Memorial Day Weekend

Memorial Day weekend was a busy one. It's been non-stop busy since Thursday afternoon; and, at this point, I'm running on fumes. I've worked almost 70 hours since the 24th and haven't had a day off yet. 

I'm FUCKING EXHAUSTED!

Hopefully I'll be able to take it fairly easy on Tuesday and just finish out my 40 hours then and take all of Wednesday/Thursday off.

As I sat down to type this I got a call telling me that the guy taking my truck would be here sometime tomorrow. Nothing like letting me know at the last minute to really round out the week. I now have to scramble to clean out the truck to make sure it's ready for him to pick up whenever he decides to arrive. I guess tomorrow he's going to call and give me a smaller window of time for when he will be here. How considerate, right?! As if I have nothing better to do with my day than to make sure I am here with the truck and wait for him to arrive. I LOVE IT!

Saturday's Finders

Anywho, that abrupt little conversation is really just getting on my nerves right now, but let's not let that overshadow the most excellent weekend I had here at Beaver Lake. As much as I enjoy the maintenance aspect of this job, I genuinely love working with the visitors- especially the kids. One of my favorite things about this little park is that the kids here are actually kids. They run around the park, ride bikes, make up games, catch frogs, and not a single one is sitting around on phones or electronics at all and I absolutely love that. The highlight of every week here is the medallion hunt. I make these little tree cookie necklaces that say Beaver Lake and then the year in some form. Then, on Saturday mornings, I take four or five and hide them together somewhere in the park. Throughout the day, I post fun little clues that start out pretty vague and slowly get a little more specific as the day goes on. The kids LIVE for the medallion hunts every summer and will spend the entire day combing the park for them. The follow me around when they get stuck and try to get more clues out of me and boy are they persistent. It took them five clues and almost the entire day to find Saturday's medallions, but they were so excited when they found them (you could hear their excited screams all throughout the park). Being that this was a holiday weekend, I his a special medallion for Memorial Day on Sunday (per the kids' request as many of them were leaving early on Monday).  I watched all of the usual finders walk right past the medallion several times, but these two first timers went right for it. They are clearly masters of the hunt or have some medallion hunting super powers. 

Memorial Day Medallion Hunt Clues

Saturday's Clues

Memorial Day Finders

There were so many familiar faces in the park this weekend and everything went smoothly. My little arsonists are getting the hang of things and I got so many compliments from campers about how amazing Sebastian and Mike (our camp host) are and how clean and safe our park felt. I am so happy to have received some good feedback in my first weekend on the job. Things are slowly starting to sort out on my end and I'm feeling more comfortable in my new role every day. One of the arsonists is off to an interpretive training this week and my boss is going to be visiting the park this Friday (no pressure). Hopefully a lot more of my questions will be answered during his visit and I'll be even more comfortable with what I'm doing. There are definitely some kinks that need ironed out, but all of that will get taken care of with time. I'm trying really hard not to stress about little things and especially not about things I can't really control. I keep telling myself that I'm doing the best I can and if I'm not trained on something, it isn't my fault and it can wait until I am. 

All in all, I'm positive this will be a great summer. 

HOW NEAT IS THAT?!