Working, Working

July is here, and the days are filled with so many things to do. We have gotten rather busy here at the campground, with the weekends being full to capacity, and really not too many sites going empty during the weekdays. Fourth of July was odd this year. It seemed as if with the holiday being on a Wednesday, people didn't really know when to celebrate. People were coming and going on all different days, so there wasn't a big onslaught of check-ins or check-outs on any one day. Unlike today, where we have about 60% of the campsites checking in for the weekend! So this afternoon is an "all hands on deck" performance :-).

We have been having so much fun here. There have been and continue to be activities that all the workampers take part in. We have potlucks every Thursday night, and the only time anyone misses one is if it is their day off and they haven't made it back to the campground in time! The few summer seasonals we have staying here also enjoy coming to potlucks, and every now and then other campers come up and have dinner with us.

Candy Bar Bingo on Saturdays have been a hit as well. The price of admission is a full size candy bar, and that gets you a game card with 6 games on it. We then take all the candy bars we've received as admission fees, and divvie them up into 5 regular prizes and the big blackout grand prize. We've had some folks walk out with a pretty big bag of candy!

Tuesday nights are now game night, and if we're not working we like to come up and learn a new game. Although everyone has become fond of the Cards, Marbles and Jokers game, so we play that quite often.

Fourth of July was fairly quiet by the standards we had been used to. It was much busier around town, which we found when we went grocery shopping in Buena Vista. I laughingly say the traffic was so bad around here, we actually had to wait for two or three cars to go by before we could exit the campground....compare that to waiting 15-20 minutes at times back in the Hamptons for traffic at busy intersections! Its all relative, right?

We had a site-decorating contest for the holiday, and judging took place Wednesday night just around dusk. Al took the cart out, and rustled up a couple of "impartial judges", that is, campers who hadn't decorated and had no relatives in the park :-). They were very serious in their deliberations, and carefully tabulated the results. The winning sites are shown below!

First place went to a family that were tent camping...pretty awesome display since they didn't have electricity to string up lights with. Lots of red, white and blue there. There winning site got them two tickets to Mount Princeton Hot Springs...way to go!

Second place was an RV site in the lower campground...I really like the quilted wall hanging in red, white and blue...hmm, maybe a project to think about??

Third place was another RV site...well done to all our winners!

We've been on a couple of hikes on our days off, but no pictures. It was pretty warm, and my camera is pretty heavy, so I just decided to not carry it. I have selected and received a light weight point and shoot, the Nikon CoolPix L810. It feels so light! So I'm testing this out, and will let you know the results. I'm pretty spoiled with the quality of photos from my Nikon D50, however. 

Well, that's about all the excitement around here for now. I'll get my wildflower excursion posted soon. We really enjoyed the town of Crested Butte, and the area. I took a lot of pictures :-). Sunday afternoon we have off, and we're going to head to the rodeo grounds in Buena Vista for the 91st Annual Collegiate Peaks Rodeo...see what that's all about. I'm also making plans for the end of the month to take a drive over to Ouray, with a stop at the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park on the way there. We've rented a four-wheel jeep for a day in Ouray, and plan to try some off-roading. That should be fun...and yes, I've picked the easy trails to start with! We've received our commitment from Express Employment for the sugarbeet harvest, so we will definitely have a new experience in October to write about! We are set for returning to Campbellsville to Amazon as well, so I have a feeling we'll be quite ready to relax in Florida after Christmas :-). Although we do have plans to "vacation" at Fort Wilderness with family at the end of January, and we are really looking forward to that...who doesn't have a great time at Disney, especially with family?