Goodbye, Camp McPherson

 

We’ve said “Goodbye!” to Camp McPherson. It’s been a good summer and I want to sort of sum up. To start with, we got along great with Della and Dan, the camp managers. For us, since this was a Christian campground, this was a ministry rather than just a job, so we probably did more than we would have otherwise, but that was never required and Dan and Della were always grateful for everything we did. That always makes whatever we do more enjoyable. A couple weeks ago they took all the staff at the camp, including the workampers, to an Amish home for a meal. This Amish family have a separate building at their home for church services and fellowship meals. A couple nights a week they serve meals for groups and let the group tour their home and answer questions about their lifestyle. It was both delicious and interesting.

 

We enjoyed our fellow workampers. Rich and Betty worked mostly in the kitchen. They kept us up on what the menu was! Their site was next to ours and we enjoyed times around the campfire and just chatted a lot. Rich also posts on my favorite RV forum, RV-Dreams.com. They’ve workamped other places over the years so we picked their brains about workamping and also about the various places they’ve been on their travels. Roger and Jean are also full-timers. Roger could talk your ears off, but was always so interesting, you never minded. Jean was great to work with. She and I worked both the candy store and housekeeping together, and I always enjoyed her company. They were a pleasure to be around.

 

There were others we enjoyed. There were several college age young people working there and we enjoyed each of them. They were fun or funny or talented or all of the above. They were all polite and helpful and easy to work with. There were a few people who came for several of the camps or other times and it was always good to see them. Especially one, Chuck, who actually brought his old Montana fifth wheel and set it up to stay in when he would come. He and Kev could always find something to tease each other about! All in all, the people were one of the best things about this summer.

 

We learned a lot this summer. For instance, I think that in the future we would want to choose workamping opportunities where there are more people staying who are also RV campers. We really enjoy interacting with others who are living in their RV. I think I was afraid that working would be hard on me because I haven’t worked outside the home in more than thirty years, but instead I found it interesting and not at all difficult. Kev didn’t have that problem, but by the time he retired he was so burned out by work. He liked most of the work he did this summer, too. So we are both encouraged to find that we liked workamping, since we’ll probably be doing a lot of that in the coming years. We’ve realized that we do want to try different kinds of jobs. For instance, we’ve lined up our next job – a six week one at a Corp of Engineers park in Summersville, WV. It will be an office job and they’ll be teaching us to use their reservation and payment system. That’ll add to our resume and also be interesting. From talking to the other workampers and looking at available jobs on workampernews.com it appears that there are quite a lot of different types of jobs, so we’ll have the chance to try different ones. I couldn’t begin to share all that we learned. Much of it seems to be learning what we do and don’t like and applying that to our decisions about future jobs. Each person or couple is different and, like most things, have different needs and wants. Those things need to be taken into consideration.

 

Before we came, we thought that this would make a good first workamping job, and we were right. We’ve enjoyed so much about Camp McPherson. Both the people and the work has been good for us. We aren’t sorry to leave, because we like moving on to a new place, but it has been a good summer and we’re so glad we spent it there.

 

Band Camps and Grandchildren

We’re now in band camp season. That and family reunions are the most frequent groups using the campground now. Only one of the band camps used the candy store, and it is now closed for the season, so I’m just doing housekeeping. Kev’s done with fishing and is just doing maintenance for the most part. He’s done a bit of housekeeping but is now working mostly on painting some of the buildings.

When the band camps are here, we get to hear a lot of marching music and drums. One thing that surprised me was how different the different groups are. Some are friendly and will acknowledge us as they go about their business, and others treat us as if we were invisible. Naturally, we prefer the friendly groups, but it doesn’t really affect our everyday lives much.

Sometimes, when we’ve got a band camp that is using both the Lodge and the Retreat Center, and then have family reunions or conferences coming in on the weekend, we have a long busy day getting those two facilities ready for the new groups. On those occasions, nearly everyone available is working at it. We even had to work one Sunday because a group left in the morning and another group was coming in early on Monday. Sometimes I’ve been surprised at people. Sometimes, that’s because of their thoughtfulness, such as the group that left tips for housekeeping. But more often it is because of their thoughtlessness and destructiveness. For example, in one group several people colored their hair using the campground’s towels. I guess, I tend to think that most people are like me and wouldn’t want to ruin what doesn’t belong to them, but apparently some people really don’t care.

This last week, we worked Monday, Tuesday and Saturday. On Tuesday we got done in good time, which was good as Della was taking all the staff out to eat at an Amish home. That was really interesting. The owners allowed us to tour their property and even their house. The man told us a little about them and answered questions. It was fascinating to find that there are several different groups of Amish and some are more conservative than others. Of course, they all seem pretty conservative to us. The food was great, too!

Then, on Thursday afternoon, our son and daughter-in-law, Preston and Melody, arrived along with our grandchildren! They brought a tent and set up on the grass below us behind the Retreat Center.  It was so wonderful to see them! Sawyer recently had his third birthday and Lincoln’s fifth birthday is next month. Since we weren’t with them on Sawyer’s birthday and can’t be with them on Lincoln’s birthday, we gave them their birthday presents while they were here. We got them each a fishing rod.  We gave them to them on Friday and then took them fishing down at the pond. I was amazed that both boys learned to cast. Of course they weren’t perfect at their age, but they really did pretty good.  Lincoln even caught a fish!  Reagan, who was born in November got her nap in while we played!  Kev took the boys for a canoe ride.  Then Preston took Melody for one.    All in all, it was a fun afternoon. They were leaving Saturday morning and Reagan got a bath in our kitchen sink.  We’ll see them again in October when we plan to be in North Carolina for a couple weeks.

The group that was in the Lodge this week left a little after 3:00 Saturday afternoon, and the next band camp was coming in early Sunday afternoon, so we got into the Lodge about 4:00 and got busy getting it ready. We had most things done by 7:00 and Fanny was coming in Sunday morning to finish up, so we didn’t have to work on Sunday.

It’s hard to believe the summer is almost over. We have less than two weeks to go here, unless we stay an extra week. We’re scheduled to be in Elkhart, Indiana, the first week in September, and may go the last week of August.