November 7, 2004

November 6 & 7, 2004

Trout Lodge

DAYS 142 & 143

 

Saturday ; What a great day ! Bright sunshine, warm, and I had a blast with today's program activities. Joanne started work at 9:00 A.M. this morning, and I didn't start until after lunch, so I was alone at the trailer for the morning. It was rather odd. We haven't been apart much since we started this travelling adventure. I puttered around doing some maintenance around the truck and trailer, then wandered over to see who was doing archery at the Camp Lakewood archery range. I could hear voices over there, and usually Lakewood is empty for the weekends. It was a group of Girl Scout leaders, in for a weekend of team building exercises, and to evaluate whether or not Camp Lakewood was a place they wanted to bring their troops to. After watching them do archery for a short time, I went over to Triangle Y Ranch, where Joanne was working the ranch store for the first time, and by herself. I visited with Joanne for a few minutes, then wandered into the corral and barn, where I watched Clay ( the only real cowboy here, as far as I can ascertain ) change shoes on a horse. It was rather interesting, and Clay was willing to answer all my questions, most of which may have seemed like silly questions to him.

After lunch, I led my first hike with paying guests of Trout Lodge. My hiking group was eight people, half children and half adults. They opted for the “difficult” choice when I asked them to select easy or difficult hike. OK ... difficult is what I gave them. They all seemed satisfied at the end of the hour of hiking, despite the fact that most of them were drenched in sweat and panting for breath from hiking up and down through the hills, much of it “off path”. I didn’t tell them that was because the hiking trails are impossible to follow once the leaves have fallen ! The ten year old boy who needed to bring his teddy bear along on the hike began to cry half way through the hike, convinced I would lead them so far into the forest they would never find their way out ! Neither I nor his mother could convince him otherwise, so we had to turn around and return the same way we came, as opposed to continuing on a circuitous route that we were already halfway around. First hike, and Canadian Daniel makes the paying guests cry < sigh >.

Immediately after my hike, at 2:00 P.M., I received archery instruction from Amy and Abby. Good thing, because at 3:00 P.M., I was the archery instructor. Yes, yes ... one hour after I touched a bow and arrows for the first time in my life, I was an archery instructor. Did fine, thank you.

At 4:00 P.M. I gave a juggling clinic, outdoors on the basketball court because the weather was so nice. I had six students ; five children and one adult. Alas, I failed to produce a juggler within the one hour clinic, but I did get one little girl, and the adult, very close. I think the girl will probably keep trying on her own, and she will soon “get it” .

After supper, I and all the rest of the program staff headed to the arts and craft building for the “children’s lock-in evening”. The parents signed their kids into the building, and then were free for an entire evening while the program staff entertained all the kids. About 3/4 of the kids spent most of the evening inside the gymnasium where a bunch of sports and physical games were. The quieter, or less physical kids had a variety of other rooms and activities to choose from. I started out in a corner of a room doing “up close” magic sitting at a little card table, with a whole bunch of kids surrounding me on folding chairs. It was a lot of fun. Halfway through the evening, I had exhausted my repertoire of magic and juggling, and I was getting very tired from an hour of tough hiking, an hour of juggling instruction, a couple of hours of archery, and now a couple of hours of magic and juggling. I gave up the magic and juggling, but seemed to still be attached to a bunch of little girls who seemed to have “adopted” me for the evening. OK ! We searched around for something they would like to do, and settled on drawing and painting in “arts and crafts”. Too bad nobody here gave Canadian Daniel a training lesson in arts and crafts. In the arts and crafts room here, the oil paints are stored in these big jars with squirt type dispensers on top, like ketchup dispensers at MacDonald’s. Quiet little eight year old Natalie needed more yellow oil paint on her cardboard “palette”, so while she stood underneath the yellow paint jar sitting up on a high counter, holding her piece of cardboard upwards underneath the dispenser spout, I reached up and pushed the pump down.

SHPLURT ! UH-OH ! ! ! ALL OVER NATALIE ! ! ! ! ! Poor little Natalie stood there looking pathetically upwards at me, all covered in yellow oil paint. DAMN ! And she was wearing the cutest little white patterned fleece hooded sweater. DAMN ! That fleece material sure can suck up oil paint quickly. DAMN ! I rushed Natalie off towards the bathroom, grabbing the first adult female I laid eyes on, and dragged her along instructing her to take Natalie into the woman’s bathroom and try to wash the paint off the fleece sweater.

No, no ... a little rinse was not going to solve this problem. It just made it worse. Now the paint was all smudged and smeared and rubbed into the fleece. What a freaking mess ! Good thing Natalie’s mother was a good sport about it when she came to pick Natalie up. I felt so badly about what happened.

 

Sunday ; Up early this morning. Joanne was working the ranch store alone again, and had to be there by 8:30. I was teaching archery at 9, so I had to start getting everything ready at 8:30. I did archery at 9:00, and again at 10:00. Two guests at 9:00, fifteen at 10:00. Maximum allowable is sixteen. I did fine. At 11:00 I was leading a hike. No takers, as most guests were preparing to check out already, so I took myself on a hike that Joanne and I have been wanting to do, south along the lakeshore. As I hiked along the lakeshore, I could hear voices up high on the ridge above me, and realized I was near the high ropes summit course, and it was being used. I decided to hike “off path” straight up the ridge to see the high ropes stuff in action. Tough climb up that ridge ! At the top, I sat down to catch my breath and watch the activity. It was all the Girl Scout leaders being put through the high ropes summit course. I watched for awhile, then started hiking slowly back down towards Trout Lodge, underneath the summit course finale; the zip line ! I wanted to see the zip line being done. The end of the summit course is a ride on a 300 foot zip line, from the top of a 50 foot tower, to ground level, hanging underneath the zip line on a little pulley. KEWL !

When I met Joanne in the dining room for lunch, she was amused. At the ranch, the “cowboys” in their cowboy hats, leather chaps, and boots with spurs, had spent the morning treating her like “the little ma’am running the store”. At noon when they all left the ranch to come to Trout Lodge dining room for lunch, the cowboys all climbed into their Chevy Cavaliers and Saturns, and their jaws dropped when they saw “little ma’am” climb into a one ton dually, and fire up the demon diesel. GRRRRGRRRRGRRRRGRRRR ! “Smell my diesel fumes, little cowboys” !

After lunch, we returned to the trailer, and went on a short hike to see “Pike’s Peak”, the climbing tower and zip line fairly near our RV Park. Then I napped. Long and hard !

We chatted over dinner with Julie, Jack and Sharon. We’ve got our own little RV Workamper clique developing.

After dinner I updated my blog and retrieved e-mail. There was an e-mail from Joanne's sister with a message to me to phone my sister, who is having some manner of computer problem preventing her from using e-mail. I had to stand on top of the tool chest box in the back of Dee-Dee to get a very weak, rather intermittent cell phone signal. My phone call to Sharon had to be brief. The quality of the sound was poor. I think the nearest cell phone tower is in Potosi, about 12 miles away, and the terrain around here is mountainous.

DSK