Here We Go Again!

The lake comes up, the lake goes down, and the wheels on the
bus go round and round. It’s been a crazy 12 months at Saylorville, where we volunteer
and live each summer. As we helplessly watch the lake rise again, we know that
the possibility of being moved out again is a very real. Everyone has their
fingers crossed that it won’t happen again.

Being an outspoken environmentalist and conservationist, I rein myself in on my blog because I don’t want to politicize it. There is enough of that toxin in the world right now. But there are some real issues that impact Saylorville Lake and many cities around the country who are developed near rivers. Saylorville was built 42 years ago when Polk City was barely a town and the cities of Ankeny and Johnston who flank the east and west shores were miles from the shoreline. In the decades since it was built, Ankeny has developed all the way to the lake shore, literally. Polk City has grown from a few hundred to nearly 5,000. Every time they develop a new neighborhood or commercial property, they poor more concrete and lay more sewer tile that carries the run-off to the barrier dam at the north end of the reservoir that protects the city from flooding. Add to that, the miles of field tile that farmers lay every year north of here. Those fields drain into the creeks, which run to the Des Moines River that feeds Saylorville. Every square yard of pavement, and linear foot of field tile impacts the lake in a negative way. It also prevents mother earth from doing her job which is to absorb and filter rainwater down to the aquifers that serve as natural storage for fresh clean water. To exasperate the situation, rain events are becoming increasingly more potent. Up to the last few years in my 54 years in Iowa,  a typical storm brought ½ - 1 inch of rain. A big rain was 2-3 inches. Now, the weather map on the news is commonly filled with 4-6-inch reports of fallen rain. It seems, every time it rains, my rain gauge has at least an inch. Trace amounts are not seen any longer. 42 years of silt accumulation at the inlet of the lake has reduced the holding capacity significantly.

We sit in Volunteer Village and watch the River Gauge website predict the lake level. We all know, when it gets to 880 MSL ( mean feet above sea level) we are out of here. The water will be at our back doors and the maintenance crew will be forced to pull the power grid. It happened twice last summer, after only happening once before over 10 years ago. It happened this spring before we returned, and it threatens to happen again this summer at least once. That is unprecedented and not a sustainable situation for us who live in Volunteer Village in trade for our work here at the lake.

What’s a volunteer to do?  We contract for these gigs with the agreement of trading our time and talents for a full-service site. When this situation occurs here the 10 couples in the village are forced to live in sites with electric only. We have to pull out regularly and dump our tanks and live within the constraints of our holding tanks and still work the same as when we are getting the convenience of a full hook up site. We are asked to literally move our whole life when we move back and forth from the public campsites to the village as the fickle lake rises and falls. Many of us plant gardens and landscape our sites. We have patio furniture, extra vehicles, porches and many other things that define us from the weekend warriors. It is no small task to pick up and move when you plan to be in the same site for the six month season you have committed to. It does present a dilemma. It’s not the lakes fault. The Rangers  are powerless to stop factors that are wreaking havoc. We are very fond of this place and love our summers here, but we have to consider whether to continue when we know the dynamics of the lake have changed and volunteer village is now in a regularly flooding plain.

Site 7- The Summer Place

 We keep in contact
with many work campers we have met along the way and this scenario is playing
out all across the country as wildfires, floods and other extreme prolonged
weather events impact the natural areas where we love to work. We as park volunteers
have a front row seat to the impact that climate change is having on our earth.
This is where I will stop, lest I get on a rant about the state of our environment
and mankind’s careless consumption and pillaging.

I hope we don’t have to reconsider our summer gig. We love
it here. But if we endure another year of being moved back and forth from our site,
we may be forced to find a different way to be at home in Iowa near the kids
during the summer months.  In the meantime,
I will watch the lake rise from my motorhome window over the table that doubles
as my desk. I’ll say a silent prayer to Mother Earth, plead for mercy, and hope
for the best.

Until Next Time…

We Still Need Routine

Full-time RV people seem to have one common thread, we crave variety and a change of scenery. We also hate extreme weather. However, we also share a common human trait with everyone else. A deep-seated need for routine and structure. It is a difficult thing to come by in this lifestyle but, I am finding as we move through our third year that it is very necessary to strike a balance between routine and variety lest, we lose our minds.

Champ and I have found it work camping. We have settled into a nice routine of coming back to Saylorville each summer season to work in a familiar place we both love and be near our family and life- long friends. We satisfy the desire for variety by going to a different location and job each winter season. As tempting as it is to return to some of the places we have worked so far, we are not quite ready to quit dabbling in new corners of the country.

Even the veteran couples I have talked to who don’t work camp and simply travel about lapping up all the United States has to offer, often say after a couple of years they got tired of the constant upheaval. Many gradually settled into their own routine of sorts by splitting their time each year between a few favorite places where they visit kids, friends or other family and in general feel they are in a familiar home-like place. Some have even found themselves in a network of reunions with other travelers they have come to know on the road. Others chose that time to start work camping at places they particularly like and want to revisit for extended periods of time.

As work campers, Champ and I are noticing we have indeed found our stride. I sew up our job for each winter along about December the previous year. When we arrive at our winter destination, we have established a routine of checking out the area, seeking out the preferred places to shop and the nearest hospital. I go to the town library to get a visitors card and pick the librarians brain for info about the area. They are a wealth of information as they tend to be long time citizens and eager to share the finer points of their hometown. We find a route for our daily walks, I send the kids our mailing address for the park where we are working, and we go about getting to know our volunteer counterparts. Then, of course there are video chats home on the holiday’s and the winter birthdays that we miss each winter. Routine.

This spring, like the two previous, we arrived back in Central Iowa and promptly made the rounds seeing the kids. We have gotten in the habit of picking up our daughter’s boys from school one of the first days back and bringing them out to our place at the lake. The first week is filled with reunions. Soon after our return, we host Mother’s Day Breakfast and then the regular interval of summer season birthdays begins. It is punctuated each year by a handful of graduations, usually at least one wedding and, we hope, no funerals. Regular overnight visits with grand kids and babysitting dates, little league and soccer games fill our summer when we are not working for the lake.  By now we have settled into a nice routine of our three-day work week for Saylorville. This year Champ is able to manage his time and duties pretty autonomously. I have eased into a nice rhythm of working for Natural Resources Monday’s and Wednesdays with Tuesday set aside to finalize the newsletters that I write for the park and submit each Wednesday morning. I sit on the patio in front of my motor home and watch the birds go about their spring nesting and breeding routines, that include nesting in the home made wren house that I hang up in the tree in front. I smile as I watch my two cats start to remember their summer home and lay in the same places and scratch on the same tress and stumps as the previous year. Even animals need routine.  

• 

  Mother's Day with the kids

• 

  Spring Welcome Back Happy Hour at our place

• 

  Loading the mowers for a full day of work

• 

  Building her new nest

People who travel all the time tell me they build their needed routines around making calls home at regular times, planning their time in the area within a sort of framework that develops over time. Planning their next few stops and of course things like grocery shopping and laundry give them a sense of normality in this very unconventional lifestyle.

It’s a funny thing, when we were static, living in our house and going about our pre-retirement life we were stifled by our routine.  It was mind-numbingly monotonous. We craved the variety that this life promises. After three years we still love the adventure and change of scenery and have learned to incorporate just enough routine to make us feel secure and normal.

Until Next Time...

How to Love Your Splendide Dryer Part II

Most people's gripe about the Splendid all in one machines is the dryers quit drying after a period of time. We've learned some things that are worth sharing and I promise will make you like your machine again. If your gripe is doing small loads, I can't help you there. Everything is small and compact in RV living. I've been waiting till we serviced our dryer to share this with everyone. I did a post a year or so ago sharing the rinsing process that helps if you start having trouble with your dryer timing out and stopping a few minutes into the dry cycle. You know the cue, all the lights start blinking and the dryer shuts off leaving a pile of soggy clothes for you to hang up and air dry. This seems to be where people decide the machine is junk and start going to the laundry mat and hating their machine. I called Splendide's tech support the first time it happened 18 months or so ago, and they emailed me the instructions below. They say to do it three times. I have only ever done it once and got good results. He also said that once a year or so we should have a tech come out and take it apart and remove all the built up lint that stays behind. I do this every 15-20 loads, which for us is about once a month'

1. Start the unit without clothes and with the dry time off on cycle # 11. When the water stops entering the unit push and hold the start button until all the lights come on then release the button. *NOTE: If the water is not at least half way up the glass repeat this step.

• Move
  the cycle knob to cycle # 2 push the extra rinse button then press the start
  button once (do not hold) then let it run through that complete cycle. Do
  this 3 times then try the dryer.   

Now, for the good part. When that process stops working you can call a tech and spend over $150.00 for the service call and time. Or, if you mechanically oriented, save your money. I took some pictures when Champ took ours apart recently to give you an idea of what you will be getting into. I"m not going to get into painful details about what tools you need and exactly how to do it. If you are the kind of person who will tackle this task you will already know what you need and how to take something apart and put it back together.

• 

  Unplugging the heating element

• 

  Top view with element removed

• 

  Back view cover over lint trap

• 

  Lint that came from the cover
  

• 

  Lint built up in the trap

• 

  Back view with filter removed

The first step is to take to top cover off the machine and disconnect the heating element. It's a pretty simple plug in loom style assembly. Then you can do one of two things. You can remove the entire back cover which takes some work. Champ decided since this is going to be a regular event, he took tin snips and cut some tabs in the cabinet on the left and center, creating sort of a door to get to the area where the filter and cover are. You can see where he did this in the last picture. The white filter cover needs to come off. Under it is a screened lint trap. Rinse the white cover thoroughly inside, you'll be amazed at what is in there. Empty the filter and rinse it. I was surprised how much gunk had built up over the 2 years we've owned the machine! When you have everything cleaned up, put everything back together. The whole process took about 30 minutes. I am happy to report that the dryer works like new again and we didn't have to waste money and time waiting for a tech to come out. When the dryer quit drying and the rinse cycle process failed me, I was back up and running the same day and the repair guy was pretty cute too!

Until Next Time...

A Trip Down Memory Lane

There is no question we are back in Iowa.  The daytime temperatures have see-sawed between cool damp rainy 50’s and warm sunny lower 70’s. The wind still has a bite, and I start my outdoor workday in about 4 layers from the waist up. Someday's, I am still in all four layers when I come home, other days I am carrying a pile of clothes from the car and down to my High Viz work T- shirt.

Everyone who will occupy Volunteer Village has arrived. In a couple of weeks we will host our season opener happy hour to bring all the new people and the returning people together and have a chance to get to know each other better.

I have started getting my publishing calendar for the newsletters filled in with topics that will get me started for the season. At a certain point my ongoing weekly project will start to generate its own momentum and instead of trying to come up with topics for articles it will be a matter of choosing which things to write about.

I answer the question, “What is it like?” occasionally. Answer?  “It can be very nostalgic, if you return to places regularly.”

I love time spent on a mower.  Next to gardening work, it is my favorite
form of park volunteer work.  This summer
the volunteers will be taking on some more of the mowing. At the beginning of
the season when mowing contracts are still being finalized and the weather is
uncooperative, as it often is during spring in the Midwest, the initial spring
mowfest falls under “Other Duties as Assigned” for the natural resource
volunteers.  In between rain showers I
have spent some time on a commercial mower getting campgrounds and day use
areas groomed for the opening season that arrived last weekend and is sold out
here at Saylorville.

My office view this spring

The ranger tasked two of us with mowing the very campground where Champ and I camped regularly before we started our new lifestyle three years ago.  I was mowing at Prairie Flower and found myself mowing the campsites in Honeysuckle Loop where we spent many weekends over the years. All of a sudden, I realized I was mowing the campsite where we had an all-night fire side conversation about the fantasy of living in our camper and being one of the volunteers we encountered when we were camping. I got a little choked up remembering that night as I mowed and realizing just 12 years later, we are living that pipe dream we spent all night talking about when we still had a daughter living at home. As I mowed each site, I remembered times when we were in that site. Triple birthday celebrations for me and my two sisters whose birthdays are within a month of mine. Mother's Day breakfasts. A terrible storm one weekend that sunk our boat and the neighboring camper who put our awning in and picked up our lawn chairs while we were dragging our sunken boat out of the lake after straight line winds  drove it underwater seconds after I abandoned it along the shoreline realizing it would sink with me and my daughter in it as we awaited our turn to load. I mowed around a good-sized Maple tree, remembering a weekend early in our marriage when we were camping in the site next to it and witnessed some college kids strip the green limbs off the tree for ‘firewood’. We called the Ranger and watched as they were removed from the campsite. The tree survived and is now a 20’ tall Maple showing no signs of the trauma is suffered as a young tree 15 years ago.

I realized the place, while it is a nice campground lives in my heart because of the experiences and the people I remember from these sites. I started thinking about other places we've been. The ones I remember the best are the places where we met new people. I remember great detail about those places. Without the human connection my memory of places we've been is vague. I thought ahead to the winter we have planned in Texas this next season.  As Champ and I talked that night about my trip down memory lane we both realized we will go south to get away from the cold northern climate each winter season. But our choices are now being driven more by who we will see in the places rather than the places themselves. We return to Texas next winter. Yes, it will be warm and the park where we will work camp for our site will be nice. The true draw though is who we will see while in Texas.  People we will visit along the way between Des Moines and the southern border. People we met this past winter who will end up in Texas near us for at least some of the time, and of course the people we already know who call south Texas home. We have plans to visit other states that we haven’t traveled to yet. The reason they are officially on our radar now is the people we know who will be there to welcome us and show off their home state to us. New places are fun and interesting, new people make them special and memorable.

Until Next Time…