October 24 & 25, 2004

October 24 & 25, 2004

Trout Lodge

DAYS 129 & 130

 

Sunday ; This was originally to be our first day of work here at Trout Lodge, but our start has been delayed by one day because Jessica Clay, the co-ordinator of the Workamper / Volunteer Program here had to go to Texas for the weekend. She left us instructions to familiarize ourselves as much as possible today. We started the day with a pontoon boat tour around Sunnen Lake, conducted by Laura.

"This is Trout Lodge overlooking Sunnen lake. It has 80 rooms and 19 lofts, each with a beautiful view of Sunnen Lake, which is a mile and a half long by half a mile wide with 5 miles of shoreline. Sunnen Lake's average depth is 20 to 30 feet, although it is 40 to 45 feet deep right in front of the spillway."

We had lunch in the dining room, then took a "facility tour" in a ten passenger van, conducted by Kelly. It takes about 45 minutes to drive slowly around the grounds of Trout Lodge, and adjacent Camp Lakewood, with narration.

Pontoon boat tours, and facility tours, will be 2 of my jobs here.

Mid-afternoon, we drove to the nearest town, Potosi, about 12 miles away. We wanted to buy a few supplies, look for somewhere to buy Science Diet Senior cans for Toby, and locate a GM dealer. Our first stop was at Dickey Bub's Farm And Home ( I kid you not ) to search for some of the supplies we needed. We bought a few supplies there, then went over to the Wal-Mart Super Centre. I don't understand how a town of less than 3000 can support a Wal-Mart Super Centre. Even more puzzling, why is it open 24 hours, like most of the large Wal-Mart stores here in the U.S. seem to be ? Is there a lot of locals going out to shop at Wal-Mart at 3:00 A.M. ? We checked out both the local feed stores. Neither one carries Science Diet. We located the GM dealer. It's a Chevrolet dealer, but I'm sure I can get an oil filler cap for a GMC truck there.

After dinner in the Trout Lodge dining room ( what great food at every meal ! ) I went to the front foyer lounge which is a Wi-Fi hotspot. It was my first time using Wi-Fi. It worked very well. I became so engrossed in e-mail, then attempting to connect to AOL through Wi-Fi that I sort of lost track of time, and didn't get to do my journal for Sunday, on Sunday. I eventually figured out how to connect to AOL through Wi-Fi. For the 5 weeks that we're here, I'll have unlimited free Wi-Fi access. WOO-HOO ! Faster than dial-up access through land line. Much faster than dial-up access through my cell phone.

 

Monday ; Today was our first day of "real" work since we sold PET VALU 234 Westgate on March 2. Over 8 months since a day of "real" work. We're tired !

We started the day by meeting Jessica in the dining room at 9:00 A.M.. After meeting with her for awhile, Ben took us out to the boat house and docks to give me an introduction to the operation of the pontoon boats. We went out on the lake in one of the three pontoon boats for a few minutes, and Ben checked out my "boat proficiency". I've owned three different sized boats over the years, so operating this pontoon boat seems within my capabilities. I assume that I "passed" the pontoon boat docking test.

Ben had to go pick up another staff member at the St. Louis airport, so he set us up in a meeting room to watch a couple of staff training videos. The first one was a history of the development of this YMCA facility ; Trout Lodge and Camp Lakewood. They have a major benefactor, the Sunnen family of St. Louis, who has been their benefactor for 2 generations now, since 1946.

After watching the videos, we met with Jessica again in the dining room. After we had lunch, she introduced us to most of the senior staff members, in their offices.

Our work schedule ended at 1:00 P.M., but we offered to work for the afternoon, to make up for the missed half day shift yesterday. Most of our shifts are half day shifts, 4 or 5 hours long. We were assigned to Angie for the afternoon, to assist with decorating Hillcrest Hall for Hallowe'en. Hillcrest Hall is a multi-purpose building, and will be used for most of the indoor Hallowe'en activities Thursday through Sunday.

Our "regular" jobs won't begin until next Monday. The balance of this week will be dedicated to Hallowe'en preparations, then actual Hallowe'en programs. KEWL ! We decorated Hillcrest Hall until 5:00 P.M., at which time we finally had an opportunity to meet with Chris Lunn, the Program Director. He's known as "Lunny". He's from Australia. I guess he's my "boss", although not Joanne's. I'm assigned to "Programs" and she's assigned to "Front Desk".

After meeting with Lunny for about 20 minutes, we returned to the trailer to feed the cats, and get some laundry for washing. We have decided to drive back and forth between the trailer and Trout Lodge most of the time. We walked over last night, and it's about a half hour walk. We drove back to Hillcrest Hall, loaded the laundry into the washers at the laundry building beside Hillcrest Hall, admired our decorating a bit, then over to the main lodge for dinner.

After dinner I visited with Deborah at the front desk while Joanne walked back to Hillcrest to put the laundry into the dryers. We both visited with Deborah for awhile, waiting for the laundry to dry. We picked up the laundry, headed back to the trailer, and I sat down at the computer.

WHEW ! Long, hard day.

DSK