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!!

Files under Daily Life | Leave a Comment | No Comments »

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…

Files under Daily Life | Leave a Comment | No Comments »

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.

Files under Workamping | Leave a Comment | No Comments »

As I said in my last post, we were scheduled in housekeeping for Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. Well, Sunday came and we were basically the only ones scheduled to do cabin cleaning, but we had to turn around sixteen cabins this morning (people moving out and moving in on the same day), so both the managers, one of the assistant managers, an office/whatever lady, the groundskeepers/restroom cleaners, and Kevin and I all set out to clean cabins right at eleven o’clock — check out time. Kevin and I cleaned six of “hot” cabins plus two of the tiny cabins with no running water. It was a very long, hot day. As we were finishing up our last cabin, the managers came and thanked us for our hard work and told us the new housekeeper was starting on Monday, so we could take the day off if we wanted. We did.

On Monday, we went into the town of Tomball, which is about 20 miles North of us. It is way smaller than Cypress, which is about the same distance East of us, but they have everything we would need there, and less traffic and congestion as well. We went shopping, then went out to lunch at CiCi’s pizza buffet. Their deal is all day buffet for a reasonable price, and they will make any request that anyone has, no matter how much pizza they already have out. Pretty impressive customer service, and the pizza was ok, too. After lunch, we went back home and did nothing the rest of the day.

Tuesday, we were scheduled to clean cabins again, but the main housekeeping teams were working today, so we did one that was checked out early, then went looking for another job. The job we got assigned to was to put the number stickers with arrows and Yogi stickers on all of the new power pedestals in the newest area of the campground (photos). That took us to lunch, then we checked the older areas to make sure all of their stickers were correct. After that, we asked what we should do, but neither manager had anything specific, so we signed out two hours early. We won’t have very many hours this week, but we worked around 43 1/2 hours last week with the pizza training and all, so our checks should still be enough to pay all of the bills…

Files under Workamping | Leave a Comment | No Comments »