After my last post with pictures, one of my readers asked me what the purpose of hex signs are on a barn. There is some disagreement as to whether there is some meaning to them or whether they are just decorations. If anyone else is curious, here is a link to a Wikipedia article on hex signs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hex_sign.
This morning I went in to the office to help however I could with the process of getting the store set up. I was putting cans of soda in the store refrigerator and my box knife for cutting the plastic cover off the case accidentally punctured one of the cans. I heard a ph-shhh and some of the pop spilled inside the box. I offered to pay for it, but Tim told me just to drink it. I told Kathy about it later which prompted her to show Mark and me what our employee discounts are in the store. They are very generous. So far I’m really liking this place!
This afternoon Tim showed Mark and me how he wants the bathrooms cleaned. There are male and female bathrooms near the office with four toilets, four showers, and five sinks in each. Cleaning supplies are kept there for those sets of bathrooms. Then he showed us where the cleaning supplies are for the back bathrooms, which are more spacious and very nice. They are closer to where we’re staying so if, for some reason, we chose to take showers there, it would be kind of a luxury after showering in the RV for so long!
After cleaning the restrooms Tim showed us where the outhouse is and where the supplies are for it. When I had first heard that part of our job would be cleaning an outhouse, I was envisioning either one of those old fashioned kinds with a half moon in the door or a Port-a-potty. This is neither. It’s airy and reasonably large and there is a male and female side. There’s no running water in the outhouse, but for cleaning purposes there is a faucet with a hose we can hook up.
Mark cleaned bathrooms in Alaska last summer and after our training today he was very impressed with how much better this set-up is from the standpoint of us cleaners. They have everything conveniently placed near where we need to use it. The equipment is ingenious! They have floor fans that are built to point down to dry the floor after we’ve mopped. There’s a place where automated chemical dilution happens as you’re filling a spray bottle. They use a sprayer kind of like what you’d use for killing weeds, but this is for power-cleaning the showers. We’ve never worked in such an impressive, modern place before. Or rather, I should say that from the camper’s perspective the campground is rustic and comfortable, but from the employee’s perspective the owners have thought of everything to make our jobs easier.
Another reader asked me to send pictures of our campground. I’ll try to get some tomorrow, but for now here is a map of the campground:
Wagon Trail Campground map
If you can’t enlarge this map, let me point a few things out to you. Under the gray recreation field (with the symbol of someone playing volleyball) close to the road is a tiny black square. That’s the outhouse. You can see three larger black squares above the playground area (with the symbols of children playing). Those are the store/office, the game room and adult lounge, and the front bathrooms and laundry room. Toward the upward right you see a road leading to a sort of gray rectangular area. That’s where we live along with some of the other Workampers. Not far from where we live (near the dotted trail line) is another black rectangle. That’s the back bathrooms.
This place has yurts, cabins, and even a rental RV. There are tent sites as well as RV sites. All the sites are spacious and more private than it looks on this map. Some of them are downright secluded!
One final comment I got from my mom is that it sounds like we’re working hard. The last two days we’ve been getting rid of a winter’s worth of accumulated dust and dirt. Tomorrow we barely have anything to do, especially since two of our three reservations for this weekend canceled due to rain in the forecast.
Keep those comments and questions coming!