The Exodus

I have joked off and on that if all hell breaks loose, we won’t worry, we are in a motorhome and we’ll just moved out of the way of the chaos. We are in that reality around the country now. The problem is we can't escape this situation like a flood or wildfire or some other natural disaster. The enitre country is shrouded in it. 

This week has been a game changer in the work camping world. I sit here writing, trying to process my thoughts about the situation we are in right now. We have been in parks in the past, that have had extenuating circumstances that impacted the work we were doing for the park. In those situations, we were assured by the park management that they recognized our commitment to the job, the distance we travelled to be there and were not asked to leave. In time the situation settled down and it was back to business as usual. We felt appreciated and welcome despite the difficult circumstances for the park and the work campers.

The Corona Virus Panic arrives in Llano Grande

We are enjoying a zero COVID-19 environment in the Rio Grande Valley, so far. In the past 24 hours we have gone from feeling relatively insulated from the situation to being fully impacted by the threat that is still only academic and speculative in this region. Yesterday, the corporate office followed the trend of other parks in the valley and closed all public areas in the park and cancelled all events for the foreseeable future. What does that mean to workcampers you ask?  Well, if your job involves working in the restaurant, bar, golf course or any other Activities Office function, you were told yesterday that your job had ended and given till the end of the week to either, find work in another department, leave or pay full price for your site for the remainder of your contracted stay. Hmmm.  Champ and I are lucky, in that the office is open so I still have a job, and maintenance is an essential service that continues to operate. Other work campers are not so lucky. The park is completely focused on the all mighty dollar. If you don’t work, you don’t stay. Never mind the season long commitment and hard work. Never mind our next destination may still be buried in snow and ice or the job doesn’t start. Never mind that we contracted to work until March 31^st and contracted to have our site till April 4^th.  Some are facing summer jobs being delayed since the parks have been closed for now. The security of being self-contained is fraying a bit for some with the uncertainty of when and where their next move or job will be. Work campers here are all feeling different levels of anxiety and uncertainty this week. The one common feeling among us here is the feeling that we are not appreciated and are basically in the way and now a burden to the parks bottom line. Not a good feeling. Having worked for only one private park, we don’t know if this is an attitude common among private parks or if it is the attitude of this particular management team. I do know, several people who were planning to return are making other plans for next winter as a result of the abrasive treatment  received from the Volunteer Coordinator as this situation developed. Champ and I have been treated well so far and working hard not to get caught up in the drama.  However, It is hard to watch our co-workers be treated like they couldn’t be less disposable.  

Graham at the IT help desk with over 40 modems turned in by early departees. 

The office is busy with people, many of them Canadians, who have been summoned home by their insurance companies and fears they will not be let back into their home country. Others are leaving to go home and help kids who still have jobs to go to with schools and daycares closed. Some are just panicked and need to be somewhere familiar, so they feel more secure. We had two scheduled check outs yesterday yet processed over 40. 

I watch the updates at home, try to sift the bullshit and rumors from the facts. I go work my hours in the office and smile while people vent their anxiety. I come home and sit it in the lawn chair and decompress.  We visit with the neighbors and are planning communal dinners and get togethers, like the old days when we went camping with our group.  The 90-degree heat has returned and the pools are closed, that really stinks. But, these are the times we live in today. We have it relatively good here compared to many others around the country and for that we are thankful.

I watch the panicked snowbirds fly out of here two to four weeks early and think to myself, it’s like going out in the middle of a blizzard, instead of waiting for the storm to pass and the roads to be plowed. I believe deep in my heart that by early April, when we are set to take flight ourselves that the worst will be over and the dust will be settled. In the mean time, rumors swirl, grocery store shelves are empty for unexplained reasons and a tough situation is revealing the best and the worst of people.

Until next time…

Along the Banks of the Rio Grande

Last Friday, I was given a warm send off by the pharmacy where I have worked part time this winter. My last day was spent going over lastminute things with their new bookkeeper and enjoying the lunch and cake they brought in. There wasn’t much work involved in my last workday. The owners gave me a very nice gift and we took pictures. Even before my last day was complete, I was making plans to do things I have missed out on this winter.

From the left RD, Rubin and Rosemary (owners) Kristy, me, Jessica, Terry, Anita and Melanie

My first excursion was with Judy and Marlin Cook yesterday. Via the network that is travelling, we were introduced through Face Book to Judy and Marlin, by our friends Chuck and Julie, who we met and became friends with, in Florida last winter. The two couples have lived across the road from each other in Maine for decades.  We met in person on Christmas Day when we visited the National Butterfly Center and agreed to see each other again to do some birding.

They took me to Salineno about 100 miles west of our winter digs to a beautiful natural area along the banks of the Rio Grande River. The birding by their standards was mediocre, only confirming 29 species.  To me it was a successful day. I saw three species I had never seen and took some nice photographs. I saw a Crested Cara Cara in flight for the first time and marveled at the magnificent raptor. I got so caught up watching him, I didn’t get a photograph. I have to remind myself from time to time that experience can get lost in trying to get the photograph. There are situations when it is more satisfying to stay ‘in the moment’ and let the memory live in your head.  That was one of those times. I also got to see Blue Winged Teals flying away from us several times and realized how they got their name. I saw my first Altimara Oriole nest. An amazing feat of engineering. At about 3 times the size of a Baltimore Oriole nest, the huge structure hung from the end of a small branch in a tree near the river bank and we all wondered how the weight didn’t break the branch or how it withstood the wind.  I watched a Belted Kingfisher kite above the river in the morning sunlight and saw my first Gray Hawk.

Altimera Oriole nest about 3feet long and 8-10 Inches wide

Black Crested Titmouse a new bird for me

From left Marlin Cook Terri Smelcer, Judy Cook and me. Mexico in the background at Salineno

Bees polinating an Aloe Vera plant in bloom

Red Winged Blackbird Pair 

Green Jay

Great Kiskadee

Mostly I was enchanted by the beautiful river. The Rio Grande is in the news so much now and all we think about are illegal immigrants wading across. Not the case where we were. I shut the news stories out of my thoughts and took in the natural beauty of the area. Having always been drawn to water, I am particularly intrigued with rivers. I stood on the bank and looked across into Mexico. The animals didn’t know there was a political boundary as they hunted and perched and went about their existence. I wondered, why can’t human beings do that? The Osprey that I watched pluck a fish out of river flew to our side with his lunch and perched on top of a utility pole while his head and shoulders dried. Then he took his lunch into Mexico to eat it. All without a passport or customs agent questioning where he got his fish. I was envious for a moment at the freedom of wild animals. The thought of a steel wall standing in the way of being able to experience the river the way I did yesterday makes me sad.

Osprey with his lunch

We stopped in Roma, Texas and walked through the gardens in the historic town established in 1765, then went to see the Rio Grande from the bluffs on the edge of town. Quite a different experience at the river side here compared to the refuge were we spent the morning, but still far removed from the stereotype portrayed on the evening news. Roma is across the river from Miguel-Alaman. There is an international bridge that connects our countries and a wealth of cultural and commerce history between the two cities. I sat on the bluff and watched the town. There was a small city park at the rivers’ edge. I saw a young family enjoying the park and through my binoculars I could watch a little girl swinging on a swingset in her back yard. I watched a woman hanging laundry out to dry on the beautiful sunny 85-degree day and a man a few houses down working on someone’s deck. Not unlike a suburban area in the United States. Again, I wondered why we work so hard to be afraid of each other and create boundaries rather than connections.

Family at the park across the river

Looking West from Roma

Bridge crossing at Roma/ Miguel Alaman

After about 10 hours together we parted ways late in the afternoon with plans to meet again next Wednesday for a guided tour through Estero Llano Grande State Park next door. Our next three weeks pre-flight calendar is filling quickly with people to see and things to do. The pressure is not as bad this time around since we are returning next winter to the same place. Plenty to look forward to.

Until next time….

“We have all winter”.  We say that a dozen times when we arrive at a new winter destination and start getting to know our work camping compadres. We sit around in the afternoon after work and talk about all the things we want to do during the winter before we all flock and head back north. The list becomes long, but we don’t fret to much about because… ‘we have all winter” to do this or that.

As I sat outside having my tea this morning about 6:30 a.m.;  I noticed that the songs of the birds around my site have changed. Warblers are warbling, the Kill Deers are gone and the most noticeable to me is the solitary Red-Wing Blackbirds are now in flocks, preparing for their journey north. Pelicans, who have been abundant all winter on the Resaca behind our sight, are thinning. Not unlike us. I am checking more people out than in at the RV office and my time at the pharmacy, where I have been keeping the books this winter is almost done. We are 4 weeks from lift off. We aren’t packing up just yet, but our minds are definitely in flight mode.

Our days for this season at Llano Grande number under thirty now. We are coming back next winter. We did secure a north facing site, a few streets over, to keep the winter sun from beating in the windshield of the motorhome and turning the front cap into an oven. We are already talking about things we will do next winter that we didn’t get around to this year.  I have a short list of people to see one more time before we leave. There is something about this snowbird lifestyle, six months here, six months there that really make the years start to tick by fast. By fast I mean, NHRA fast, not 70 MPH on the Interstate fast.

We left our kids and grandkids in October with the 5-month absence seeming like an eternity. Then we blinked and woke up this morning are realized our 4^th winter season away from the Midwest is almost over. We will arrive back in Iowa at our nest at good ole’ site number seven in volunteer village in about 40 days. We’ll get together with friends and family and talk about what we want to do next summer and say the same thing we said in November, here in the Rio Grande Valley. “We have all season”. One would think after 4 seasons we would start to realize how quickly it will go. Time will tell.

Until next time…

What We've Learned This Winter

When we accepted our job for the winter, we had never worked for a resort style RV Park. We had only stayed in them as guests and enjoyed the amenities in between our jobs with State Parks or Federal Wildlife areas.  Last fall as we dipped our toe into this style job, I was a little apprehensive about being disconnected from the wilderness and we had no idea what the work camping experience would feel like in a park like this.

Now that we are nearing the end of our five-month commitment, it is safe to say we are pretty much sold on working for this type of park in the winter months. Llano Grande has been especially kind to my call to nature hard wiring. I can walk the levee, about 100 yards from our RV, and in less than ¼ mile I find myself in the middle of Estero Llano Grande State Park where the wildlife and birds are so dense it’s hard to remember the park is surrounded by the bustling Rio Grand Valley full of RV parks,  chain retail stores and restaurants, souvenir shops, Progresso, Mexico and Winter Texans.

Working for this resort is very business-like, in the sense that we have a written contract, duties and departments are well defined and the expectations are quite clear. We each work 12 ½ hours per week. Monday and Tuesday’s are our days. Me in the office, Champ with Maintenance. After that we are free to take in all the live music entertainment, card games, clubs for virtually every hobby and interest as we can stand.

Juarez St Site-

The Levee that protects the park from the Resaca

Wildlife area type parks are less formal. The work is not as defined, and the hours are more fluid. We show up on our days and do whatever the Rangers ask of us. There are loose job descriptions but as I have written over the past three years, “other duties as assigned’ is a very popular bullet point. We enjoy the variety and I relish working outdoors or in a Visitor’s Center interpreting the park to visitors. During our first winter, at a Wildlife Refuge, I was weeding out a flower bed in front of the offices.  The Head Ranger’s voice startled me when he spoke the words “You are really in your element aren’t you?” I was so engrossed in the flower bed and so happy doing the work I lost sight of my immediate surroundings and was completely unaware that he had been standing there for nearly a minute before he said anything. That pretty much sums up my love of working in natural areas.

However, there is something to be said for having a heated pool and hot tub available at the end of a busy day. I love having a Yoga class to take free of charge on Monday and Wednesdays before dinner. Then there are the Friday afternoon Happy Hours.  2 hours of live music, dancing and whatever we take in our coolers to drink or maybe a snack to share. For $10.00 each we went to a dance with a great oldies band one Saturday night. There are more activities than there are hours for the taking. All without leaving the park.

Hot tub and heated pool await each evening

There are pros and cons to both brands of work camping. We love working for the Corps of Engineers in Iowa during the summer months. We are both very attached to Saylorville Lake and hope to return there many more years. What we learned about ourselves this winter is we would rather work at the resorts in the winter.

Like many work campers, we are learning through experience what we like and don’t like. What questions to ask and how to find the perfect job for us as a couple. One very important thing I have learned about myself is that I need a park that has natural areas nearby, preferably walking distance. I all but suffocated in the concrete jungle of Ocala, Florida last winter. Even though we had breathtaking State Parks nearby and wonderful park neighbors who became friends, I really struggled with not being able to walk out the door and engage with the natural world. Llano, fits that need well. 

We still want to work in the Southwest but are no longer seeking a job with AZ State Parks or FWS for the winter months.  Deep down, I don’t think I will like being in a place where the sites are crushed rock instead of grass. On the other hand, I hear there are no mosquitoes in AZ. We won’t know until we try it for a winter. Even though we have spent 3 of 4 winters in Texas we aren’t quite ready to adopt the brand Winter Texan. 

Through our conversations with others who have worked for private parks, in both paid and site trade scenarios we have gathered a great deal of food for thought. For now, my sites are on April when we will   return to our ‘nest’ in good old site #7 at Saylorville Lake’s Volunteer Village. 

We aren’t yet ready to settle into a ‘rut’ of going to the same parks winter and spring.  We have a lot of places in the south that we want to still work camp during the winter months. What has changed is the focus on what kind of job we will seek out. Many people we run into who have spent many years in the same park have shared that they wished they had tried different places early on instead of falling into the routine of summer/winter in the same park. We will heed that advice as we have other sage advice from those who have gone before us. For now we will do one more year here before we start sampling other southern destinations once again.   Maybe someday we will settle into a park permanently, but neither of us sees that happening any year soon.

Until Next Time…

Sunday mornings

For years Sunday mornings have included watching CBS Sunday Morning. The trumpets of their intro music are a natural a sound to me as church bells on a Sunday morning. The stories are always interesting to me and I love Mo Rocca's Mobituary segment at the end of the show.  I'm trying hard to take a weekend and do nothing but it isn't something that I'm very good at.
As I watched the show this morning the sun started to peak through the cloud cover and I grew restless. It was 8:45 and already 70 degrees the sun was peaking out and I knew it would be a decent birding  morning. For the first time since ditching Direct TV I missed it since I couldn't record the rest of the show.
Never-the-less I grabbed my new camera and binnoculars and headed for the levee, hoping to see the Altamira Oriole again and photograph it. . We get Baltimore and Orchard Orioles in Iowa in abundance. This is a bird I will only see here or in Mexico so its a good sighting for this fledgling birder. I heard the familiar Oriole calls and soon found one eating seeds in a Mesquite Tree. Orioles are one of my favorites, not only for their coloring but their beautiful song.

Altamira Oriole 

The sun was short lived and the light became less that ideal for photography but I did get a decent picture of the Oriole I went in search of and was able to watch him in my binnoculars for a good while.
As I approached the entrance to the trail leading into the State Park, be still my heart, there stood two Bobcats in the middle of the trail!  One went into the tall grass but one stayed on the trail. I slowing took my camera off my shoulder and got three nice shots of him before he ambled off into the timber. It was one of those moments that made my heart skip a beat and I felt so lucky to have been in just the right place at precicely the right time. He showed very little concern with my presense and didn't dart away like I expected he would.

I walked back to the RV full of joy from the encounter. It's going to be a good day. I can catch Mo Rocca on his Podcast later today.

Until Next Time...

New Camera and New Birds

One of the cool things about coming to South Texas is the wildlife. There are birds and other critters here that I don’t see anywhere else. That was part of the draw. I knew South Texas would be different from Hill Country and the Coastal Bend areas we have volunteered in past years. One of the big benefits is there are no Juniper Trees, a source of misery for me our first winter in Texas. The birds are exotic as are the Winter Texans, who are a whole different breed from the Winter Texans who migrate to central parts of Texas. The constant in our Texas experience are the people. We really like native Texans. The Rio Grande Valley has become a sort of melting pot of people we have met on the road. We are getting a chance to spend time with people we met previous winters, including people we met in Florida last winter who are here this winter. We will see Iowa relatives who are spending their first winter in Texas this year and of course we have spent lots of time with our good friends Will and Judy, who we work with at Saylorville in the summer time and are the reason we came to the RGV this winter.

I have had wonderful birding experiences here on my weekend morning walks along the levee and into the State Park that abuts the RV park. Last weekend was a big birding weekend for me in general. I saw my first Altamira Oriole and Tropical Kingbird as I walked along the levee last Saturday morning. I was lazy that morning and took my binoculars but didn’t feel like hauling my camera along. Figures, I’d see two new birds in perfect light and not have a camera to capture the moment.

Later that afternoon, we wandered in to McAllen on an entirely different mission and ended up at Best Buy where I bought a new camera. I’ve been and SLR snob for years. I have been whining about not having quite enough lens for some of the wildlife shots I take. The problem lies in that, when I go lens shopping, I am too cheap to pay the big bucks for the lens I want and don’t want to haul the weight around. At an average of 8lbs, about 14” long and around  $2k, it’s easy to be indicisive. For some reason a Canon point and shoot caught my eye that afternoon. I picked it up aimed it at a box on a top shelf in the far corner of the store and was able to read the label. It had my attention. I started looking closer at it and found it had 4k resolution and was WiFi enabled. I was totally in awe of the advancement of digital technology. Still, I was having trouble with the fact that it was a simple point and shoot. It was on sale for $500.00 and I had a big birding day planned for the next day. Champ was all for me buying it. It weighed all of 2 lbs. I decided I would test drive in the next morning and if I didn’t like it, I’d bring it back on Monday.

We set out early Sunday morning on John’s bird tour.  When I pulled it out to take a picture of a Crested Cara Cara sitting several hundred yards in the outfield, I was a little embarrassed as the serious photographers pulled out their 10-pound monsters. That faded quickly as I shot a decent picture ( despite the crappy light)  of the bird and had lens to spare!

Crested Cara Cara

 By the end of the day I was in love with my new camera and didn’t once complain that I wish I had a little more lens. I actually pulled it back several times. I saw and photographed several species that were new for me. Most I will not see anywhere else but South Texas. One, the Savanah Sparrow is a cute little bird that can see at Saylorville now that I know when and what to look for.

Greater Yellowlegs

Reddish Egret

Roseated Spoonbill

Savanah Sparrows

White Tailed Kite

Loggerhead Shrike

Loggerhead prey impaled and awaiting dinner time 

As my home state freezes 5 feet deep into the soil and air temperature struggles to get above freezing, I sit on my patio in my shorts and flip flops and watch beautiful birds in the trees around us. My favorite the Great Kiskadee and the Vermillion Fly Catchers call from the live oaks. A Kestral sits on the top of the dead Palm across the road every night. Harris’s Hawks sit on the wires and one never knows what one will see on a walk across the levee and into the State Park next door. My new compact camera will be on my hip every time. Good things do indeed come in small packages.  

Until next time…

Painting Numbers On Sites

When we accepted the job at a private RV Park we knew it would be a different experience from working at a Federal or State Park. We’ve been here two months now and have found we like it quite a lot. We love the amenities and since we are both working for the site we only work a day and a half each per week, leaving ample time to take advantage of them.

As we get to know our fellow workcampers, we have found that most of them are experienced working for private parks. Only one other couple has worked for a federal recreation area and that happens to be our work  companions from Saylorville Lake who happened by pure coincidence to end up, not only at the same park as us this year, but just a few sites away.

The main take away from our conversations has been to absolutely insist on a detailed written job description along with a photograph of your site. Many use Google Earth to get a current picture. Case in point, the Maintenance Department that Champ and Paul are working with has undergone a lot of turnover with work campers this season. When Paul got hired here, they told him his main job for the winter would be painting new numbers on the over 1200 sites here. Sounds like a pretty nice gig! When he and Champ met with the maintenance supervisor the first day, he told them it wasn’t a priority and that their primary job was to keep the park looking nice. Most days that means, curbside garbage collection. Other days there are light maintenance jobs, power washing, picking up the pieces of palm bark and fronds, otherwise known as “Palm Poop”. You get the picture.   A couple days a month Champ spends the day in the street sweeper. His very first job as a teenager was working a garbage route. He jokes now that after a long career as a crane operator, then 26 years at the Department of Transportation, he has come full circle back to collecting trash. He even got to ride on the back of the compactor truck the other day. So far, they have been tasked with repainting the number on exactly one site. Only because the resident complained they weren’t getting their Amazon deliveries because the site number was worn off.

Early on, one of the maintenance workers left because he hated the work. The new guy Jim, showed up and announced, he had been hired to paint numbers on all the sites. We tried not to snicker and smiled to ourselves the next week when he joined Paul on trash duty. He transferred to the I.T. department when they lost a tech a couple of weeks ago and John showed up in the park to join the maintenance team. You guessed it,  he told us he had been hired to paint numbers on the sites! We didn’t even try to stifle the chuckles that time. Apparently, the volunteer coordinator and the head of maintenance are not on the same page in terms of what it means to work in maintenance. The standing joke here is that painting numbers on sites must be code for picking up garbage. The moral of the story is, get it in writing. I’m sure the park's job description, if they even have one, has more bullet points than painting site numbers.

All that aside, we are having a pretty good experience. The weather is awesome. We like the area and are taking part in many of the activities and taking advantage of the pool and hot tub. I'm getting plenty of opportunity to go birding and have seen a number of species for the first time. Many of which I will not see anywhere but in the Rio Grande Valley.  We are meeting many new people and have formed a group of friends here in the park, some workcampers, some not. We’ll pursue other private park jobs in future winters and put into practice some of the job seeking and negotiating tactics that other, more experienced private park volunteers use to be sure that their experience is a positive one. The federal park jobs always have very detailed job descriptions and some have what is called a ‘Volunteer Bill of Rights’ that detail expectations and responsibilities of both the work campers and the park rangers who supervise them. Private parks don’t do as good a job with that part. We have learned from others that Google will often yield some sources of reviews of past 

workcampers at various places. Reviews should always be taken with a grain of salt of course but if there is a pattern of bad experience, it will likely show up in repetitive negative feedback. After all, review writers are more often motivated by bad experiences, than good. 

In the meantime, I’ll be working in the office and the guys will be ‘painting numbers on sites’. In between we’ll lounge around the pool, on someone’s patio or at a card table somewhere in the park, while we watch the blizzards and freezing temperatures up north in our new feeds a safe distance 1500 miles south of home.

Until next time…