Wednesday, August 15, 2007

8/10//07 A Day from Hell

Its still in the 100's here and the forecast doesn't show us getting out of triple digits anytime soon.

We have two rather large groups staying with us and they are as different as night and day. The first group, the Gateway Winnies, a group of retired Winnebago owners, have come to spend the weekend as one of their monthly camping trips. In addition to camping together these retirees are scheduled for a float down the Meramec and then Saturday evening a catered dinner for them will be held in the campground clubhouse from our own Cricket Cafe. For the most part getting them all checked in went well. I say for the most part because there was a slight problem and at the last minute we had to move a couple of them from their assigned campsites to others. It seems the ones who waited to come in on Friday all came in pretty much one after the other in addition to those campers who were coming in for the weekend that weren't affiliated with this group. Well, we have temps in the 100's (still!) and as they all turned on their air conditioners it was quite a strain on the electric system. It seems everyone in this group had a voltage meter which I guess in the long run was a good thing. It wasn't long before they were coming to the office to let us know that they were only drawing 102 volts instead of the minimum 108 that they should have. In their position we too would have been in the office I guess but when they come as a group its rather overwhelming because there wasn't anything we could do other than move them to other sites which feed off of different circuits (?). (I'm not an electrician so I'm not sure if I'm using the right terminology here) This means they aren't all camping "together" but hey, its small campground how far away could they really be? Once they all had A/C the grumbling seemed to stop as they were cool Happy Campers.

The other group we have is the Pritchards. Ah, the Pritchards. This is one group we won't soon forget. They rented four cabins and a cottage for their stay. They have five in each cabin that sleeps four and a tent set up on each site to house the overflow. There is 30-some in this group and they are here to PARTY in this "family" campground. I just knew there was going to be trouble and they didn't disappoint me.
This group is for the most part family, from Illinois, with boyfriends/girlfriends and a couple of cousins thrown in for good measure. For whatever reason the younger guys (older teens/younger 20-somethings) in this group decided to give themselves mohawks just before they came here. Now I'm not a fan of this particular hairstyle but it was all I could do not to laugh out loud at some of them. Have you ever seen a mohawk that was off center? Trust me, you would have laughed too.

The office/store was kept busy all afternoon and early evening. Bags of ice were flying out the door as fast as I could fill them it seemed.

On top of all this, this as Kampertainment weekend! Friday and Saturday nights we have entertainment in the cafe. Tonite it was singer, Joe Taylor. I wish I could tell you if he was good or not but I can't because as soon as the clock struck seven I was outta there!

Around midnight the trouble started. It seems as though the drinking got out of hand with the younger Pritchards and the foul language started. Now they had been warned repeatedly that the ten o'clock quiet time was strictly enforced but I guess they didn't think this rule applied to them. One young man, who we thought was about 20, really got out of hand as he was just plain drunk. Dan and Barb had had enough and called the sheriff. It was soon found out that this fella was a boyfriend to one of the Pritchard daughters and was only 16 years old! The police took him away to juvenile hall and his parents were called to come get him, from several hours away in Illinois! I bet that went over well.

After this incident things quieted down for the night. What will tomorrow bring?

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