A Supa Saturday

As A Woofcamping Bark Ranger, Harley helps clean the fire pits and pick up garbage. 

We've been having so much fun in the park.  It's been busy with all the campsites booked. Harley dog and I do loads of workamping and meet interesting people, dogs and wildlife.

The heavy labor wears me out pretty quickly, so I work some, rest some, drink coffee, work some, rest some, drink coffee, work some more...  With the cold snap I sold a lot of firewood.  This sounds easy, but I have to go load up my mini-truck with the wood nearly 2 miles away, bring it back to my site, unload it, then when people want to buy it, I load it back up and deliver it to them unless they can carry it all and most can't.  It's not bundled, it's sold loose in groups of 8 chunks or more. When that runs out I have a secret stash at the other end of the campground, but still that's work to go raid it. All the firewood money goes to the Friends of the Park which in turn is spent back in the park.  It's all just  part of my volunteer workamping duties.

The truck is so small, it's really like a gas powered golf cart I can't always just leave the firewood in it, because then I don't have room to haul off the mountain of weekend garbage. Sometimes I end up making 3-4 trips daily to the dump.  The little cart I drive is SO FREAKING LOUD that I now wear ear muffs to hold my head together and tune out some of the noise. This is a huge relief as I think the loud noise (without the ear muffs) was making me really cranky.

I am super happy not to be cranky anymore. Yabbadabbadoo!

Our favorite chore may surprise you.   Harley and I walk around the entire campground several times a day with a bucket and a litter picker, snatching up debris like gum wrappers, beer cans, cigarette butts, just daggum garbage that appears out of nowhere.

We try to do our part to make America beautiful!

Mid-morning the ranger asked how I was doing.

I said "I've been busy with a shovel and a dump truck, restoring order in the restrooms!"

She had a good laugh over my analogy.

I sure wish Harley could help me with the restroom cleaning. But I find that if I smile while I am working and act thrilled, then the time goes quickly.  Harley usually waits outside, alternating between guarding the door and flirting with the campers.

It's been so cold lately, that he is bundled up in sweaters with  sometimes a little doggy coat over that. When it was 40ish F degrees  recently, I piled on so many layers of clothes it emptied out half my closet and drawers. I get cold super easy. I guess decades in the Caribbean did that to me.

A friend  came to visit us and by sheer luck due to a cancellation he was able to camp next to us. He brought Harley a new toy and a box of treats. Lucky pooch!

He also brought us steak and shrimp. Whee!

I marinated the steaks for future reference. Later I made steamed corn with butter, potatoes tossed with sour cream, garlic and chives, homemade beans from my crockpot plus a salad of little artichokes hearts, olives, mushrooms and grape tomatoes tossed with Italian dressing served over greens. My friend brought over his gas grill to cook the steaks on. He asked me how I wanted mine done and I said "Just cook mine like yours."

He said "Well, I don't know how you like it. Rare? Medium?  Well done?"

I said "However you're cooking yours, will be fine with me!  It's been so long since I had any beef, I am happy to have it any which way you cook it!"

He ate his entire steak, but I could only get half mine down, so I have leftovers.  Yummy!

After we ate, Harley was treated to a tiny bowl of steak sliced up into bite size pieces. Poor thing, he is just all paws and can't seem to handle the steak knife on his own.

When he was through with that, he sat there with his eyes wide open, smacking his lips and wiping his tongue all around his face, checking optimistically to see if any errant pieces were stuck to his fur.  

In spite of the chill, we  dined al fresco, building my first fire of the season. After dinner we sat around the firepit swapping gossip and celebrating life. It was super fun to have company and  a sumptuous fireside dinner.

Earlier in the day my friend volunteered to help me with some of my workamper chores, so it was a super duper day all around.

Life is good.

This morning my friend came over for coffee at sunrise,  announcing he was leaving soon because a faraway trout stream was calling his name, hundreds of miles away.