August 22, 2003 KOA update/evaluation
We’ve noted things slowing considerably in the campground, which turned out to bode ill for us. At lunch, the General Manager said he needed to lay off two couples and we were to be one. After our initial shock, we actually started feeling quite pleased to be able to leave early.
This has seemed to be a bad luck summer for us and the start to our fulltiming lifestyle. First was my leg injury, which necessitated nearly a month of healing and caused me to miss more than a week’s work. Marc then got very sick with strep throat and bronchitis, costing us a doctor’s visit, prescriptions and more lost work. Then he spread it to me and I missed more time from work. To add insult to injury, during my last ride in to the park, I was stung on the cheek by a bee and that half of my face swelled for nearly a week.
Adding to our discomfort, we think because they felt proprietary about being here from the beginning of the season, and we were late arrivals and “newbies”, we were never really accepted by most of the other workampers, who effectively formed a clique entirely excluding us. Despite having not given them cause by anything we said, some would not even give us a “Good morning” in passing nor acknowledge our presence in any fashion. We found this entirely bewildering and terribly immature to say the least. It was as if because we hadn’t been here for the season’s opening, then we shouldn’t be here at all.
Unlike our last workamping experience in the San Juans, where we made lasting friendships and enjoyed camaraderie around the campfire, we have found the majority of workampers here to be petty, self-centered, arrogant, and boorish. We’re elated to be leaving them behind and hope our paths never cross again. It’s a harsh ending to something we had been so excited about at the beginning. In addition, management’s style was not to our liking either. We’ll just leave it at that, saying we look forward to moving onward and upward and that this was definitely a learning experience. We now consider our early lay off a blessing in disguise….
Next week, some friends of Marc’s are coming all the way from California with a Harley to ride the park with us. Our last day of work will be Tuesday the 26th; we’ll enjoy our friends for two days then pull up stakes on Friday. We’ll try and add a postscript as to what’s next!