We had Visitors!!!!

Remember last time I said that we are growing mushrooms in the front yard, Well, here is the proof.

I promised you also pictures from Adventureland the other day and here are a couple. I just could not get in the mood to take a lot of pictures and then I started thinking. Have you ever seen people take a lot of pictures of the place they work? It is a big difference to visit an amusement park to have fun or to work in one. It was an interesting lesson to be learned. :-)


In the meantime we had our first visitors from Retama Village. Donna and Grant send us an email a couple of weeks ago and said that they were coming through Des Moines and if we could meet up. "Sure" I said, happy to get to see a familiar face. Unfortunately they had problems with a blown tire again and instead of getting in a Tuesday and staying a few days, they came in Friday evening, after they also had to pull over on I35 due to a Tornado warning. They had to move on on Saturday and we were working Friday night. Not to fear, we are creative. I did not have to work until 11:20 am Saturday morning and Donna and Grant were kind enough to drive to the casino, which is right next to us, and we met for a 2 hour breakfast. It was so good to get a big hug and a smile. Other than meeting Ute last year on the coast of Oregon, we have never seen our friends on the road other than at the rallies. So everybody, you know where we are, our day off normally is Tuesday and we are always available for breakfasts, since we do work in the afternoon and evening. We sure look forward to anybody who wants to visit us. :-)

As you can tell I am blogging on a Friday afternoon, which means I have two days off this week again. Doug went to work at 2:40 pm and will not be home until after 9 pm. Starting next week the park will be open till 9 pm on weekdays and 10 pm on weekends. We will have to work some long hours, but at least it is starting to pay some bills and that was our goal. Since I am off today I decided to work on some little projects. The cloth on our small awning had come out of the metal rail, so I got our new 6 foot aluminum ladder down from the truck and started investigating. Luckily the material had not ripped and we had just lost a piece of plastic rod that was holding the awning in its groove. I took out the screw that holds the awning in place, called the technician from the place where we bought the rig, confirmed with him that I was correct about the small rod holding the awning in place and just used a bigger metal nail (didn't have anything else thin enough), attached the awning back in its groove and put the screw back on. Next project was a rattle in the light fixture in the kitchen that we have since last summer. Took the cover off, stuck some small felt pieces on the metal plate that was rattling ever time the washer is in the spin cycle and then of course had to do a load of laundry to make sure my fix worked. Come to find out I am actually pretty handy! :-)

It finally stopped raining 1 1/2 days ago and due to us having so many bad thunderstorms, Doug has ordered us a 50 amp surge protector so we don't have to worry about loosing every electrical appliance in the rig in the next storm. By the way, the tornado sirens actually did go of the other day, however, we found out later that in Altoona the sirens will also go of when we have winds in excess of 70 mph (as if that is much better). We took the passports out of the safe and decided to go check out a new grocery store. I just did not feel like staying in the bathrooms with everybody else waiting for the weather to pass. Our neighbors told us later that we did have small hail in the campground. Well, we are not supposed to have a storm again until Saturday evening, so our "lake" might actually disappear for a few hours. Otherwise, we are doing find and Doug's arm has approved a lot by now. I am really proud of him and his dedication to doing his exercises most of the time.

Another beautiful day in Iowa!

NOT!!!! I can't remember the last day that is has not rained. We are talking slow drizzling rain to severe thunderstorms at any time in the day or of course at night when we are trying to sleep. At least the last two days the rain has waited until 8 am and allowed us to sleep through the night. Here are some pictures of our "lake", which is supposed to be a road and the hookup of our neighbor two hours after another thunderstorm.


The ground has been so saturated that at this point the puddles just keep getting bigger and we are growing mushrooms in our front yard. Normal rainfall for this part of the country in June is supposed to be 2"; at this point we are up to almost 6". On the bright side it seems that our lot is slanted enough that the water only passes through to the lot across the street with the Class A and he gets flooded. By now he has invested in a sump pump to get the water out from under his rig. Mike if you need some water, we will be happy to pump some over!!

This seems to be a year of firsts here at Adventureland. When we signed on with Gary from Human Resource he said that the park never closed doesn't matter how bad the weather gets. It is even in their park brochures. Well guess what, the park closed early for 5 days in a row because the weather looked bad for the evening when they made the decision in the morning. Apparently the owners look at the weather report at 8 am and then post early closings on the website and the big welcome sign up front. Well since people are not used to this, nobody looked at the website and there was some rather upset customers for a few days. Last Thursday I got a call from my department and was asked not to come in, since the park was closing early. Two hours later I get a call and was asked to work a double shift on Friday, which I happily agreed to. Guess what, we closed early on Friday too and I worked eight hours instead of the anticipated 11 hours. By now we check the website first in the morning to see how long we work at any given day.

On the bright side again, Adventureland has activities for its employees and last night was movie night. They basically take over a local movie theater and we get to see a movie for free and get a discount coupon for the popcorn and soda. To see a movie and have a large popcorn and soda for $5 is not a bad deal. Since Doug was working till 8 pm we went to the late showing at 9:45 pm and got home sometime after midnight. At least we are off today and were able to sleep in a little bit. There is also an "alphabet game" going on, so we will go to the park later on and I will take some pictures so that you guys finally get to see where we work. Stay tuned!

Tornado Watch

People that live in the mid-west are very familiar with the tornado watches that occur pretty much throughout the summer. Well, it was my first one and I really did not know what to do. Should we pack up some stuff to be ready to head for the shelter, or just stay put? Doug just gave me "the look" and told me that he was watching the local channel on TV to make sure we would not miss any announcement for us to find a shelter. Actually there are a few shelters in the campground and they will sound a siren should we need to leave the rig. In the end we just had a very severe thunderstorm with heavy rain, which was a lot better than the hail they had south of us, and there was a tornado touchdown about 100 miles south of us. I guess I will have to get used to the weather up here and just be watchful.

Doug and I have been working full time now for almost two weeks and I have to say that he made the better choice with working in rides. He has a clear schedule of which ride he is on for the whole week and is advised of it in advance. I get my schedule in advance with my starting times for the following week, however, I never know where I work until I report to work in the retail office that day, which also means I don't know how long I work that day. I assumed that you always work until the park closes, however, the water rides in the park close one to two hours before the rest of the park and the retail stores that are associated with these rides close at the same time then the ride and you get send home. It makes it a little bit difficult to carpool with Doug, when I don't know how long I work on a daily basis. Once Doug's arm is better and he will ride his bike to the park it will not matter anymore, but right now it is somewhat annoying. Interestingly enough I am not the only one in our group that is unhappy about the way things are run in retail. Unfortunately, I don't think that there is much I can do about this and I am sure this will pass. If we do come back next year, I definitely will not work in retail again.

Other than that, we are doing fine. :-)