First things first. Happy Birthday Gail! Yep, girlfriend, its that time of year again. That time when we have to remember all over again how old YOUNG we are. I was just getting used to saying 56 and now I have to get used to 57. Of course you’ll be used to it much faster than me because you ARE 57 as of today and I’m STILL 56. And I’ll still be 56 tomorrow and here you’ll be able to say YOUR next birthday you’ll be 58. Not ME, my next birthday I’ll be 57. Oh I just love the two day difference in our birthdays. And I really love it that YOURS is the 24th and mine is the 26th and its not the other way around. Hope you have a wonderful day my friend!
I stepped outside at 7:45 this morning, clipboard and pen in hand, and a wall of stifling HOT air hit me like a wall. Oh, I am so glad I put those reservation cards out last night. I can’t imagine having to do that in this heat with this already blazing sun. I did two rows of looking to see who vacated their campsites and decided right then and there that there was no way I was going to do my normal walk of the campground streets and went for the keys to the buggy.
I wasn’t too surprised to find that of the 54 campers that were leaving today that half of them were already gone and half of those remaining were already tearing down camp and preparing to hit the road. One of my co-workers told me that she heard the campers pulling out at six this morning. Can’t say I blame them.
As soon as I saw that Ed and Audrey’s site that they were moving to was empty I went to their place to say hello and to let them know they could move at any time. This was at ten and I woke them up. Hey I didn’t know they sat at the water’s edge till three!
Usually we don’t let arriving campers in until noon. Not so today, if their site was open we let them in instead of sending them down to 3 R’s Road to wait until the proper time. Its just too hot to do that to anybody. Usually, campers start arriving as early as ten o’clock, not today, it seems everyone made note that the check time was one and abided by it. The one day they COULD have gotten in early, go figure.
By eleven most were gone and I just had a few stragglers. I had four that were just moving to other sites and all of their moves depended on one camper that was leaving the campground. Follow along now….Site # 330 was leaving for good. Site 217 was moving to 330. Site 305 was moving to 217. Site 294 was moving to 305 and site 286 was moving to 294. Got that? All the moves within the park were packed up and ready to move. All except site # 330. At eleven o’clock they hadn’t even started to pack up. the awning was still out, the bikes weren’t loaded to the bike rack, the baby pool still had water in it, towels were still on the makeshift line and there was no signs of life to be seen. I went to the check-in booth to get a Friendly Reminder paper that gently reminded campers that check out time was at noon. However, by the time I got back to their site prep activity had started. S-L-O-W-L-Y. Now all the other campers don’t know that the site they are moving to are waiting for their site to move, I have feeling they think they are just hanging around for whatever reason although I can’t imagine anyone doing that in this heat. As I ride the streets of the campground I can see them walking to their future site to see if they were open yet. It had to be aggravating I’m sure. Finally, at 11:50 the campers who are leaving for good….left! And the moves started. At noon I was satisfied that all sites were empty and I declared my day DONE!
Meanwhile, Bob was cutting grass weeds in sites that had been occupied for the last two weeks, trying to get them cut before the next campers came in. He came home soaking wet.
Our day was done, Ed and Audrey moved their rig and got set up on their site and around one, after everyone had a chance to shower and change clothes we met up at our place.
Audrey likes her beer. Plain and simple she likes her beer. When she walked in she was wearing these.
After making short order of catching up on the last two years since we’ve seen each other we decided that since none of us had eaten anything today we would go out for LINNER, a lunch/dinner combination since it was now 2:30 in the afternoon. Oh. My. Gosh! What a mistake that was! Traffic was unbelievable. Bob and I quickly remembered why we don’t go out on weekends. Out intent was to go to Rehoboth to Ruby Tuesday’s but as soon as we saw Outback we pulled in there. And not without problems I might add.
There was no way to access the parking lot from Route 1, the main corridor we were on. So we overshot the hidden entrance and had to find a place a turn around. Finally situated so that we could make a left turn, so that we could get to the entrance, we had to sit through three, count em’ three, green turning lights. These lights lasted long enough for two cars to get through safely. We finally got to the parking entrance which was….OUT BACK….as Bob pointed out.
There were very few lunch/dinner patrons at three o’clock in the afternoon so we were seated right away and cold beverages brought to us without delay. Let the feasting begin!
One of those large deep fried onions, a Tumbleweed, or a Bloomin’ Onion, I forget what Outback calls theirs, was the order for the day to start with. Mmmmm Mmmmm Good!
Dinner choices made, oven warmed bread delivered, onion already half eaten, waiting on salads and the steaks we all ordered we sat and talked and laughed and re-lived Yellowstone. What a great time we had.
A delicious dinner was had by all and it was time to go back out into the heat. I think it was even hotter!
Back into traffic we headed south towards the Inlet, anxious to get inside the park for the evening, no need to go out again. For anything! We parted ways for a bit and about an hour or so later Audrey and Ed returned to our place. We resumed where we left off, talking, laughing and making plans for a near future weekend. When we got “used to” the A/C we would go outside in the heat for a bit and sit under the awning. When we had enough of the heat, back inside we would go where the A/C felt oh so good.
Around eleven I looked over at Ed and saw this.
It wasn’t much later when we called it a night.
What an absolutely great time we had with these two. Just like back in Yellowstone.
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