Strange Day

Yesterday was a very strange day.  First of all, it rained ALL day long and the high temperature was only 63 degrees.

Around mid-morning there was a knock on our door.  It was the County Sheriff asking if we had seen this guy that has been camped in the park for a few weeks.  We told him we hadn’t seen him that day, but that he came and went at odd hours. 

This guy is camped by himself in a pop-up that has more duct tape than canvas.  The sheriff came back a little later and gave us his card.  He asked if we would call him if we saw the guy.  It appears the guy does home repairs and was paid to put a roof on a house.  He took off the old roof, but didn’t put on the new one.  And it rained hard all day yesterday.  Get the picture.

A little later there was another knock.  This time it was a guy who has been camping here all week.  He said someone went through his car Monday night.  Some tool boxes were taken, but the guy said he found them scattered in the park.  Nothing seemed to be missing.  Strange!

This park has been very quiet since we have been here.  I don’t think it is an unsafe place.  I do think you get a different type of customer in a county park than in a private campground.  Of course, we’ve seen some pretty nasty private campgrounds with ancient permanent units looking like they could fall apart at any moment.  As the saying goes, “it takes all kinds”.

I must tell you my good news about DirecTV.  I got a call from Emily at DirecTV a few days ago.   After my remarks to the survey company, Emily called to see if she could help me resolve the problems I was having.  She fixed everything!  She was able to credit the cancellation charges back to our credit card instead of making us wait for a check.  She cancelled the extra receiver we were forced to pay for and gave us a credit for what we had already paid on it.  She was a miracle worker.  All the stuff everyone else told me was impossible because “the system” wouldn’t allow it, she fixed in 10 minutes.  I think the moral of the story is don’t give up :)   Unfortunately, I think there are many people who do give up or don’t even notice the extra charges.  That’s one way a company can make a profit :(  If I didn’t like my TIVO and satellite TV so much, I would have cancelled a long time ago!

Today was laundry day.  I have come across some interesting characters in my laundromat visits.  Most of the customers seem very nice, but a few times there have been some unsavory looking types.  Maybe it’s my sheltered small town life coming through.  Today there were two real idiots in there.  It was a man and a woman.  They had some type of mattress pad that had shredded in the washer.  They put it in the dryer and there were pieces of the thing all over the floor.  They spoke real loud.  I’m sure they were trying to impress everyone with their extensive vocabulary of swear words.  Grow up!

Today is a beautiful day.  This is more like it.  I hope all of you are enjoying the day as much as we are!

Golf Today – Oh My!

Kevin and I went golfing today.  I need practice!!!  I’ve never been a very good player, but I used to get out several times a year and would do OK.  The last time I played with any regularity was in 2007.  In 2008 I think I went 2 or 3 times, and I didn’t go at all in 2009.  Boy, did it show :)

There is a very nice course near us.  They have a Monday special of 9 holes with a cart for $10 a person.  Kevin asked me to play with him on Mondays.  I said I would give it a try.  On the first hole, I hit a poor shot off the tee and then proceeded to miss the ball my next 2 attempts in the fairway.  I must admit I shed a few tears and was ready to sell the clubs.  I get really nervous when there are people behind us. 

We let the group behind us play through and they were almost  as bad as I was.  I felt better and kept trying.  I actually hit some decent shots.  I had good luck with Kevin’s oversized driver.  I have a hybrid 5 wood, and I hit that club well in the fairway.  We didn’t keep score, but I know I got better as we went along.  I’ll try again next week :)

We had a nice weekend.  Some of our friends came and camped for the weekend.  The weather Saturday was great until late afternoon.  Then, the torrential rains started, and it rained a good part of the night.  We were busy all day Saturday with canoe and kayak rentals.

Yesterday I drove into town to see my mother and pick up our mail from our son’s house.  It’s an hour drive each way, but I listen to audio books.  Books make the drive so much more enjoyable.

Right after I got back, we had a thundershower.  Here’s the beautiful rainbow we saw right behind our camper after the rain ended.

I saw this family of geese on the river yesterday.  Aren’t they cute!

Beautiful Week

We had another beautiful week.  The weather was terrific.  It rained last night and this morning, and there is scattered rain predicted for the weekend.

This weekend is a special family weekend in the park.  All camping is $5 per night, canoe and kayak rentals are half-price, and it is free fishing weekend in Wisconsin so no licenses are required.  We are almost fully booked.  There are just a few tent sites left.  Hopefully, the weather will cooperate!

I took these pictures on our walk a few days ago.  I’m still experimenting with my camera.  I don’t know what kind of flowers these were, but they were pretty and the bees were loving them :)

I downloaded Windows LiveWriter and am writing my first post using the program.  So far, I’m liking it!

We ran some errands this week.  We made a trip to Camping World for some chemicals, and found a branch of our bank to deposit some refund checks from our car and homeowners insurance.

I also spent another 30 minutes on the phone with DirecTV.  After 45 minutes last week getting our accounts merged, I discovered that they didn’t merge the accounts and charged us the $120 cancellation fee on our home account, and they charged it to our credit card.  They have now credited the money back to our account, but they “can’t” issue a credit to our credit card.  They need to issue a refund check which will take 4-6 weeks.   What a racket.  I’m thinking I may actually have this straightened out by the end of the year :)  I won’t give up, though!

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Wonderful Weekend

We had a wonderful weekend. Even though the campground was completely full, there were no problems. Everyone behaved and had a good time. The weather was incredible. It was actually hot, but I'm not complaining. Highs were in the upper 80s and it was humid. Our site does not have any shade so we had to run the air.

Yesterday we were very busy with canoe rentals. The park has 4 canoes and 4 kayaks to rent. Prices are $5 per hour, $15 for a half day, or $25 for a full day. On Saturday 2 families rented all 4 kayaks for both Saturday and Sunday. That was $200; they didn't bat an eye. They had several kids between them and they kept the kayaks at their sites right on the river for both days. I think they had a great time using the kayaks.

Two of the canoes were rented for the day yesterday morning. The other 2 canoes came and went all day with hourly rentals. It worked out well, but it seemed people only came when we were trying to eat. It must have been Murphy's Law :)

We had some friends camping in the park for the weekend. We played games, ate, sat around the campfire, ate, chatted, ate (you get the picture)! Oh yeah, and we may have had a few cocktails :)

Thanks for your comments regarding DirecTV. I didn't want to appear negative, but I try to give details about our experiences. Hopefully, it may help others in their fulltime plans.

We don't have the network feed for the east and west coasts. According to the installer, we can call every time we move, give them our new zip code, and they are supposed to give us the local feed for that area. We were assured there was no limit on this, and we would not be charged. We'll see how that goes.

Kevin put a switch on the system so we can switch between DirecTV and the antenna if we want to. If DirecTV gives us a hard time, we'll just use the antenna for local channels. Of course, then we won't be able to tape them on the DVR. We'll see how it goes this winter.

I was finally able to get a picture of a hummingbird at my feeder. They sure move fast :) Thanks to Judy for letting me know it is a ruby throated hummingbird coming to my feeder. It wasn't his neck that was green, but his back. Oops! His neck is sort of orange.

Continued Frustrations with DirecTV

I spent another hour on the phone this week trying to straighten out our DirecTV account.

When I originally called in early May to change our service from our house to the RV, I was told it was not possible and that we needed to be in one location at all times with a permanently mounted satellite. After going round and round with the guy, we finally agreed the best course was to suspend our account until we could find someone who knew what they were doing.

After several unsuccessful attempts, Kevin found a local DirecTV installer who was able to get us exactly what we needed. She shipped the satellite, the tripod, a DVR and a regular receiver for our two TVs. An installer came to our RV and hooked it all up. Finally, success. Now the only problem was we had two DirecTV accounts. I still needed to deal with the suspended account.

This is where the hour long phone call came into play. I thought I would go crazy :) By the end of the call, I had been transferred to three different people. The first person told me the accounts had to be merged and transferred me to a "merge specialist". OK, that sounded reasonable.

After holding for some time, the merge specialist came on the line. He went ahead and merged the accounts. After he was done, he told me one of our old receivers had to be transferred to the merged account. I explained our situation AGAIN; that we already had two receivers and didn't need a third one and how the original person I spoke to could have avoided all this mess if he only knew what he was talking about. Well, after going round and round, I was told an old receiver had to be transferred. The "system" would not allow anything else. No overrides were possible. I asked for a supervisor. He would not transfer me to a supervisor!! By now I was growing weak from hunger and exhaustion. I agreed to the receiver transfer figuring I'll just call a few days later and cancel the extra receiver. You guessed it, I now had to be transferred to an "activation specialist".

More time on hold. I asked the activation person if she could get around the "system" since I didn't need the receiver she was transferring. She told me to call a week later and cancel it. That's what I had already figured I would do. I have NEVER encountered such unbelievably screwed up customer service!!

The following day I received a call from a survey company asking about my DirecTV customer service call. You can imagine the earfull she got. She assured me someone from DirecTV would be calling me and solving this entire mess. That was on Wednesday; still no call from the magic person who can fix things. Go figure!

My blood pressure is now back to normal. Actually, the rest of the week was great. We have had the most beautiful weather the last several days. This has been very unusual for May in Wisconsin. Average high temps are 72 degrees. It has been in the 80s for an entire week. The Memorial Day weekend forecast is fantastic.

The campground sites are all reserved. I'm sure we will be quite busy this weekend.

I also want to report that I have had a visitor to my hummingbird feeder. I'm so excited! I'm trying to get a picture, but it never stays long enough. I don't know exactly what kind it is, but is has a green neck :)

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Fantastic Weekend

We had an absolutely fantastic weekend. There were 20 units here from the camping club we belong to. We were able to spend time with them in between our host duties. Since most of the sites were occupied by our club, we didn't have many people needing help. Here's some of the group having breakfast Sunday morning. Did I mention this group likes to eat? :)

Saturday morning started out a bit foggy and cool. Once the sun came out it was a beautiful day with highs around 80 degrees. Yesterday the heat and humidity really set in. High of 89 degrees with a dewpoint of 69 percent. Our bodies are still in winter mode, so it was a bit much to cope with. I'm not complaining; I REALLY don't like winter. The rest of the week is supposed to stay hot and humid. Next weekend is supposed to cool off into the high 70's. That would make for an excellent Memorial Day weekend.

I did rent a canoe Saturday morning to a younger couple. As soon as she got in, the canoe tipped over and she was soaked, sweatshirt and all. The water is still cold. Ouch! I also rented a canoe for half the day to a grandfather and his 10 year old grandson. The grandson wanted to fish. They were back in 2 hours. I guess 10 years old don't have much of an attention span especially when the fish aren't biting :)

Yesterday we rented a canoe to a young man with some children. When they came back, the guy spent 20 minutes telling me his life story. I think I'm a pretty friendly person, but I really don't need to know everyone's life story. Some people just love to talk!

Kevin had a surprise for me this morning. He shaved off his mustache. When I met him 35 years ago, I convinced him to grow a mustache. He's had one ever since. The last few years it has been feeling more and more like a wire brush against my face. I've been asking him to shave it, but he didn't want to. Finally, he told me when we were fulltimers, he would do it. Well, he wouldn't consider us fulltimers until we had the check in hand from the house sale. That was Friday. When I reminded him of what he had said, he started waffling. I didn't push and this morning, surprise; no mustache! Guess what? I didn't notice. Oops! He looks great and no more wire brush :) He's rather picture shy, so no pictures. You'll have to take my word for it!

This afternoon, we're going to the library in town. They have free WiFi and I want to download an anti-virus program to the new laptop. Then I'll get back to trying to get it to work as a WiFi hotspot in our camper. Wish me luck. I know just enough about technology to make me dangerous :)

Dreams Do Come True

It has finally happened. Our house is officially sold and the money is in our account. I can't believe the dream has finally come true!!! There were times when I never thought we'd sell the house and start this next chapter in our lives. I can't tell you how happy we are!!!!

Reader Merikay has asked us to tell about our duties as camphosts. In order to become camphosts we signed an agreement stating we would be available 3 hours a day, 5 days a week and that we would also be available when we were in the campground.

Our main duties are selling firewood and renting canoes and kayaks. The canoes and kayaks are not in the water yet. Supposedly that will happen this weekend. We are expecting a heatwave with temperatures in the high 80s this weekend and next week. This is extremely unusual for Wisconsin this early in the year. I'm thinking those boats will come in handy.

We are co-hosts at the park. The other host's site is right next to the wood shed. She has been on vacation for the past 2 weeks so we have been selling the firewood. Once she is back, I think most people will be buying from her as she is right there. Things here are very laid back, so I'm not sure how it will work exactly. I was thinking of suggesting we have some assigned times for the firewood so we aren't always wondering if we should be up there.

Today Kevin spent about 1-1/2 hours doing some weedwacking. That's the first time they asked him to help with that, but he doesn't mind. That's about it. We pick up garbage when we take walks and answer questions people may have. Tough job, but someone's gotta do it :)

Here's the scoop on the dog bite. Last Saturday evening Kevin and I were taking a walk. We were in the middle of the road. As we passed a campsite, this big boxer dog came out from behind the truck and bit me in the butt! I never even saw it until it was charging at me. I was very startled. It was tied to the bumper of the truck, but the leash was long enough to reach the middle of the road.

I was stunned. I felt a sting and wasn't quite sure what had happened. The owners were yelling at the dog. They never said a word to us. We just kept going. I wasn't even sure what had happened. I felt my leg and didn't feel anything wet so I knew I wasn't bleeding. When we got back home, I looked in the mirror. There were 2 red bumps. It definitely nipped me, but didn't break the skin. Now I have 2 bruises where it got me.

I have been wondering if we did the right thing in not saying anything. We are so new here and didn't want to make waves. I'm not sure the dog's owners realized I got bit. I'm fine, but I keep thinking about the dog biting someone else. What if it had been a child?

In "hindsight" I think we should have reported it. I am not anti-dogs. We have had dogs in the past. I do have a problem with people not having control of their dogs. I sure hope no one else gets bit by that dog! Oh well, it's over.

Kevin likes to have me walk next to him closest to the side of the road for safety reasons. I told him from now on, I'm walking in the middle of the road as far from the side as possible. I figure I have a better chance with cars than I do with dogs :) Big dogs scare me, and I think they must sense it.

Hopefully, this weekend we won't have any dog bites or drunks stealing wood. Most of the reserved sites this weekend will be a camping club called the Milwaukee Jaybirds. We have been members of this club since 1981. This is the first time the club will be camping in our "backyard". It will be fun to see our club friends!