Sunday, February 5, 2023

 I dunno what to tell ya. 

If these people want to just show up and move in?  As long as I at least talked to them on the phone first? It's fine by me.  Exactly what happened today.  Dude calls - How much, do you have 30 amp hookups, etc.  Yes.  He says he's a couple hours out - this is long term stuff here - so I told him he could check it out first, if he likes it, call me and I'll come over there.

Well, I thought nothing further of it, if they show, they show, if they don't, they don't, I'm not stressing ove this stuff.  

Later on, I got a notification from HipCamp. That's a venue where people who have any kind of place to park your RV or pitch a tent get on the platform and say, hey! We gotta place for you!  Well why not?  It actually costs me less than the campground software I'm using now, including the credit card processing fee.  Hipcamp is pretty cool, actually.  It was my first customer with them.  Hipcamp sends you a text message notifying you of the reservation and all the details, then at the bottom it says something like "If you wish to communicate with them, you can do so by replying here!".

I like that, it goes through their system to deliver messages both ways. Well, after a texting discussion, I waited about an hour and then went over there. It isn't actually surprising now to me that the first guy that called today had picked a spot and moved in. Nice guy, got out a checkbook, another pipeline worker.  Says he lives - well far away, enough that making a trip everyday is not desirable. 

He said he came to my place, looked around, went to 2 places closer, was not happy with them and came back to my place.  Okay!  His statement was the spots at those 2 places were both muddy and sites crammed in together. "You know, when you put your slideouts out, they are almost touching your neighbor's slideouts?".  

Yup, I know. I didn't say that to him, I just thought about all the research I had done before deciding to make wider lots versus attempting to save money on utilities and gravel by having them scrunched in. A LOT of research.  It may seem like a no-brainer, but there are still people building new parks that are - cramming them in like sardines.  

I'm up to number 6 long term now.  If the other guy shows this coming week, I'll be half full.  Regardless, I'm more than paying the bills now.  And if I could just get more people to come in for overnights?  I wouldn't have to go back to trucking.

I went out to the highway, figured I'd wait a minute and see if they were going to show up - however, they already paid in advance.  I followed them into the park and we got into a lengthy discussion. 

You see, they just came from Fort Meyers, Florida- they normally fly in down there but they said the lady's sister and family were sleeping on cots in what was left of the garage of their home.  They showed pics.  You know those news stories about boats in mangrove trees? Yup, that family had had one end up 20 feet or so off the ground, they had pics to prove it.  They're just overnighters, but I am glad for the business. 

 I'm hoping these people leave me a good review, they were very happy about my place and informed me it was "on the upper end of the scale" of how nice it was compared to other Hipcamp places they have stayed. 

Well it's been a long day.  I was 2 towns over - getting the cheaper version of a cornhole game that Dick's sporting goods has.  My website says I have it, I'll just set it up somewhere and if people want to play it, great. In fact, I'll be putting it somewhere near the community fire pit.  

Trying to get those - railroad ties - cut up has been a ridiculous exercise in futility.  The miter saw has a maxium lift setting, it won't go high enough to get the tie into it's cutting area. I would have had to take off a safety device, which I actually would have been happy to do, but I didn't have a hex wrench to get it off with.  

I actually was able to get a few cut off with the chainsaw - and then gave up on it.  Nonsense, I had no idea how difficult that was going to be, I wouldn't have bought the darn things if I HAD known, or asked Lowe's to cut them up for me. 

I'm not unhappy right now. Every time someone moves in there, I get a little more relief. Like, ok, this might actually work out for me.  

 Friday late-morning Typical morning when there is no work.  It was, I should say, until the new guy called.  "There's nothing wron...