TVC Office - Day # 15 - The opposite

The campground was at its max capacity as we walked to work Saturday morning around 9:20 am, and it seems that we pretty much mirrored what was happening in the rest of SLT*.  Saturday reminded me a lot of Memorial Day weekend, and 4th of July weekend......the cell towers in SLT* become overwhelmed with the increased population, cell phones cease functioning, and our campground WiFi's inability to keep up with the demand within TVC** is continuous fodder for discussion.  The office is packed with people registering, presenting problems ("someone is in my site", the biggest problem, "I can't get my RV into my site", 2nd biggest problem), and buying things ("do you have this shirt in XXXXL?").  Every time someone approached the counter with a "Reserve America" reservation we cringed.  Ironically, most of those presenting "Reserve America" reservations tend to be from Europe, and in some cases, as you can imagine, there is a language barrier, which makes trying to explain why their reservation is messed up even more difficult.  It's obvious to all of us that they (RA***) do not know enough about our park to make reservations......we hear the phrase "they guaranteed" this, or that would be in our site.......often.  Guaranteeing someone will have a fire pit at TVC** when fewer than 30% of the sites do just makes our lives very difficult as we try to explain that is not true, and that there are absolutely no more portable fire places available for their stay.  Sometimes the disappointed customer will stand there after you have repeated for the umpteenth time "your site does not have a fire pit, and there are none available" staring at you as if that will make one magically appear out of the ether.   Don't get me wrong,  totally get their disappointment.....I have stood on the other side of the counter doing the same thing in years past.  Now I carry my own portable fireplace with me wherever I travel.  To me, and to many who camp a fire is an integral part of the camping experience, so I get their unhappiness.

It took me until almost 3 pm to complete my site check rounds as I was being called away, necessarily, continually to help solve the aforementioned problems ("someone is in my site", "I can't get my RV in my site").  The "someone is in my site" involves one of two things, usually....1) someone has not checked out yet who should have, or 2) someone is in the wrong site.  Added to the mix was the fact the battery in my golf cart did not seem to be holding a charge for very long, which made moving from one problem to the other even more difficult.

Fortunately my fellow office clerks and I are "battle hardened" and we performed our difficult task with grace, and were able to solve most of the problems aside from the non-existent fire pits.  

I had received a message from a long time very good friend, Claude, that he would be stopping by overnight to visit us on his way to Oregon.  We haven't seen Claude in almost 30 months.  He said he was timing his arrival to coincide with the end of our shift at 6 pm, and sure enough I looked up from the terminal about 5:50 pm and there he was just pulling into the park.  We have known Claude since 1978 and he and I have gone on some epic long distance bike rides, and back pack trips over the years, and he shares our love of RVing....he owns a 1984 BlueBird Wanderlodge.

I found a place for him to park his truck and enclosed trailer for night, and then helped him move some of his stuff over to our site for the night.  He had brought a sleeping cot, and sleeping bag which we set up in our trailer, along with a change of clothes.  Since we have not yet gotten our VW back from the shop we all walked over to Raley's to buy some steaks, and other "fixin's" for dinner.   We ended up buying some ready made top sirloin "kababs" to BBQ, and Claude had brought some fresh corn, so after we got back I turned on the BBQ and began grilling the corn and the kabobs.  

While we were getting dinner ready our friend, Debby, came riding by on her newly outfitted "Burning Man" bicycle all lit up with LED lights.....very cool.

We had a great dinner, a fire (of course), a bit of wine, and a lot of great conversation until around 10:30 when we all decided we had better hit the sack.....we have to work Sunday, and Claude still has 600 miles to his destination on Sunday.

Thanks for stopping by!

* SLT = South Lake Tahoe
**  TVC = Tahoe Valley Campground
*** RA = Reserve America