Saturday, April 24 – First week at Lake George Escape

 

Wow! This has been a very interesting week.

Monday and Tuesday

Jesse worked at Schroon Valley remodeling the bath house.

Ginger started with team building for (GSI) Guest Services, Inc. Team is made up of the following 11 people:

Jim and Jan as our managers/directors

Jim primarily in charge of Reservations and Reception (R&R) which includes front desk, phone reservation, front gate and express check-in. Craig- as assistance manager; Joanne, Tina and Ginger as supervisors.

Jan in charge of Fun and Games and Retail, which includes Lodge store, Honey Bear store and Schroon Valley store.

David, Dotty and Bonnie are the supervisors with Don as inventory manager.

Kelli was also part of the team as theme coordinator for Fun & Games.There will also be Ron and Linda as fun and game supervisors who are not here yet.

We did all types of exercises to get to know each other better and to come up with a game plan for our team. I (Ginger) believe all of us walked out of there feeling really good about what we have agreed to do this summer and our co-workers.

Wednesday Jesse also worked at Schroon Valley putting the finishing touches on the bath house.

Thursday Jesse worked at LGE getting the rental trailers leveled and putting up the metal awnings. They also cleaned the outside of the rental trailers.

On Wednesday and Thursday Craig, Joanne, Tina and Ginger started rewriting the R&R manual and outlining how to train the associates that we would be working with.

Friday Jesse worked at Schroon Valley trimming trees, moving trailers and general cleaning of the park.

Friday morning Jim held a meeting with all 11 of us. He informed us that corporate “ELS” lowered the boom. They are not honoring their commitment to Jim and Jan because I budget cuts. Therefore they will not be compensated what they were promised. Because of this the structure will change.

Jan will still be in charge of retail and all remains the same for those team member in that department.

R&R-big changes; Jim and Craig will no longer be in that department. They both will go back to fun and games with Jim being in charge as in past years. So Joanne, Tina and I have to decide if we want to stay in our positions without Jim and Craig being our managers. They plan to hire an assistant manager for us to work under.

After all this was discussed we broke for lunch even though it was only around 10:45. We needed time to digest all this and talk with our spouses. We were asked to be back by 1:00pm with our decisions.

Jesse was working at Schroon today and Jim was also at Schroon. So home we went. Jesse and I talked about the pros and cons of the new structure and I decided that if Joanne and Tina wanted to stay so would I. They decided the to stay. So, I will do my best to honor my commitment.

After making our decisions the four of us Craig, Joanne, Tina and I continued to finish with the manual. Craig and Jim will be helping for a while to make the transition go smoothly.

That was our work week. As I stated very interesting week.

In the evenings on Monday and Tuesday we just stayed home and chilled for the evening. Wednesday Joanne, Jim, Jesse and I went into town at Lucky Star for dinner. On Thursday we stayed home and relaxed.

Friday Jim and Joanne came over for cocktails after work. We were all talking about the events of the day and decided to order pizza to share. It was a great way to end the week, spending time with friends.

You may find I will not be writing as often while working, but I will write when I can.

Here are some pictures taken on our way here and a couple of our site.

HUGS to all!!

 

Thursday April 22, - Alive and Well

Just to let you know we are alive and well and working our buns off. After a 7 1/2 month weekend it will take a bit to get our groove back in this working thing.

We have been extremely busy at work. Ginger and her team of supervisors have been rewriting the manual for reservations and reception, now known as R&R, along with team building and leadership training. Jesse has been working at both campgrounds trying to get everything ready for opening days.

Schroon Valley opens Mothers Day weekend May 7th and Lake George Escape's opening day is May 14th.

Other than work and TV we did manage to visit a couple of our favorite restaurants in the area. That pretty much covers the past few days.

Be safe

Saturday, April 17 – Paperwork, Haircut, and Relaxing and Shopping

Friday Jesse took off to LGE to drop off our paperwork and speak to his bosses, Randy and Jack, about starting time for Monday. I was getting dressed while he was gone.

After he returned I left to go and get my hair cut. I planned to go into Queensbury to the mall but it was raining and I just didn’t feel like it, so I stopped at the Grand Union in town for a few grocery items and went home.

I started some chicken on the stove to make taco soup.

We went out to dinner with Jim and Joanne. We had to wait for a table for about 40 minutes, but we didn’t mind. We ordered a drink and sat on the sofa’s and just got caught up on what we did over the winter.

It was so nice to spend time just relaxing with friends.

The wait was worth it the food was delicious. Jesse ordered blackened sword fish and I ordered grilled salmon. They were served with broccoli and mashed potatoes, cabbage and carrots. The mixture of those three items didn’t sound good, but our waitress assured us it was good. It was outstanding…very tasty!

After dinner we were home for the evening and it rained all night.

Today-Saturday

We got up and just hung out in the morning. Around noon we headed out to Queensbury.

Our first stop was the bank for money, then on to Panera's for a sandwich.

After our bellies were full we went to Walmart for supplies. I had a lot of non-food items to get so we split up.

I saw Rudy (co-worker) while heading over to the food section, then Dottie his wife showed up, they arrived yesterday. We stood in the front isle getting caught up then Jesse showed up. We stood a while longer before saying see ya.

Jesse and I finished our shopping then went home to put everything away.

Jesse worked outside getting the truck organized, getting out our chairs, and putting up lights. I’m really not sure what all he did he did until the rain stopped.

I was inside finishing up the soup and make chicken salad for lunches this week.

We stood outside and visited with Tina, Don and their grandson Vinny for a while before the cold sent us inside for warmth.

Jesse and I had our soup and just relaxed for the evening of HGTV.

Hugs to all!!!!!

Thursday, April 15 – Last Travel Day for a while

 

We we up early this morning about 5:45am. We got things ready and packed up to depart. As I showed you yesterday we were parked in such a way that we could not pull out of out site. We would have to back-out.

Jesse was ready and I went to the rear to spot him. The back up went well, I got into the truck and Jesse put it in drive and BAM! OMG!!! We heard this loud BAM!  Jesse says “That’s not good, the trailer fell on the truck”.

We both got out and found this.

I was thinking the hitch broke so I got the camera to take pictures for insurance reasons. Jesse thought I was doing it so I could blog them.

Well thankfully the hitch was okay, Jesse forgot to lock it in. Not sure why? It is not something I would have ever thought he would do, but I was very proud of him for keeping his cool. We lowered the lading gear and raised the trailer. Jesse says the are 3 words that caused this mishap…neg li gence!  He also thinks the damage was so minimal because he has so much junk in the truck that it kept the weight off the sides of the truck bed.

The trailer put  a small dent in the top of the tailgate and bent the end of the bed liner rail, and put a dent in the Blue Boy, but other than that no damage. We were very lucky.

We hitched back up and departed at 8am and traveled down the road to a small place for breakfast. Well this was my test for OCD and I did not pass. This place was very dirty, cluttered and old. I ordered water and it came in a plastic cup that I assumed was stained. I asked for a straw and still could not make myself drink it.

I ordered eggs, bacon (extra crispy) and potatoes. The flatware was clean. The bacon was limp, the eggs were okay and I ate one piece of toast. Jesse ordered the same except he got coffee served in a stained cup (I hope it was stained) that looked very dirty inside and out. He ate all of his and finished mine. This only cost $8.70 for the two of us, but I failed the test. I can live with that failure.

We continued on down some back roads, then on to I-81. We ran into a back-up for construction in Wilkes-Barre which held us up for about a hour.

We made it to Lake George at 2:45 traveling 319 miles today.

We said our hello’s to Tonya, Merilee, Jim, Craig, Bonnie and Tina before continuing down the road to Lake George Schroon Valley Resort, which will be our home for the next 5 months.

We got set-up and of course it stared to rain. Were exhausted by the time we finished at 6pm.

I heated the left over pizza and we just sat in our recliners before going to bed early. 

Wednesday, April 14 – Travel Day #2 to Lake George

 

We left the camp ground at 7:45 today. We drove only 301 miles and arrived at Whispering Pines Camping Estates at 3:00pm. We paid $17.50 for full hook-up 50 amps.

We ran into a lot of traffic on I-495 around Washington DC. I seemed very strange to travel in Maryland but not go home.

Whispering Pines is in northeastern Pennsylvania. It is a very cute place that doesn’t have level sites. You can tell by how we are parked.

You pull your rig in then unhook the truck and drive through the grass to pull around.

After we were set up and got showers we decided to drive into Benson to have pizza. It was a very cute little town.

Scenic overlook

  

The pizza was very good. We got a large and only ate 1/2 so now we have leftovers.

After returning to the rig we let the boys out. It was very quiet and the boys liked being off lease to move around. Buddy loves to run so he was very happy to have the space to do that.

It was a quiet evening. We went to bed a little early as we were both tired. We will travel again tomorrow and should arrive at Lake George.

Tuesday, April 13 - Travel Day

 

We passed into North Carolina just minutes after departing at 8am. We had a beautiful ride along the back country roads for the first hour and 45 minutes.

Very nice farm houses, plowed fields, and azalea bushes just beginning to bloom.  It was a nice beginning to our travel day.

We then travel on I-95 N. After 335 miles we stopped at 2:45 in Milford Virginia at R&D Family Campground.

Just as we arrived it started to rain. As I write this it is still raining. I want to go back to Myrtle Beach. We had beautiful weather there.

We were able to use  passport America and paid $15.75 for water/electric pull through. The campground seems like a nice small place to stay for a family vacation.

I defrosted a pasta casserole, I had made previously, made a green salad to go with it and warmed some Texas toast.

We just relaxed and watched TV for the evening.

Monday, April 12 – Last Day in Myrtle Beach

I finally got the rally days posted so you can go back and look at them.

Today we slept-in and took our time getting ready. I gave Jesse a haircut, he wanted a shorter cut this time, and I gave him what he asked for. (See picture below)

After getting dressed we were off to North Myrtle Beach. We stopped in a little place on Main Street for a sandwich. We talked to the owner who happen to be from Rockville Maryland..small world. He was very curious about our life style.

Then we walked on the beach. We were surprised about the number of people on the beach.

I put my feet in the water, but Jesse said it was too cold for him

You can see Jesse's new hair cut in this picture.

After we returned home we walked down to Howard and Linda’s rig to say see ya later. Howard was getting ready to pack up his boats and Jesse gave him a hand, since Linda has a bum knee we just sat and supervised. We stayed and visited much longer then we planned, so dinner was just sandwiches.

We are heading to Lake George tomorrow. Plan to be there on Thursday.

Until Tomorrow good night.

Sunday April 11 – Last Day of RV-Dreams Rally; Longs, SC

This morning was a farewell breakfast which started at 8am. Everyone gathered for a great breakfast of eggs, bacon, sausage, grits, potatoes, bisquits, Danish, coffee and juice.

One thing I have to say, all the food at the rally was delicious. The caterer they hired was really friendly and good food.

After our breakfast Howard and Linda thanked everyone for coming, wished them safe travels to their next destination and gave and received hugs and handshakes. They played “My Wish” by Rascal Flatts which they also played at the 1st rally we attended. The words of the chorus really say it all.

My wish, for you, is that this life becomes all that you want it to,
Your dreams stay big, and your worries stay small,
You never need to carry more than you can hold,
And while you're out there getting where you're getting to,
I hope you know somebody loves you, and wants the same things too,
Yeah, this, is my wish

After we said our see ya down the road to those that were leaving we went back to our rig and Jesse started on taking the underside of the rig apart.

We have a leak in our gray tank.

Lee gave Jesse some sealant to use and we hope it works. While he was doing that I took our sheets to the laundry to get them done and also paid for another nights stay. We decided since we had to spend time on chores today we wanted to play tomorrow.

After dinner of grilled hamburgers and turkey burgers those that we stayed met at H&L rig for a campfire. I brought all the fixins for smores.

Howard built a wonderful fire

We were surprised at the number of attendees that were still here.

It was a long day, and it was quite cool sitting outside, so around 9pm we bid everyone a good night and went home. I watched Brothers and Sisters while Jesse computered, then we were in our bed for the night.

It has been a great rally and we are very glad we came. Safe travels to all!!

Saturday, April 10- RV-Dreams Rally Day 4

Jesse went to all the seminars today, to learn more about them here is Howard and Linda’s journal entry.

I came in to the end of the seminar “choosing a campground” which was just before lunch. We went home and I made lunch for us and spent time with the boys.

From 3-5:30 was open house. Many of the RV family opened their rigs for us to tour them. Since Jesse and I are in the early stages of talking about getting a new rig we were very interested in touring as many 5th wheels as we could.

I liked the lay-out in a few rigs and it gave us much more to talk about.

We had to rush home, feed the boys and get dressed for dinner and the 50’s sock hop afterward.

Dinner was steak and shrimp, along with salad, rolls, red skin potatoes, corn on the cob and a few different desserts. I had chocolate cake and Jesse had pecan pie. Everything was yummy for our tummies.

Then the dance started.

Linda got Jesse up to dance saying she wanted to dance with her brother in-law. Let me explain..Linda and I both have been asked several times if we were sisters, so we started calling each other sis. Everyone at the rally thought we were sister especially because I completed their laundry the other day.

The DJ got things started with a few games which really helped everyone loosen up.

And then the dancing began and we had a great time.

Here’s a picture of some lap dancing that was going on by Debbie and Mike Goode

We were very tired when it ended at 10pm and we were really ready to go home and relax.

Oh, but we did have a wonder fun evening.