RV McCurdy's, Brad and Diane: A vacation from vacation

Saturday morning we get up and are back to work. We are taking a couple of days off and are making up our time....the only good thing we only have a few check-ins (3) and the park is full. We did our rounds about 4 or 5 times, lots of questions from the campers, but all in all a quiet day. We do have one site that is really wet and the people that had it reserved are in on of our emergency sites, but we somebody came in and re-rented the wet camp site.....now there are absolutely no sites, both emergency sites are rented as well as the flooded site.....who knew it would be this busy. Dinner was in the crock pot, corned beef and cabbage, so that was easy and done early, after that we sat outside and talked until about 9:00, then headed inside to watch the news and get ready for bed.

Sunday should have been another quiet day.....but no. We only had about 20 campers to check out, and then we had 14 campers checking in, meaning we only had 6 open sites for the night. OK, first off we had one site that had 2 campers on it and about 3 tents, stopped about 10:30, to remind them check out is at 11:00 .....oh they say, we probably won't be out by then, so we left them know somebody had the site reserved and could be there at noon, oh, they weren't sure they would be out by noon either.....we don't enforce the rules, we just pass them info. We had another 2 sites with 3 big rigs parked tightly together, same thing...no hurry to get out, but the site is reserved. Down the road to 3 more newly reserved sites that are parked full of cars (about 7) and we can only find the owners of one of the cars....so back up the road we head (this is only the first half of the CG). We actually ran into Roger (our Ranger) told him what was going on, so he was going to talk to the folks, by now it is 11:45. Two of the new campers have just pulled in and aren't happy they can't get into their sites. So between us, the ranger and the new campers standing, staring and walk around the leaving people finally started to pull out. About that time they announce over the radio that the boat trailer parking lot at South Bay is full and they are directed to send all boat launchers to Inlet Bay (our CG/Marina), so the next thing you know the boats are lined up about 30 in a line and we can hardly get past the marina to the other half of the CG, but we managed to make it. Things over there aren't looking to bad, but one site is already parked full of boat trailers and there is nobody around that can move them.....so we crossed that site off the available list. Just to sum things up, every time we had a walk in and rented a site we spent the next half hour running to the site, making sure it was empty and if not, finding the owners of the vehicles and asking them to move. The best thing was, we actually had 3 people that just wanted to day use a campsite, ended up renting them a site so we wouldn't make them leave....made our life easier. What a hectic day, happy hour with Larry and Sue began about 4:30, then about 5:00 Larry went out to wet down the road because the dust was getting bad. A camper flew by and Larry snapped a pic of his license plate number...well the guy didn't like that, so he slammed the car in reverse and flew back the road....a ranger saw this and came over just as the guy was threatening Larry, saying he has a gun and would be back.....George, the ranger, called the big guys in, 'Rangers with Guns'. We ended up having about an hour talk with Jim, "the ranger with the gun", about what can be improved.....that was helpful and maybe things can be changed that will help...i.e., instead of 15 mph, make it 5, now we all know 5 is almost impossible, but at 15 they push it. After that Larry and Sue headed inside and we continued to pack, have dinner and get ready for our trip in the morning. In the mean time, Katherine started texting, they scheduled me until 11:00 pm.....I don't do 11:00 PM, so change me or I don't work.....imagine that, they changed the hours....plus they have me 3 days a week.....only 2.

Monday....enough of this, pack, cleaning up and out of the park by 10:00. I stopped to do our weekend close out.....computers are downed, probably all day, back on the road for me. A stop for wine, and quick trip through Wal-Mart and on the road to meet Brad at Transwest, where he headed

A view of Pike's Peak
from our campsite!

for a refrigerator estimate. I get a phone call when I'm about 20 miles away, they want $150.00 just to do the estimate....I don't think so. So we plan to meet at a gas station, hook up, head down the road, stop for lunch... back on the road with our destination 'Garden of the Gods RV Resort' to meet Buddy and Theresa. We finally pull in, get in our site and meet them about 4:00. About 5:00, after we are settled and hooked up, a glass of wine and drinks for them and we settle in for a chat. About 6:30 we headed across the road for a very good Mexican Dinner, Margarita's included.....and when we headed out about 8:30 it was pouring. Now, not knowing where we were headed we all drove, pulling in we thought it was funny that it was just across the street from the CG, but on the way home, we were glad we had the cars. We get home and it starts to rain so hard it sounds like hail, but it was just rain. That was still going on when we all headed to bed....hope we sleep.

A nice morning, and now I didn't sleep well but Brad and Rudy did. They were up early and out for their walk and I was in the shower before the alarm went off at 7:15. Out trip to up Pikes Peak is at 10:40, but we all plan on leaving the CG about 9:30. Theresa yells Hi about 8:00 so I head over for a chat to find our they had a terrible night, Buddy choked on his pills, passed out, fell and didn't hurt himself bad, but a few bruises on his face...Theresa says he mouthed off so she slapped him with the cutting board....great sense of humor. We all managed to get on the road about 9:30 getting to the Cog Railway on time, checked in, got our seat assignments and then shopped for water and snacks. Boarding was a 10:20....we waited until last and finally headed up the mountain for the 1.5 hour trip. What a ride, not bad, great views, but the car was having troubles. One unscheduled stop and a complete restart, but we made it. We had about 30-45 min. at the top, not really long after using the rest room and getting something to eat, but we survived. The temp was 32, so a quick pic or two out side and a dart back into the visitor center. It was interesting, lots of snow and it was snowing so hard it looked like a blizzard when we stopped, but we survived. We then heard the warning whistle, so back out to the train for our trip back down the mountain, what a great trip. After that a few purchases at the shops we all headed into town for a late lunch. The first restaurant wasn't open, so down the hill a little further to the pizza shop....what a great find. We all had the Laughing Lab Beer which was great, but we kicked the keg and they didn't have any more... .so we just had water after that. We finally headed out of there about 4:00 to go rescue Rudy and then we walked him for over and hour, while Buddy and Tee got to rest.....some how it didn't seem fair, but we survived. After that we all just sat outside and talked until about 8pm when a thunderstorm chased us all in side.

Thanks for the visit,
Brad and Diane