We worked 11 - 6 today, and we were quite busy in the morning, but Sunday is the day most people leave, so after around 2:30, the snack bar was dead. We did some cleaning and some sitting around, and then it started raining. Again. We should have closed up as soon as it started raining–I think we only had two customers after that. Since we were open six of seven days this week, this was our best week so far. We sold nearly $2000 worth of pizza and drinks. Not bad considering that most people who go camping bring way too much food with them.

Once we got home, we fixed some dinner(I had the leftover stew and Kevin fixed a frozen dinner), then the cat and I sat outside for awhile. Then he wanted to go for a walk, so we wandered around the campground a bit. We were standing near a tree when I heard a “cheep” and a thud. I shined the flashlight on the thing that fell from the tree and I was shocked to see that it was a bird with a small snake coiling around it. That sort of freaked me out–seeing a snake fall out of the tree we were standing under, so I picked the cat up and we went back to the RV. I told Kevin what happened and he just asked why I didn’t have the camera with me to take a picture. I decided it was a small snake and not too scary on the ground, so I grabbed the camera and went back out to snap some pictures. It was dark, so the pictures aren’t that great–I had to find the snake with the flashlight, focus the camera, move the flashlight out of the shot, then take the picture without moving the camera. Good thing I took a bunch of pictures, because most of them were blurry. There is one distance shot of the snake still coiled around the bird, and a close-up of the snake with a lump in its throat…

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The Snack bar is open from 11am to 8pm on Saturday, so it is our longest day of the week. I had worked on Monday for Sue so I could train Erika to make pizzas and I was going to leave early on Saturday. But we were quite busy during the first half of the day, so I decided to just stay and work. I did not want to leave Kevin alone with Sue if they were going to be busy, because she can barely do the job. So all three of us worked until 8:00. And of course it was slow. We got the majority of our business before 5:00. But I am sure if I had left it would have been busy and would not have gone well. We decided to make ourselves a pizza for dinner tonight. We have to pay full price, just like everyone else, so when we make our own, we add a few extra toppings to make it just how we like it.

We only have three work shirts apiece, so we have to do a load of laundry every three days, and today was one of them. So even though we did not get off work until 9:00, then ate dinner, I still had to start a load of laundry. It did not get done until after 11, and even then the shirts were still damp. I hung them up to let them dry overnight. I think that if we are required to wear a uniform and we work five days a week, we should get five shirts, but we only get three. We do get free laundry in the laundry room, but I only use that when there are a bunch of towels and sheets–about every two weeks or so…

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The weather was nicer today, but it was very humid due to the rain yesterday. We did not work until 2pm, so we had a nice, leisurely morning. The owners are in the park since yesterday, so they are trying to get us the rest of the equipment we need to sell food other than pizza. We got another freezer that we barely have the room for, a small safe to store the register money overnight, and he has also ordered us some more tables. The food has already been ordered from Sysco, so hopefully the tables to put the fryer on will be here by the time the food arrives on Tuesday. So by Wednesday, we are supposed to be selling the pizzas, plus french fries, onion rings, cheese sticks, chicken tenders and wings, and maybe a few other things. I would like to do a few salads and maybe some cookies or other sweets, but that will come later…

For dinner tonight, I threw some Costco stew meat, along with a bottle of dark beer, some onion, carrot, potato, and seasonings into the crock pot and let it cook while we were at work. When we got home, I was very surprised to see that the meat was fall-apart tender, but the potatoes were barely cooked. I actually thought they might turn to mush, cooking for eight hours, but I had to fish them out and microwave them for a few minutes to make them soft enough to eat. I think it could be due to the lack of liquid in the pot, but I thought the steam alone would be enough to cook them in eight hours. Anyway, we made some minute rice and had that with the stew for dinner. Then the cat really wanted out, but he doesn’t really like the number of people that show up here on the weekends, so he really didn’t want to walk. We just sat in our little yard for awhile, but I did make him walk a little bit.

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Today is Thursday and we are back to work. The day started out nice, but then it got very dark and windy. Then the thunder and lightning and the rains. It never seems to just sprinkle here–the rains are torrential. And they usually don’t last very long, but today the rain just sort of settled in and the winds died down. When there is lightening in the area, they have to close down the pool for safety. Since the snack bar is very close to the pool, when the pool is empty, we sell no pizza. So we sat around for a couple of hours waiting for customers. A few came, but the day was not that great.

After work, we were too hungry to cook, so we had sandwiches and chips for dinner, then sat outside with the cat for a few hours. There are so many bugs here, I can barely stand it. Now, there seem to have hatched some flying beetle-like things, and they are all over in the grassy areas. And they don’t just mind their own business–they seem to want to attack me. I could hardly stand to be outside. Hopefully they don’t stay around too long!!!

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So we knew that we were going to go do some shopping today, but we weren’t sure where. We both said we needed hair cuts, so we first went to Great Clips. Then, since we didn’t have any breakfast, it was lunch time. We have been in Texas for nearly two months, and we still hadn’t tried Texas BBQ. So that is what we had today. We went to Spring Creek BBQ in Cypress. We had no idea what to expect when we walked in. They serve cafeteria style–you pick your meat, then they have a buffet line for the sides. We both had the beef brisket (since they didn’t have pork), then we picked some sides. They had mac and cheese, corn, cole slaw, two kinds of beans, potato salad and hot bread. You can basically have all-you-can-eat of the sides, but we got so much meat that I just got some corn and cole slaw and bread. Kevin just got corn and bread–I guess he could have gotten fries or potato, but we did not know that when we were there. I found that on the website after we got back home. Anyway, we got seated and started eating. We both had missed the pan of hot BBQ sauce near the sides, so we were looking around for sauce. I remembered that I had seen something that could have been sauce, so I went and got some. Once we poured on the sauce, we both really liked the meat. The cole slaw was fresh and good, but the corn was watery and icky. They kept coming around with hot bread, so we both got plenty to eat.

After lunch, we went to Sam’s Club. We didn’t really need a lot, but Kevin likes their cinnamon rolls and precooked bacon. We also got some more drinking water, some cat food, and a few other things. Then we went to Randalls grocery store. They are owned by Safeway, so I can even use my Safeway card there. We got a few groceries, then went back home. We hit rain while we were out, and it had also rained at the park while we were gone. Of course we left our chairs out, so they were soaked. They were mostly dry by dark, so we covered them just in case it rains again tonight. No dinner tonight–we were both too full from lunch. We each fixed a snack and that was it.

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Today I worked, but Kevin was off. The owners are trying to get the snack shack open seven days a week, so they wanted us to train someone else to work there. We have had one person come over and give us breaks on Saturday, our long day, and sometimes she stays and helps out Saturday night. She is a nice lady, but she has trouble with the basics of pizza making, so we were a bit nervous leaving her in charge of the snack shack, even for the slow days. Plus, three people are not quite enough to be open seven days, when Kevin and I take the same two days off each week. So we really needed at least one more person to work the two days a week that we will be off. The manager decided to schedule someone from housekeeping. She said she had plenty of restaurant experience, and she did pick up the pizza making very easily. It was Monday, so we only had a few orders, but everything she did make was made correctly, so that was good. Then the manager came over and told us that since they are short on staff, the owners said they could hold off on being open seven days for awhile. So that means that Kevin and I will work Wednesday-Sunday, and we really won’t need the extra help. But I guess it is still good for them to have someone else who can work at the snack shack–just in case Kevin and/or I need to be off longer than two days.

While I was working, Kevin came over twice and said he was going to Camping World to get a few things that we needed. But he never made it. He got busy talking to Judy and Kathy, the pair of work camping women, and never left the campground. He was still chatting with them when I got off work, so I got the cat and went over there, but I was really hungry, so we didn’t stay.

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So I took all of these pictures of the animals we have here, and Kevin put them up on the website, so I guess I have to write something about the pictures I took. There is a “petting zoo” here. But no one actually gets to go in and pet the animals. There is a vending machine that has some sort of food, and the kids can put their hand in these little square holes in the fence and feed the animals. Hardly any petting. And if you just stick your hand in the holes to pet the animals and you have no food in your hands, the animals just walk away. They want fed. Not petted. Not very fun. But I still took a bunch of pictures of the animals. The cat and I walk over to look at them a couple of times a week, although I usually have to carry the cat over to the pen. He doesn’t really like to be so close to animals that big, although he is curious about them. He watches them for a short time, then heads back to the coach…

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We went to the Blue Bell Creamery in Brenham, Texas–about 20 miles west of where we are staying. The tour was pretty basic, and they do not allow cameras on the tour. It started out with a short film about the creamery’s history, then we went through a long hallway to a viewing room where we could see the ice cream being made and packaged. They had about five flavor lines in the first room, and three more flavors plus ice cream sandwich making in the second room we saw. There is one more production room at this location that we did not see, plus they have another factory close by. The guide said they produce their frozen novelties there. At the end of the tour we got to sample some of the ice cream at the little scoop shop in the store. We paid $3.00 for the tour and a big dish of ice cream. I had lemon. Kevin had rocky road. We both liked it.

After that, we went looking for a place to get a quick and inexpensive haircut, but there was no place like Supercuts or Great Clips, so no haircuts today. We did find a dollar store, so we wandered in there for awhile, then went to lunch. The first place we stopped at was a country style buffet. It was 2:00, so they were not very busy. We went in and looked at the menu board and decided not to stay. It looked a lot nicer from outside, plus there was really nothing on the menu that sounded good to either of us. We then went to Whataburger. We have seen these all over Texas and decided to try it out. Things were a little disorganized, but we went ahead and ordered. While we were waiting, someone from another table went up to the counter to get some ketchup, and he was told they were out. We were like “what?” “how can they be out of ketchup” I guess their delivery truck had not arrived and they were running out of a lot of things. We were not even sure that we wanted burgers and fries with no ketchup. Kevin did get some extra mustard so his burger would not be dry, and I had bacon and lettuce on mine, so that kept mine from being dry–any more mustard would have been too much mustard for me. It was actually quite good, considering we both usually use a lot of ketchup on our burgers. And the fries were very fresh, so even they were not so bad without ketchup…

Anyway, after lunch we did our grocery shopping. We first went to Super Wal-Mart because their prices are very good on some things that we buy a lot of (like sandwich meat and breakfast sausage), and Kevin really likes the cookies they have in their bakery. Then we went to HEB. The one in Brenham is much smaller and older that the wonderful store they have in Cypress, but we didn’t have any trouble spending our weekly grocery allowance. Then we went home and unpacked the groceries. We thought we would make steaks for dinner, but we decided we were still full from lunch, so we each fixed a snack. We are off again tomorrow, but I don’t think we will be doing much. Probably some housework and laundry. Yippee!!

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I have not posted anything in nearly two weeks, so I am going to try to catch everyone up in this one post. We were off on Wednesday and Thursday (the 4th and 5th), and we did the usual. Some laundry, some house work. We had to return our broken phone, so we had to find a FedEx drop off. While we were out, we went to a farmer’s market and I bought some pickling cucumbers and some freshly shelled beans. The next day, since we had three days off this week and nothing important that needed doing, I made some refrigerator pickles with the cucumbers I had bought, I baked two loaves of bread (they came out ok, but a little too dense–maybe from the humidity. I don’t know.), and I cooked the beans.

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday we worked, all in the snack shack. We had a great weekend, selling 118 pizzas in three days. We would have sold more, but there was a mixup with our Sunday schedule and we closed up three hours earlier than we had originally planned (long story–the two managers just never seem to be on the same page, and we followed our printed work schedule (from one manager), not what we had discussed (with the other manager)). Anyway, aside from that, we were really happy with how the weekend went.

Monday was our agreed upon one day of housekeeping, and we cleaned a whopping eight cabins. They were all the one bedroom ones that sleep eight(yogi cabins), and we just kind of got in the groove. It was still a long, hot day, but since we knew we were only doing housekeeping one day this week, it seemed less tiring.

Tuesday and Wednesday we were off. On Tuesday, we went into Cypress to do some shopping. We went to Costco, and while we were there, the rains came, the power went out, and the thunder and lightning came. It was crazy. Luckily for us, Costco has a generator system for when the power goes out, so we were still able to check out. We were both drenched by the time we got to the car and got everything loaded, but just as quickly as the rain started, it stopped, and when we got to Wal-Mart to do the rest of our shopping, it was clearing up. Tuesday evening, we were invited to a cookout by another work camping couple. They are two older ladies that have been traveling together for some time now. About twelve of us were there, and we had hot dogs, some salads, and some desserts. It was a nice evening, except for the flies. They were everywhere, driving everyone crazy the whole evening.

Thursday: snack shack open again. We worked Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday all in the snack shack. We sold around 125 pizzas in four days–not quite as good as our 118 in three days, but I guess since it was Father’s day weekend, people planned on cooking out. We just never really know what to expect. In the three weekends we have been open, every day has been different from the last. Maybe after a few more weeks of tracking sales, we can predict what a day might be like, but since the customers are different every single weekend, we may never be able to predict sales.

Well, that is a brief summary of what we have been doing for the last two weeks. We will try to be good and post more regularly again…

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Just a small video of the water park here. To view a higher quality version of the video Click Here and then under the video click on the “watch in high quality” link.

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