Workamping Lessons

(Craig/Karin) As the summer begins to slowly wind down, we have nearly seen all of the places here in West Virginia that we said we would. Our latest adventure led us to the Greenbrier Trail. This is a 77 mile trail that runs along the Greenbrier River in the eastern part of West Virginia. We picked up the trail in a small town called Marlington. The trail is paved for a mile or so, then it turns into a wide path consisting of crushed gravel. We traveled from south to north, heading slightly uphill as we pedaled. The elevation gain was unnoticeable, being that the trail only rises 220 feet over 77 miles.

It was a beautiful trip as we cycled for about 23 miles. We did get some rain, so we had to pull over and throw on the ponchos. The spookiest part of the trip was when we arrived at a tunnel that went right through a mountain. According to the map, the tunnel was only 520 feet long. There must be a sharp curve included, because as we walked into the tunnel, it was truly pitch black. Karin looked at Craig and apologized for not bringing a flashlight along. Craig’s response to that was “lets go”! As we entered the tunnel and all turned to black, Karin was rather nervous and let out a few “expletives” as we blindly went ahead. The darkness didn’t last for long. We went around the bend and there came the sunlight. As we exited the tunnel, Karin said to Craig “that wasn’t so bad”. Craig responded with a silent smile.

On Mondays and Tuesdays, one of Craig’s tasks is to ride around in a golf cart at check out time to make sure that people are checking out. Craig was in area 3 when a kid ran up to him and reported that there was a snake at their campsite. As Craig arrived, the frantic mother asked him to get rid of the snake. It turned out to be a rather large black snake. Craig attempted to grab the snake by it’s tail to move it, but it turned on him and poised itself to strike. Now a black snake is not poisonous, but it can bruise you with it’s bite. Craig just didn’t feel like getting bit that day. He decided to just push it towards the forest. Once the mother saw this, she became frantic again, wanting the snake removed to a far and distance land. So before the snake could escape, Craig took a stick and flung it into an open area. He then took the stick, pinned the snake’s head down, grabbed the snake with two fingers just behind it’s head at the jawbone and picked up the snake. Wow, the snake was nearly as tall as Craig! A good five feet in length. The father had come back now and saw Craig lift the snake. Craig looked at the father and said “I used to watch the Crocodile Hunter”. Well, they found a sack and tried to get the snake into it, but Craig figured that as soon as he released the snake into the sack, that he may get bit. So Craig jumped back onto the golf cart, holding the snake up and out of the cart, and drove off to the rear of area 3. There he released it, and everyone lived happily ever after.

We only have about four weeks to go here. The campground is still very busy, but we can sense that things are slowing down. Our contract runs until September 7th. We may stick around for a few days to raft the Gauley River (Craig is still thinking about that). Our next job will be in Campbellsville, Kentucky. We will be working for Amazon.com. That runs from October 15th until December 23rd. We will be visiting with Craig’s parents in North Carolina in between this job and Amazon.com.

We have learned so much from our experiences here at Mountain Lake Campground. We would like to share a few with you.

Never assume, although in most circumstances, you’re probably right.

Craig was waiting on a female customer. She wanted a primitive campsite (no electric or water) to put her tent on. As he was taking her payment for the site, she received a phone call. Craig couldn’t help but to hear her ask the person on the other end of the phone “do I have any clients lined up yet for tonight or tomorrow night?”.

GOLF stands for Gentlemen Only Ladies Forbidden.

Karin had a married couple come up to the counter wanting to play miniature golf. A little while later, the couple came back and returned their clubs and golf balls. They also returned a blank score card. Karin asked “who won”? The gentleman responded that his wife had won. Karin then held up the scorecard and said “but how do you know? There’s nothing written on the scorecard”? The gentleman said “lady, we’re married. I knew the score way before we ever played”!

Great Danes are invisible dogs.

Karin was approached by a woman in the store. She said that there was a terrible odor over near the toy section. Craig went to investigate and found a large pile of poop right in the middle of the floor. The woman said that it must have been a dog. Craig thought to himself that the only dog that could have done that (it was big) was a Great Dane! Neither Craig or Karin could recall seeing a dog come through the front door.

Children and their parents are easily entertained.

This continues from where we left off concerning the Great Dane. Craig went back to get some cleaning materials to take care of the mess. As he came around the corner to the location of the poop, he found two young boys. They had decided to walk through and slide around in the poop. There were “poop-prints” everywhere. Their parents were just standing there……and laughing very hard. They just thought that the kids were so cute. After they left, Craig cleaned up the mess. He looked at Karin afterwards and said “thank God for bleach”.

Honey is not always sweet.

There is a sign in the store that reads “Honey Wagons must be paid for by noon on the day that you order it”. Seasoned campers know what this means. The new campers always ask what a “Honey Wagon “ is. A honey wagon is a tank on wheels that is pulled behind a truck. It’s purpose is to empty the sewage tanks on a camper, since the campground does not have sewer lines running through it. The truck then hauls the honey wagon to a dump station and dumps it. After explaining this, the customer’s smile always goes away. Their thoughts of someone pulling around a cute little wagon that’s selling jars of fresh honey straight from the beehive….just vanished.

Copperhead !!

(Craig/Karin) Memorial day weekend has come and gone with little to no problems. We worked in the store on Saturday and had Sunday off. Craig handled reservations and Karin was the sample girl. She was dipping animal crackers into homemade cinnamon honey butter and passing them out. The funny thing was that she had the last jar of that specific honey butter! So many people wanted it, but couldn’t have it. What a tease! Some people griped a little that the store didn’t have animal crackers to sell. Oh well, you just cannot please everyone.

On Sunday, we decided to head out on a road trip. Not too far…..we just wanted to go the opposite way of all the weekenders and do a little hiking. We ended up in a small town called Fenwick. The Cherry River ran through it and looked inviting. So we pulled over and jumped in. Typical cold water coming down the mountains. It was a hot day, so it was very refreshing.

Mondays and Tuesdays are now Craig’s days to be the fill-in as the pool guy. Clean it up, sweep it, check and add chemicals if necessary. It’s a pretty easy job. On Tuesday, there was a group of high school students there for a private party. They sat in the pavilion that is right next to the pool as Craig was cleaning it. Some of the kids were calling out to Craig, saying “Hi Mr. Pumpkin”, referring to the bright orange polo shirt that he had to wear for work. Craig thought about responding with a single finger salute…..but then remembered that he was a ambassador for his employer. So he just did the old “grin and bear it” stance. A couple of teachers approached Craig and asked him where there was a water spigot at to fill up water balloons for a fight with the students later. Craig showed them the spigot and asked the teachers to forewarn him before the water balloon fight started, so that he wouldn’t get wet. The teachers said that they would do so, and turned on the spigot. Well, they had forgotten to attach a balloon to the hose, so water shot out and sprayed Craig. How funny was that! After they all stopped laughing, Craig smiled and responded that now he knew for future reference to watch out for the teachers as well as the students.

Karin has gotten into the swing of things in the store. She loves to converse with people as she rings them up at the register. The guys just love her! Craig was at the next register and asked the next person in line if he could help him. The gentleman responded “no, I’ll wait for Karin”. Craig can understand that…..her warm smile, blue eyes and bubbly personality are very appealing! Craig just smiles and thinks to himself “ enjoy it now guys, ’cause later on she’s heading home with me”. :)

Wednesdays and Thursdays are looking like they are going to be our regular days off. This past Wednesday, we just relaxed and visited the library. On Thursday, we decided to explore Hawks Nest, overlooking part of the New River Gorge. You drive through the small town of Anstead to get there. After checking out Lover’s Leap overlook, we wanted to get down to the bottom of the gorge. So we drove back through Anstead and found a dirt road that went along Mill Creek. Good thing we have a four wheel drive vehicle. We passed by and took some pictures of the creek, which had several waterfalls along the way. At the bottom, we found a rail trail that went back along the creek, so we began our hike.

Craig usually leads the way, using a hiking stick just to watch out for any pesky critters. The trail was about four feet wide, so Karin felt safe and passed up Craig to lead the way. About a half mile into the hike, as Craig followed Karin, Craig noticed a brown coil off to the right side of the trail. It was on top of a rocky area, maybe a foot from the trail. Karin was about to walk right by it. She didn’t see it at all. But Craig did…and he realized that is was a coiled up snake. Copperhead! Craig had never seen one, but it was very obvious now as to why they are named copperheads. Should he yell out to Karin, startling her and possibly frightening this venomous snake? He decided not to say anything until after Karin was well past it. Craig walked past it also, acting as if he had not noticed it. About ten feet past the snake, Craig stopped Karin. “Honey, now don’t be alarmed” is what Craig said. Before he continued, Karin knew instantly what he was about to say. But she didn’t realize that they had already past it. He explained why he didn’t alert her, and she fully understood. We walked back to take a look at it from a safe distance. Craig took pictures and then we moved along.

For some reason, Karin decided to follow behind Craig for the rest of the journey. We stumbled upon an old coal mine entrance barred by a steel grate. The date carved into the stone arch was 1921. It was rather eerie. As we stood there, we could see the miners going into and out of the entrance. Ok, it’s been closed for some time, but the mental image was there. Not a job that either one of us would be enthused about. There are many coal miners in this state. It is a very dangerous job, hence the mining accident that just took many lives in this state several weeks ago.

We returned to the trail and headed back down. When we reached the area of the copperhead, we stayed on the right side of the trail to give us a lot of space as we passed back by. The snake was still there, just enjoying a little sun. We went passed it and stopped again to observe it. We were about twelve feet away when the snake seemed to sense our presence. It moved slightly and tighten it’s coil up, raising it’s head as if to warn us that we were close enough. We understood it’s message, and continued down the trail. Another day in West Virginia was gone. Karin has a list of places for us to hike and see. Like sands in the hourglass, these are the days of our lives. :)
　

The Dumbing Down Transition

(Craig/Karin) We began our workamping job nearly three weeks ago. We are working together in the general store, learning how to make reservations and conduct other functions throughout the store. It’s a nice store filled with all kinds of neat stuff: T-shirts, shorts, candles, lawn ornaments, kites, toys, camping essentials, and an assortment of food. Hot pretzels, popcorn, nachos, cappuccino, soft serve and hand scooped ice cream, hot fudge, home made fudge and much more. It is a parent’s nightmare! Kids could walk in and then exit without buying a thing….and still leave with a visual sugar high! Three bucks can buy you a jawbreaker the size of a baseball. If you look at the fine print on the wrapper of that jawbreaker, it probably says that it’s produced and distributed by the American Dental Association. Hey, when times are bad you have to drum up business somehow. :)

Karin and I believe that if we are going to share our experiences, then we must share ALL of our experiences….no matter if they are good or if they are bad. Well, our ship has had smooth sailing up to this point, but we’ve hit some rough seas with this job. After two weeks of work, we found ourselves becoming a bit moody. We became easily irritated with each other and our surroundings. This was very unusual for us. We’ve been the best of friends from the start, never having a harsh word for one another. Disagreements between us were non-existent until now. What was happening here?? We didn’t know. We had to figure it out. We finally sat down and had a “heart to heart” discussion about our feelings and emotional distress. We put it all on the table……laid it all on the line. Communication was the key. We believe that we have figured it out. We came to a conclusion and we termed it “The Dumbing Down Transition”.

Now the last thing that we want to do is offend anyone. This has nothing to do with your line of work. It doesn’t matter if you’re a food preparer at McDonalds, or the chief executive officer at Microsoft. If or when you decide to make a drastic change to your lifestyle, as we have done, then you will go through a transition. Is everyone affected the same way? Nah. We are all different. Some will be affected more than others. But there will be a transition. We hadn’t really talked about it, let alone planned for it. We just ran into it. Karin was a stockbroker. Craig a manager and business owner. And now we find ourselves standing behind a counter…..in bright orange work shirts that should have “County Jail” painted on the back of them…..asking a kid if he wants his superman ice cream scoop to be placed upon a regular or sugar cone. Or making a stuff-a-buddy teddy bear by shoving a pipe into the rear end of an empty teddy bear skin and pumping it full of stuffing. What have we done to our life? The one million dollar stock trades are gone. No more business ownership. All things that were familiar to us were left behind. It’s kinda like doing a belly-flop onto a parking lot from a twenty story building. Pretty unfamiliar, if you can get our drift. So that’s where the dumbing down transition comes from. It has nothing to do with ignorance. It’s just a huge change in our lifestyle. Ok, so now that we see what the problem is…..how do we fix it?

Once we had figured out why things had soured over the last couple of weeks, we were able to smile. We actually laughed and cried a bit, both at the same time. When it came to this job, or really any job in the future, we will need to dumb it down. And guess what? There’s nothing wrong with that. The whole purpose of this lifestyle change was to work less, play more, see more and enjoy our life together. No more three hour commutes (our current commute is 3 minutes by truck, 15 minutes by foot). No more overtime. No more working sixty hour work weeks for a forty hour salary. We are not saying that everyone needs to make this kind of change to attempt to achieve these results. It’s just the path that we chose. We are both committed to this one year journey. Let’s see what happens.

We worked hard the week Memorial Day weekend was coming up. Karin and I were asked to get the adult and kid’s pool ready for opening day. It rained that day. So we showed up, put on our ponchos and went out and worked in the rain. It was a wonderful day! It was a nice change from being in the store. Then came Friday, the big check-in day. Karin was at area 3 and I was at the area 2 gate. Our job was to check passes. We met so many people from all over. It was hot when we began at 2:30 in the afternoon. Lightening began to present itself around 7pm, so we called it a night. As we went back to the area that we live in, it was quite a sight to see! We were the first ones to camp in area 1 almost three weeks ago. As we drove into the area, it had come alive. The area was full of life. It was like someone added water and trailers sprouted up from beneath the dirt. Kids were playing at the playground and riding their bikes. The adults were lighting campfires and cooking up some grub. Everyone waved as we passed by them. We parked and took a walk throughout our new community. People were laughing and smiling. They were so happy to be here. Many license plates were from West Virginia. We saw others too….Virginia, North Carolina, Michigan, Ontario and many others. They were happy to be here…..to do for three days what we plan to do for the next 10 months. We had to step back and remember why we did this. Will we do this again next year? Only time will tell.

West "By God" Virginia

(Craig/Karin) We left Ohio on Tuesday, knowing that we only had three more nights until we arrived at our workamping job in West Virginia. Since our motto is “frugal”, we decided to stop at a Cracker Barrel in Mt Sterling, Kentucky. Most Cracker Barrels have RV and bus parking…..and some will even let you stay overnight. When we arrived and sat down for dinner, Craig asked for the manager. As soon as he mentioned that we were pulling a camper, the manager invited us to stay overnight. She even offered tips on various places in town that may be of some interest to us. So we stayed the night and got a good night’s sleep.

Some of you have asked the question “where do you guys find the free places to stay”? We use two sites: freecampgrounds.com and casinocamper.com. These two sites alone have saved us hundreds of dollars! We also joined passportamerica.com. Passport America offers 50% discounts at many participating campgrounds across the country. Sometimes there are stipulations to the discount (i.e discount good only mon-thurs, discount good for up to three nights, etc). We’ve used this several times, and it has already paid for itself. We also use rvparkreviews.com. This is a great tool to read about the campgrounds before you decide to go there.

Our next stop was in St Albans, West Virginia. We found a free site at the city park. It was right along the Kanawha River, near Charleston. The city park had three RV sites with electric, access to water and a dump station. Nice! Now this little park was squeezed in between highway 60 and the river, so it was a bit noisy. There’s always pros and cons when something is free :) We stayed two nights there. We enjoyed watching the barges head up and down the river. After our two night stay, we threw a few bucks in the “donation” box, and off we were to our final destination. Well, not so fast. Craig noticed a transmission leak under the truck. It looked like a gasket leak. So we traveled around town to attempt to get it fixed. Everyone said that they couldn’t look at it until Monday. At least one fellow was honest. His response was “most places ‘round here close early on Fridays”. So on to plan “B”……load up with some tranny fluid and leak stopper and move on. That’s what we did.

Summersville, West Virginia was a little over 100 miles from where we were. There were some steep climbs along the way. Our truck’s temperature gauge was rising as we motored up these steep inclines. The extra fan to help with the cooling system kicked on several times. Thank goodness for that! The temperature stayed in range as we got closer to our summer home. We did stop at a rest area, where we saw a travel trailer about the size of ours, sitting at the rest area with a blown tire. Craig asked them if they were ok, and the gentleman responded that they had a tire on the way. We told him where we were heading, and he quickly warned us about the Summersville police. He said that Summersville was a big speed trap. Karin asked him if they would mess with someone pulling a trailer. His response was “Ma’am, you gotta be careful on a bicycle there”!

We pulled into Summersville, strongly heeding the 50 mph signs posted every half mile or so. Craig waved at the Summersville police cruiser sitting in the center median. And then we saw the sign to Summersville Lake. We turned right and drove a few miles. A Mountain Lake Campground sign pointed us straight ahead. We arrived at the general store. The store is the heartbeat of the campground. You call to reserve your site there. You check-in there. You can buy gifts, food, snacks, wood, ice and many other things there. So we entered the store. Craig went up to the counter and announced “Craig N Karin, workampers, reporting for duty”.

Susan James, the owner of Mountain Lake Campground, came out to greet us. We also met several other workampers that happened to be there when we arrived. Everyone was very friendly and were happy to see us. The store itself was very nice. It is open, but there are still many things to stock to get it completely up and running. We jumped onto the back of a golf cart while Susan took us to inspect our campsite.
This place is huge! There are four separate camping areas, each one with 50 to 70 sites within it. Three of the areas offer water and electric hookups. One area is considered the “primitive” camping area, mainly for tents. The general store is on the main street that connects all four areas. There is a pavilion next to the store for various activities and functions. Behind the store is a pool, another kids pool and a huge jumping pillow. Across the street from the store is an amphitheater mainly for movies. Next to that is a small BBQ restaurant and also a miniature golf course. Throughout the campground there are playgrounds, volleyball nets, basketball courts and horseshoe pits. There is a shower house with laundry and vending machines within each area. There are no sewer connections, but there is a dump site within each area. The campground also has what they call a “honey wagon” (why, we don’t know). The honey wagon is a tank pulled by a truck that can be dispatched to your site to empty your sewage for you. This allows you to stay put and not have to pull your trailer or RV to a dump site every few days.

The area that Susan has placed us in is not open yet. It won’t open until Memorial Day weekend. So we have the place to ourselves for about three weeks! It is beautiful. The sites are large. Even if this place filled up, our closest neighbor would be at least 50 feet away. There was a brief moment that our eyes met as we looked around at the beauty of this place. We later spoke and realized that we both had the same thought at that moment. The thought was that all of our hard work and research had paid off! This was exactly the kind of setting that we both had imagined being in.

Our first day at work will be on Monday, so we had the whole weekend to set up camp and explore. Karin worked on the inside of the trailer as Craig worked outside. It’s different when you know that you’ll be in the same place for four months. You can now go through all of the “junk” that you’ve dragged along and revisit why you did bring it. We want to keep the outdoors tidy, so we were very precise as to where to store things outside.

So we took our first hike to the store. It’s probably about a half mile hike. We saw many trails leading into various points of the forest. Several deer were seen along the way. Susan did tell us that they had five or six black bears sighted last year. We hiked past the store and down to the lake. Wow, the lake is gorgeous! Clear mountain water with the green forest surrounding it. This is not your typical round lake. Craig said that it reminded him somewhat of Lake Powell in Arizona. But this lake is surrounded by forest right up to the shoreline. We read somewhere that there are about 60 miles of shoreline, so that makes for a pretty big lake.
We then hiked up to Long Point. The point is nearly two miles from our campsite. The trail starts out wide, but narrows as we get closer to the point. There were several steep inclines along the way. At the end of the trail, there is a sign that reads “End of Trail”. We kinda chuckled about that until we saw why the sign was there. Maybe twenty feet past the sign, you find yourself standing on a rock, overlooking the lake. If you decided to go and extra foot or two, then you would plunge about two hundred feet straight down!
Well it's Monday....time to start earning our keep! We’ll get another update out soon :)