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Late September - Making the Rounds

9/30/2019

As September ended, we made the transition from our Camp Host role to Park Host, finishing up our campsite cleaning duties and looking forward to focusing more on park projects. During our days off, we made a couple trips to see family and celebrate a momentous birthday.

A Devil of a Time

While making rounds at the campground, we continued to meet interesting people and make new connections. One of the more unusual was a crew assembled to film commercials for Devil’s Backbone beer. We were invited to share some of their dinner and afterward watch as they shot a 10 second scene over and over and over . . .

Carolina watches over Joe's preparations of the group cabins.

When not circling the campground, we continued advancing Cabin Work Week plans and ensuring the cabins were ready for the volunteers arriving on Public Lands Day, Sept. 28. With all the prep done by fellow host, Joe, major progress was made in painting 3 of the cabins. There is more to do, but we are well-positioned to have them all painted by the end of Cabin Work Week in November. With our camp host duties behind us, we can now focus on this effort even more.

Four generations together for the youngest's birthday

From One to Ninety-One

We took advantage of our proximity to NC to share in our great niece’s first birthday celebration. The chemistry themed birthday celebration was complete with periodic table, science experiments and petri dish and test tube treats. But the biggest treat was time together with family and the surprise visit of Cathy’s mom to the party.

James Stockman Cancer Institute in Frederick MD

North Again

After completing another of Cathy’s treatments in Frederick, we headed a little further north and east to meet up with Dave’s mom and sister Diane at the “world’s largest buffet” in East Earl, PA. After a satisfying meal, we dodged dozens of well-lit Amish buggies along the road en route to our hotel in Strasbourg. We enjoyed a leisurely morning together the next day before saying our goodbyes and heading back to the park.

It was great time together.

Diane, Mom and Dave in Strasbourg

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Early September - It's Like a Job

9/16/2019

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Spending our first 2 weeks in the role of Camp Hosts at Pocahontas State Park, we have a new appreciation for the role, and a stronger conviction that we prefer our time spent as Park Hosts. This is a little too much like a real job. But we certainly stay busy and, more importantly, we have had more interaction with campers and the office staff, which is a good thing. Being in the Richmond area, we’ve seen more of our kids and grandkids as well, which is one more reason why we like to be here.

Dave checks out the park's ice machine, which is amazingly familiar

Be Our Guest?

When we arrived at the park on Labor Day, we had wanted to stay as much as we could in order to do more on-site coordination of the Cabin Work Week preparations. We also offered to help out as we could on anything the park needed. Our first day, we went to help the pool concession staff deep clean the kitchen now that the pool was closed. Discovering we had a unique skill to offer, we spent half the day de-scaling the ice machine. But before we could get into another project, we were surprised to hear a proposal that solved a few of our logistical problems, taking us in a slightly different direction.

One of the current camp hosts was also a Red Cross volunteer being called up to respond to Dorian. Could we take over their hosting for the rest of the month of September? After discussing one scheduling conflict with the other host, we decided it was easy to say yes. That would allow us to spend time in the park getting ready for Cabin Work Week and within range of Frederick for Cathy’s treatments and the kids living nearby.

Giving directions to the hiking trails

A day in the life of camp host follows a particular schedule. Rounds through the campground with reports due at 9am, 3pm, and 7pm. Clean the sites of any trash, including micro trash (e.g. twist ties, cigarette butts, plastic straws, etc.), and empty the fire pits of any ash and partially burnt wood. The ash gets dumped into a collection spot. (Hopefully once it is cool. Cathy found herself driving down the park road with flames coming from some logs that weren't as cold she thought.) On Sundays, we have to clean any of the 4 yurts that were rented. So far, that has meant all 4 every weekend. And, in case you may not have guessed, most people camping this time of year come on Friday, burn all weekend and leave on Sunday. Our 2nd Sunday in the park, we cleaned 51 campsites and 4 yurts. We dragged ourselves home that night. We kept thanking our lucky stars that it was not the heat of July or August. We also secretly get excited when we see campers that don’t build campfires.

However, we have a good time teasing our fellow camp host and getting it back in spades. One time we came back from our day off to find a list of sites showing everybody leaving that day. What? A Sunday on a Friday? We found the correct sheet tucked away, with only a handful of sites to clean. It goes back and forth and makes the “job” more fun. We’ve also hand lots of opportunity to talk to campers and have started building the ranks of the volunteers for Cabin Work Week in October / November. The recruiting had stalled over the summer, so it is encouraging to see it start to pick up.

Richmond Philharmonic Concert

We get 2 days “off”, when we can cram all of our non-host activities, such as Park after Dark meetings, Cabin Work Week preparations and brief forays out of the park for groceries etc. This Is like a real job. Our complaining is mostly pretty mild, we are happy to be in the park and enjoying it in spite of it all. We broke away from host duties to fill in at the Contact Station and to drive the shuttle for the Richmond Philharmonic concert. But we managed to skip Zoso, the Led Zeppelin cover band. Thanks, but no thanks. Our son enjoyed it while we spent the evening cooking a peach cobbler over the fire with our daughter’s family.

We have 2 more weeks before we shift into our Park Host role for October. At least when we’re asked to help out a Camp Host in the future, we won’t need any training.

Cabin Work Week
We had not even been here a day when we started recruiting for Cabin Work Week. A conversation with a fellow camper who recognized us from last year, a volunteer arriving at the contact station, another camper here to get out of Dorian’s path, and so on. Not all of the connections resulted in sign-ups, but enough did that the slots in both weeks are starting to fill.

To generate more conversations, Dave created a flyer to post around the park and hand out to those interested. He also worked with the office to pin down which sites are reserved and ensured they had enough space on either end of the 2 weeks so that folks could stay into the weekend after work ends. With this information, he started getting campsites assigned to the volunteers based on their arrival and departure information. He met with Rich about the work to be done and started positioning supplies for the upcoming Public Lands Day, which will focus on the cabins as well.

So, we are enjoying our time in the park, making progress on Cabin Work Week, and enjoying time with family. The run up to Frederick for Cathy’s treatments is manageable and we are looking forward to more time here.

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