End of an Era!!! February 2018

We sold the RV!  We said we would do this as long as we wanted or were able.  We decided we didn’t want to anymore. Four years is long enough for us.

We look forward to having a room where Terry can set up his ham radio equipment.  Kathie is dreaming about a sewing room!

We are in a rental house in Casa Grande till we leave at the end of March.  We head to Sacramento from there and will rent an apartment for 3 months.  Then to Colorado.  We plan to settle in a small town in eastern Colorado. 

We will keep our Livingston Texas address until we get settled at a permanent address.

 

2017 Summer in California

This site on Beale AFB has a tree, picnic table and wild roses!
 

May 1 we left Arizona and drove to California.  We are spending the summer near Sacramento to spend time with Stephanie & Daniel and their foster son.  We want to love on our new grandson!  We are parked at Beale Air Force Base, about 45 miles from Steph & Dan’s apartment.  It is nice to be on this beautiful base.

It is nice not to be working this summer.  We plan to rest up when we are not visiting the kids.  Some days we will just go to their apartment, or a day trip, or they will come visit us.  It is fun to be back at their church on Sundays.

Yellowstone to Arizona

We left Yellowstone on Labor Day and drove to Colorado to visit Sarah.  We spend a month there where we got new tires for our RV!  Kathie helped her mother the week she had her knee replaced.

Then we drove to Sacramento Calif to visit Steph & Dan.  We were able to help with two different foster kids during our 30 days there.  What a blessing to help them provide a loving and safe home to the babies entrusted to them.  What precious children they are.

We are now spending the winter in Casa Grande Ariz.  We arrived in time to celebrate the birthdays of both grandkids in November and December.  We did fly to California for five days over Christmas.  How special it was to help three month old “LittleJ” celebrate his first Christmas.

While we are in Casa Grande, we are enjoying the warm weather.  They have had much needed moisture here too.  Kathie is getting involved in the sewing room here at Sundance1 RV Park.  She also has been playing Mexican Train Dominos and Bunco.  Besides going to Curves many times a week, she also volunteers at the grandkids school once a week. Terry has been walking around the RV park and playing with his radio controlled car at the race track here at the RV park.  How fun it is for us to be close to Jen and her family to see them on a regular basis. We will be here till May 1.

Leaving Yellowstone

We left Yellowstone this morning after breakfast. Glad the south entrance is open again as we used it on our way to stop in Lander Wyoming tonight. We plan to arrive in Denver on Wednesday. We have enjoyed our time here in Yellowstone and will long remember all we saw and learned here. What a beautiful place to enjoy God's creation!!!

After Colorado we will then go to California for a month before we winter in Arizona.

Old Faithful General Store – work schedule

While at the Old Faithful General Store for the summer, we have been working “split shifts”.  Neither of us have ever worked one before but have found that we like it.

The shift we “Open” the store our work schedule is 7:00 am – 11:45 am then 2:30 pm – 5:45 pm.  The shift we “Close” the store our work schedule is 11:25 am – 2:45 pm then back again from 5:30 pm – 9:30 pm.

We work a combination of both shifts during the week.  One week we open, open, open, close, close.  The other week we open, close, close, open, open.  That day we open after closing the night before can be a tough one for us!  We have found that we favor the “open” shift because after eating lunch we can go home and take a nap!

In May, after working our second day, we got called into the store manager’s office.  Kathie was offered the promotion of “Floor Supervisor” for the rest of the season.  The manager said because of Kathie’s “positive aggressive” approach, they would like to use her talent/skills as the floor supervisor. 

The floor supervisor is in charge of the all 8 to 11 cashiers on duty during that shift.  She assigns cashier stations to all that are working during that shift and provides support to all the cashiers by making sure they get any coins and bills that they need as “change”.  She is also the one that they call to provide assistance with any problems like price overrides, computer issues or any other questions that the customers have.

During the “open” shift she makes sure the store is unlocked and set up for business when the doors open at the appropriate time.  During the “closing” shift, she makes sure the store is locked and the cashiers close out their money drawers.

There are fewer customers at the beginning and ending of each day.  From about 9:30 am – 6:00 pm there are “waves” of people who come into the store about every 90 minutes.  There is a direct correlation between the end of the Old Faithful eruption and the timing of the “tsunami of people” entering the store!!!

During the time of fewer customers in the store, we help clean up the register area, and store in general, re-stock merchandise and get “change” for the next round of customers. 

Employee Dining Room

One of the benefits of working for the Delaware North Corp is the Employee Dining Room (EDR).  For about $8.00 per person, per day that means we don’t need to shop, cook or clean up after eating each meal!!!  And it is VERY GOOD food.  Like going to Denny’s every meal but better. 

There is a fruit/yogurt bar for breakfast.  And cereal, Danish along with the oatmeal or grits.  M-W-F they make us eggs to order with hash browns and a meat (bacon, sausage or ham).  One breakfast is a croissant sandwich. The other days offer pancakes (plain, blueberry or chocolate chip) or French toast. 

Lunch is the big meal of the day.  We were treated on the 4^th of July to prime rib, baked potato, corn on the cob, and apple crisp.  They even had a watermelon fruit “boat” like grandma used to make!  But usually it is roast turkey, pork, beef, with a potato side and veggies.  There is always a salad bar for lunch and dinner.

The evening meal is lighter but just as good.  BLT’s, pulled pork sandwiches, brats/hotdogs and hamburgers are just a few of the meals we have had.  Along with the fixings. Friday night is always pizza night.  They have the BEST handmade pizzas!!!

And then desserts, don’t get me started.  There is a variety of pies, crisps, custards, jello or ice cream.  We even had “bananas foster” a couple of times!!!

Another reason we decided to participate in the EDR program was that we didn’t want to spend our days off going to the grocery store.  The nearest store is 30 miles away, but depending on the traffic (vehicles and animals) it can take over an hour to get there.  Even with all this good food Kathie is losing weight from walking over 4 miles a day on her shift in the store.

We have NOT had a bad meal yet!  Besides the paycheck, we will really miss this benefit of this job! This is the closest we will ever be to a private chef!!!

Animals in Yellowstone

There are MANY animals in Yellowstone.  The first day we saw a GRIZZLY in addition to the buffalo herds and elk.  The baby bison are so CUTE!  We can see them getting bigger each time we see one. We have also seen coyote and even a fox.  We are looking forward to seeing a moose and have heard reports that they have been sighted close to Old Faithful.

These bison are some of the first we saw!

Some of you have heard on the news about visitors at Yellowstone and their encounters with animals. In less than one week, we saw (with our own eyes) two separate incidents where people got too close to an elk and the elk charged after them!  Like one park ranger said “This is not Disneyland”! 

One evening at 8:45 pm we had a bison walk through our campground.  He was in the next row over.  He was grazing and kept walking!  The next day we were walking to work and saw a bison near the trail.  That same day as we walked home from work, we saw 3 elk on the other side of the parking lot.

This is the bison on the next row over in our campground.

On one of our days off, we visited the Canyon area of the park.  When we walked out to Lookout Point we were high enough to see an Osprey bird nest on top of a hoodoo.  And there was a bird in it!!!  WOW, how cool is that! 

What a beautiful place to enjoy God’s creation!!!