Not Such a Bad Weekend

 

Although we were really busy checking everyone in Friday evening, most of our campers were well behaved and surprisingly quiet. Almost everyone had boats so they spent a lot of their time on the water.

Only had a few issues with people putting up too many tents and parking too many vehicles at their sites, but we let the rangers deal with that.

We did have a group of rednecks in a beat up SUV come in Friday afternoon with no reservations, wanting a site until the 4th. No problem, we had several first come sites open. They dumped all their stuff on the picnic table and left an old guy sitting there all day. He never put up a tent and didn’t even have a chair to sit in. Finally about 9pm the group came back in a different vehicle (their other one broke down). While I was registering the site next to theirs, one of the guys came over to ask Jim if we had a radio they could use. Uh, no way, but Jim was nice enough to call the camp store and see if they happened to sell one. Luckily they don’t. They said they just wanted anything that would make some noise! The next morning they left the old guy again and went to Cape Girardeau to see if they could borrow a vehicle. Sometime in the early afternoon they came back, packed up all their stuff and left, after paying for 3 nights. It was a strange bunch, so we weren’t sorry to see them go. We then got the pleasure of cleaning up their fire pit, which they filled with trash, including a tent, pizza boxes, a couple dozen beer cans, and an entire untouched, melted sheet cake.

Here is another way to get AC into your tent. Guess they just patch the hole with the cardboard.

The only other incident we had was actually a problem with a group in the other campground. The hosts had spoken with them about some parking and scooter riding issues. At the change of shifts, the day ranger radioed the night ranger to tell him to keep an eye on them.

At that time, Jim and I were being the super helpful camp hosts and pumping up air mattresses for a young couple whose grandparents dropped them off for the weekend. The had no pump, so we took their air mattresses to the store to borrow a pump. We left our radio in the golf cart, and just as the rangers were talking, one of the scooter women pulled up beside our cart and heard the entire conversation. She was very mad when she walked into the store and was going on and on about how they had been harassed since they arrived.

Just coincidentally, the day ranger was walking into the store for a snack, so we warned her about what happened. She spent a long time trying to calm her down, and finally told her both she and the night ranger would be down to their site to discuss the issue. They must have spent an hour talking to them, way too much time spent over nothing. So we all need to be careful about keeping our radios turned down if there are people around. Jim’s solution was if they weren’t happy with the rules here, they should just pack up and go home. Such a diplomat!

The fireworks near Wappapello Dam took place on Saturday night. Lots of people went out on boats, and it was a pretty but hot evening. We ended up helping out with traffic control at the gate to the day use area, where the fireworks were semi visible.

This is the area by the “Party Tree” where all the boaters meet up and hang out. The little tree on a small island is behind the third boat from the left.

The boys aren’t crazy about the AC running all the time. They’ve been sleeping under the covers or looking for a nice comfy spot in the sun.

 

We have a leaky water spigot, so the squirrels take advantage of it to get a much needed drink. Beats having to walk all the way down to the lake!

Only three and a half weeks to go and Jim still has a couple RV projects to work on so it should go fast. He would be so much happier if he didn’t have to spend so much time scratching his bug bites!