9/30: Lake George Escape Camping Resort: Just 9 days left here and we'll start moving again! These past few days were spent with some doctor appointments, and cleaning. The Jeep and motorhome both got a very thorough cleaning. Unlike other workampers here, we didn't get much sap from the pine trees. It felt pretty good to not have any schedule to stick to. We could sleep in and do what we wanted, when we wanted. Kind of reminded us of the days of traveling before we started workamping. The trees are changing colors, but not as quickly as we hoped. Next week, we plan to take our last little trip in the area. We'll be driving across Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, and probably into the lower part of Maine. Our mission is to view some scenic parts of these states, hopefully with the brilliant fall colors of the trees. But we have our doubts for the colors. It appears we'll be a couple weeks too early.
I may have mentioned earlier that we've started our job search for next season. Many of the resorts and campgrounds will close soon and they like to have their work staff for next season already in place. We also like to know in advance where we'll be workamping, to help plan our route. A couple months ago, we applied with a popular hotel and campground located just outside of Bryce Canyon in Utah. At first, everything looked good with a positive response from them. Since then, I've tried to get more of a response from them by Emailing them with some questions. After not getting an answer to these 3 Emails from them in over 5 weeks, we decided we needed to start looking elsewhere. We sent out another inquiry and got an immediate response. Unfortunately, they only paid $5.15 an hour, which is too low for us. So we sent out 2 more inquiries. We got an immediate response from one of these employers in South Dakota. Everything looked good with them and we decided to submit an application. As soon as we sat down to fill out the forms, we received a phone call from them. After a short chat, they got a couple references from us so they could "get a head start". We Emailed off our applications. The next day, our managers at Lake George Escape got the phone call for reference checks on us. Hopefully, everything will be firmed up soon and we'll make plans to head to Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota for next summer. We never did get a response from our other inquiry. I know potential employers are busy, but if they advertise for seasonal help, at least they can acknowledge our questions and inquiries. When we applied here at Lake George Escape, we received immediate replies. This led to telephone interviews in a very short time. There's plenty of workamping positions out there. It's just a matter of finding one that meets our needs. Unfortunately, many potential employers will loose getting some excellent employees by their lack of response.
9/22: Lake George Escape Camping Resort: Bonjour.We took advantage of another short work week and headed to Montreal, Quebec, Canada
The 1000 Island Region is actually composed of over 1800 islands on the St. Lawrence River. Half of the islands are Canadian, and the other half the United States. To be classified as an island, the plot of land above water must remain above water all year and have 2 living trees on it. Almost all the islands are privately owned, with people's summer houses being built on them. We saw one island where the house took up 95% of the island, with almost no remaining land left on it. Besides the natural beauty of the area, one of the main attractions is "Heart Island", home of the "Boldt Castle". George Boldt made his wealth in the late 1800's, managing/profit sharing the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. He commissioned for a six-story, 127 room castle be built on Heart Island as a valentine's gift for his wife. Over 300 workers worked on it for over 3 years, until Mrs. Boldt died unexpectedly in 1903. Construction stopped, and the castle went to ruins for over 70 years. In 1977, the 1000 Island Bridge Authority acquired the island and has slowly been restoring and finishing the castle. It's a showcase of wealth from the early 1900's. While in the 1000 Islands area, we also visited a new winery, only 2 years old. We wish the 1000 Islands Winery the best of luck, as their wine is pretty good.
9/16: Lake George Escape Camping Resort: A lot has happened these past couple of weeks. First, we celebrated our one-year anniversary for being on the road. On September 8th, 2004, we closed on our house and officially became RV fulltimers. It's been a GREAT year. I've written a couple articles on our first year. We've documented our expenses for the first year, and wrote a small retrospective on our first year.
Our fellow workers are starting to pull out and go their separate ways. Some friends moved their 'stuff' to the site they are going to stay in next year. So we moved everything over to this new site (for us) to help guard their 'stuff' from guests. We love this new site, as it's large and full of soft grass. We didn't know what we were missing. We've hosted a few get-togethers around the campfire. There's much more room and we don't feel hidden away. We've also started our fall work schedule, which gives us Monday - Thursday off. For the next month, we'll only work 3-day weekends. But everyone was called into the lodge last Thursday. The owners made the big announcement that they've sold this campground. A large corporation, Equity Lifestyle Properties and Encore RV Parks bought the private owners out. Of course, all the workers are now concerned for the future of how workampers will be hired and treated here. We're not too concerned, as we don't plan to return next year. But many of them do. This company advertises for workampers throughout the nation, but doesn't pay any wages. They want workers to come and work a few days a week for a free site, and that's it. Out of curiosity, we'll have to keep an eye on this place and see what happens.
When Larry was researching this lifestyle and trying to get Connie motivated for it, he asked her "What first destination did she want?" She made a list,
Our first impression of the falls was that they were smaller than we imagined. Although not as big as we expected, they were huge. We were most impressed with the amount of water going over the falls. Contrary to what we had thought, the water flows from the USA into Canada. We learned that the water comes from Lake Erie (USA), down the Niagara River, over either the Canadian Horseshoe Falls, or over the American Bridal Veil and Rainbow Falls. The water continues down the Niagara River gorge, and eventually ends up in Lake Ontario (Canada). While we were visiting, the rushing water was at it's highest level for the year. Even though 1/3 of the water is diverted for power, enough water rushes over the falls to fill a million bathtubs per
After leaving Niagara Falls, we headed to the Finger Lakes region of New York. This is a series of long, thin lakes. We were surprised that the area was also covered with wineries. We concentrated our day around Seneca Lake, visiting a few wineries. Of course, we know how Connie enjoys wine tasting trips. If she had her way, we could have spent a week on this one lake visiting the 42 wineries. This doesn't count the other wineries on the other lakes! At one winery, Connie got her picture taken a few times sampling wine. In a couple months, she may be pictured in the Finger Lakes Wine Gazette! It was a great week, and another of our dream destinations visited. It's back to work for the next few days, then we plan to head to Montreal, Canada, and the 1000 Islands area of New York for next week.
9/4: Lake George Escape Camping Resort: Happy Labor Day! Being a holiday weekend, this place went crazy again. The past week was pretty quiet in the park, which was nice. But came Friday, we had almost 400 campsites being filled. By Saturday night, all 600 campsites in this resort were full. Overall, the guests were in a pretty good mood. The beautiful weather sure makes a difference. Even though, we did have a couple days of heavy rain left over from the Katrina Hurricane. But gas prices have reached $3.69 a gallon!!! We don't like the higher prices, but it won't slow us down too much (yet). We're hoping prices will drop after the holiday, and before we head south to Florida. Fellow workers have already started to pull out. The first couple left today. It's sweet sorrow, because we'll miss our new friends, yet we're all glad to get moving again. But we're here for another month, so we'll see most of them leave before us. As we enter our last month here, we'll only be working 3-day weekends. We're making plans to head to Niagara Falls next week for 4 days.
Yesterday, we headed down to Albany, NY for the day. We were a bit surprised how quiet New York's capitol was on a holiday. We guessed they all headed to the mountains for the weekend. We did a short walking tour of downtown and along the Hudson river. But our main goal was to visit the New York state museum. We had heard about their September 11, 2001 exhibit. We spent quite a bit of time there, reading about the events, watching movies of this tragedy, and looking at various items recovered from the devastation. Although very interesting, it was also very solemn. The rest of the museum was also very tasteful, presenting a variety of information on New York and it's history. Yet, it wasn't shown in a boring manner. Not too much information to get boring, and shown in interesting exhibits. Too bad we forgot to bring our camera, so no pictures today.