shift at work yesterday was a very different experience. This is a hotel operation here as opposed to a campground operation and the clientele and procedures are vastly different. First of all, nobody has a rig that is checking in. The people are mostly from foreign countries that are here to visit Yellowstone National Park, or with families on vacation for the same reason. There are also bus tours that show up with anywhere from 20 to 50 or more guests. On those occasions, we deal only with the Tour Director and not the individual guests. Good thing. There were times yesterday that we had several groups of people waiting in line to check in. There are also about 20 different booking companies that we deal with, including Expedia and Orbitz, and they already have taken payment from the people and we need to know that so that we don't double charge them. The day is filled with hotel front desk situations and that makes for a whole new environment. It is better to be very busy than to sit around looking for something to do, so that is a welcome change.

The closing procedures take a lot more time and include many more steps than we've been used to. We began closing at 11 PM last night and I didn't get out of there until 11:45. Of course, it was my first night handling the closing and I did have help from my co-worker, Karen, who led me through the process. Most of the effort is manual since the total operation of our part of the business is very manually oriented. They do not have a sophisticated computer system - it is Excel spreadsheet based - and therefore it is automatically more time consuming.

Josie also begins her work schedule today, so we both will be on duty from 3 to about 11:30. Our "lunch" break is scheduled for 7 - 8 PM and Josie has a crockpot ready to plug in when we leave for work at 3 so it should be ready by lunch time. We still have to get used to a different sleeping schedule, so we'll keep you posted on that.

We are getting ready to take a walk down town to see some of the shops and businesses that are unique to this area. It's kinda nice having a few hours of free time before starting work everyday. See ya tomorrow...

Paperwork and Getting Started

The main objective for yesterday was to meet with the H/R person and get all of our paperwork processed so we could begin work. We went into his office at 9 AM and he told us to stop back at 1 PM since he had some pressing business to take care of. So, Josie and I walked the grounds and took some pictures of significant buildings. Starting with the Gift Shop and Front Desk area for the Cabins:



Then there is the entry to the adjacent Holiday Inn, which is one of five properties owned by the Blairs - the people that hired us:

The Holiday Inn works in tandem with the Village Cabins. When we are full, we send guests to them, and vice versa. Between the two buildings is another building that houses the Lounge (Bottoms Up) and a nice restaurant (QT's). Employees all receive 25% discounts at the gift shop and the restaurant.


In the atrium of the Holiday Inn lies a swimming pool that is for the hotel guests, but we are also allowed to use it if we wish. That area is below:

Then there are the cabins - all 83 of them - that sit on the side and all around the rear of the Holiday Inn. This picture only shows a few of those:

There are many different configurations for the cabins in terms of number and types of beds and number of rooms. It will take some time to get familiar with those.

We also received our schedules yesterday and we both will be working 5 days in a row, Saturday-Wednesday, with every Thursday and Friday off. Our shift is a new one for us - 3 PM to 11 PM. It will be interesting to see how we adjust to these times. It means that we will use the TV recorder a lot more since we will not be watching prime time television, but other than that, we will just have to get used to different sleep times. My schedule starts today at 3 PM, but Josie doesn't start until tomorrow. Both of us went into work for 2 hours last night from 7 to 9 PM in order to get familiar with procedures, etc. Our new adventure is now moving full steam ahead...

Arrival in Cody

As a result of the 2 long days of travel on Tuesday and Wednesday, we slept in a little bit. By the time we had breakfast and got on the road it was after 10 AM. Actually, it was only after 9 AM since we turned the clocks ahead 1 hour for Mountain Time. We only had 215 miles to go to Cody, so it was no big deal. Here are a couple shots of the beautiful ranch land we passed during the day:


The second shot shows snow capped mountains in the distance as we approached Wyoming.

There were only a few sprinkles on the whole trip yesterday until after we arrived in Cody at 3:30 and got all set up in our new space. Then the thunderstorm moved in and we had a deluge for about an hour.

Our initial reaction to the new digs was not very positive. We were directed to an area where all the workampers stay with their rigs - remember, this is not a campground - and they tried to fit us into a space that was so tight we couldn't open our awning all the way. I walked around the area and selected another site that was open and a bit wider than the other one. I got into that space and that is where we will be for the time we spend here (below):

We took a trip into town to get a feel for places to go and we did a walk through at the Walmart Supercenter in town. It is a very complete store but the prices seemed a little higher for what we have seen in other Walmart stores. Maybe not. The population of Cody is around 9,000 people, but seems larger to us. The downtown area is very close to us and we are looking forward to exploring that further.

This morning we will go into the office to get the paperwork done for our workamping jobs. We did go into the gift shop last night and discovered that it was certainly large, complete and full of very nice merchandise. The front desk for the Resort is also in the gift shop, so we both got an opportunity to see where we will be working. It promises to be a very different experience for us, so hang on...