The calm before the storm

Since the reservation system canceled everyone’s reservations until tomorrow, the park is real quiet and relatively empty today. Tomorrow will be a different story though. We have a bunch coming in tomorrow and the rest will be arriving Friday for the weekend. Out of 171 sites, 88 are closed for maintenance so that will keep the crowds down a bit but still we are going from about 25 campers to 83 in 2 days. Check in time should be fun. Hopefully they all don’t show up at once. We are supposed to have great weather this weekend so that will be a good thing.

San Diego Fires

Here is a link to some San Diego fire related videos.
http://www.youtube.com/signonsandiego

Message Board

I have just added a message board to our website. You can go there by clicking on the “QuickTopic” link in the left column. I don’t know if this will be something we will use or not, but I thought we would give it a try. If it catches on, I will add more topics as time goes on. This is a very simple Message Board to use. There is no need to register or sign in to read and post messages.

All clean

I finished the cleaning job today. We are all clean again. From the top of the motorhome to the mats on the ground around the motorhome. Even the car is all clean again. Mentally I fell much better. Physically I am a bit sore.

Rain

From hot, dry, windy, and fires to rain. Well more like drizzle. We had just enough rain today to really mess things up. With all the ash, things are a mess. I went out today and hosed things off just to keep the ash from really sticking to everything from the moisture. Tomorrow is supposed to be back to warm and sunny so it would have baked the wet ash right into everything. By tomorrow I should have everything cleaned up again.
We have only a couple of evacuees left since most are cleared to head home. Things should get back to normal at the park now. Well…if you want to call it normal.

Today for instance, we had a complaint from a gentleman that last night the campers next to him were dousing a football with gasoline, setting it on fire, and kicking it around the campsite. We talked to them this morning and informed them that they will probably get a visit from a Ranger. I took a drive by the site and since they are all minors, they were pouring all their beer out on the ground. It just so happened the Ranger was right behind me and spotted the same thing. They were immediately evicted.

Dirty

As I stated things are improving here. I spent the day yesterday cleaning up a bit but not too much. There is still a lot of fall out of ash from the fires left in the air. Soon after cleaning up, everything is covered in a lite coat of ash. I will just have to wait for a few days before I can really clean things up.

Landen, our Grandson, came to spend a few days since school has been canceled for the rest of the week. He got a chance to see the horses we have in camp this morning. The horses have left now since they were cleared to go back to their homes. The horse owners were so appreciative that we were able to accommodate them. It was the least we could do under the circumstances. Their vet even brought them donuts and coffee this morning and checked on the horses.

Cleanup

Things are looking better here at the campground. Much of San Diego is still on fire and not contained. There are still evacuations going on but a lot of people have been allowed to go back to their homes. I spent much of the day cleaning the ash off everything but am reluctant to spend too much effort since there is still ash in the air. The wind has turned around and is now blowing the ash and smoke in that has blown out to sea. There has been some evacuees coming into the campground but not as many as I expected.

We even have a number of horses in the park that were evacuated. Although this is not a horse park, we are doing our best to accommodate them. For some reason the reservation system canceled all reservations until the end of the month. This is really causing problems for us as people come in expecting to have reservations.

Better air

The smoky skies mad a nice view over the ocean this evening. Things are getting better here in San Diego. The winds have dropped and the humidity is increasing. Things are still bad but where we are the air quality has increased considerably.

I guess Jack-o-lanterns get old and crotchety too.

This is a photo of the Pumpkin my Grandson carved just 3 days ago

Now this is what it turned into after the dry hot weather we have had in the last 3 days.

Getting better

The winds are subsiding, changing direction and the humidity is going up. That is good news. The bad news, it will still take some time to get everything under control. One of the fires is still threatening us, however we still have not received any evacuation notice and hopefully, if things continue to improve, we will not need to. The air has cleared considerably here and we are getting a slight ocean breeze. It is a shame we have had this nice warm weather with clear skies and haven’t been able to enjoy it because of the fire threat, smoke, and ash.
We are not even close to being out of the woods yet but it is looking better.

We are still here

CLICK HERE FOR FIRE UPDATES

We got a fairly good night sleep last night. We have not been evacuated as yet. There still is a possibility since the fire threatening us is 0% contained. They have evacuated the area 2 towns south of us and 2 towns north of us. The good side is, the winds have subsides and there is even a weak onshore wind which will blow the fire away from us. This allows the fire aircraft to get in the air to help fight the fires by air. They are predicting the winds and heat to continue thru tomorrow. The air quality is still bad and even though the wind changes direction it will bring the smoke over the ocean back in. Everything is covered in ash and I still wear my particle mask whenever I go outside.

Filtered sun

Here is a picture of the smoke filtered sun reflecting on the waves. You can see the smoke over the ocean as well. With all the evacuations in the area, I am surprised the campground has not filled up. They have done a really good job of providing lots of shelters all around San Diego County. Susan is not going to get any sleep tonight.

We are packed and ready to go

The yellow dot is where we are. The fire is burning in the direction of the smoke blown by the winds.

We have not been evacuated, however directly across the lagoon from us, they are under a voluntary evacuation. They are expecting one of the fires to burn down the canyon to the ocean. I doubt we will be in any danger but if it does jump the lagoon we are in big trouble. This park has a lot of vegetation and it is all dry and ready to burn. If anything, we will be getting a lot more smoke and ash than we are right now, and it is pretty bad now. Anyone that is outside is wearing particle masks and some sort of eye protection. To be honest with you, if we didn’t have a reason to be here, we would be out of here right now.

San Diego is on fire

View out the front window

We are experiencing major fires all over San Diego County today. They are saying these are the worst fires in San Diego’s history. These photos were taken at 10:00a. As you can see the sun is totally blocked out by smoke and ash. There is not a cloud in the sky, it is all smoke and ash. We have had the motorhome closed up and the air conditioner on since yesterday. The wind has died down for now and I don’t know what will happen when it comes back up. It may blow more smoke and ash into the area or it may help blow it out of the area. We have contacted the State Park campgrounds north of here to see if they can take some of our campers that are having trouble with the air quality. This will leave sites available to evacuees in our park. This is supposed to go on for a couple of days.

Bluster Day

Today was warm and windy. It was a perfect day for the Grandson to fly his kite. It is also a perfect day for fires. With the dry Southern California land, fires strike easy and it seems when it gets hot and windy, the fires begin. The fires are miles away but we got covered in smoke. I had to close up the motorhome and turn on the air conditioner to keep the smoke out. Landen also got to do a little pumpkin carving today.

He really didn’t want to pull the guts out of the pumpkin but I told him that’s part of the job and it needs to be done. He sure looks forward to coming down to the beach. There is always something fun to do.

Business as unusual

Not much out of the ordinary going on here lately. Now I don’t mean not much going on, I mean not much UNUSUAL. There is always some sort of excitement. Anyway, the weather has been great. We had a couple of days of drizzle, which cleaned the motorhome for me. This week is supposed to be in the 80s to 90s. Can’t beat that. Today is my Saturday off. Saturdays are on a rotation basis with the 3 camp hosts so we get every 3rd off. Since I “work” Friday mornings and Tuesday afternoons, this gives me about 4 days off. The State of California came through and got us another cart so we don’t have to share the 1 we had. Since the other 2 hosts are close to each other and I am the furthest they will share one and let me have the other full time.

Home from work

We don’t have the luxury to go home from work. We live at work.

With this sign in front of our motorhome, we must be available pretty much 24 hours a day. Fortunately most people respect us as ordinary people and not someone that is there for their every need 24 hours. I had one lady come up one morning and tell me that last night there were some noisy campers at 1:00a. She didn’t want to disturb us so she put up with it. I appreciate that.

Infant mortality

Infant mortality is a term used to describe a failure in the early stage of a products life. As I mentioned a few days ago, we upgraded our phone and aircard. Everything went well and worked right out of the box. Well until today, that is. Our aircard decided to roll over and die. I tried everything I knew to troubleshoot the problem and hopefully get it working again. No Go. So I called Verizon tech support. These guys are good and they aren’t even from India. Well Patrick ran me through some of the things I already did and a few I didn’t. We finally determined the card was bad. Fortunately the Verizon store is close by so I grabbed the card and headed on down the road. After explaining that Patrick and I determined the card was bad, the Verizon person said Patrick should have ordered me a new card and I would have to wait until it came in the mail. No, I replied. Patrick said to head on over to the store and get a new card. “We don’t have replacements”, she replied. I know you have cards, I just bought this one the other day. Finally she led me over to the service counter where she went back and brought me out a new card. She then asked me if I had the package it came in. I said I just brought the card in and after a few seconds of blank stairs I told her to just take the new card out of the box and exchange it with the old card. Then I asked her if she could test it for me and her answer was they don’t have any way to test it. I took one step back and looked up to make sure it said Service then said, never mind I’ll test it myself. After getting back and inserting the card it would not connect, said it wasn’t authorized. Another call to Verizon Tech. Seems the girl at the Verizon store didn’t remove the old card out of the system and add the new card. Again the Verizon Tech guy knew his stuff. Anyway we got the card working and as you can see we are back online again.

What happened here

I try to shake my fire extinguishers at least once every few months. Bouncing around in a motorhome tends to pack the powder down and it is advisable to loosen up the powder once in a while by shaking. I have 1 placed near all 3 exits, front door, side door and the bedroom emergency exit window. This is usually an uneventful chore. This time while attending to the one in the bedroom I noticed something amiss. It appears this extinguisher has been used. The first thing I noticed was the powder coming out of the nozzle while shaking it. This appears to be residual powder. I checked the gauge and noticed it was low (in the recharge range). How could this be, I wondered. Then I noticed the pin in the handle (to prevent accidental discharge) was missing. No it didn’t just fall out because it is normally held in with a plastic band to keep it in place. The really strange thing is I looked and looked and could not find the plastic band or the pin so it’s not like the band broke and the pin simply fell out. I asked Susan if she knew anything about this and she said no. We tried to remember the last time we left the motorhome unattended such as at a service center. I know I have shaken these extinguishers since the last time we left the motorhome anywhere. It’s a mystery.

Things have been quiet around here. We have had our usual minor incidences but nothing worth noting.


The thing I don’t understand is, even though our section is closed for maintenance and they have placed barricades across the road, we still see vehicles cruise through here occasionally. Either they are blind, can’t read or don’t think the signs and barricades pertain to them. It is amazing how full the campground has been this time of year. But after all, it is Southern California and the weather has been just great. I am sure it will slow down in a few weeks.

All alone

We are now all alone here at the Campground. They closed off our end for their annual maintenance. The other half of the campground is open but there is no one in site from our spot. Things have been pretty mellow around here lately. For the most part everyone has been behaving.
Susan and I went to the Verizon store and upgraded our Aircard and Phone. The new card is at least twice as fast with downloads and about 5 times faster with uploads. We got Susan a new Razor phone, which she is happy with. It had all the wiz bangs such as mp3 player and camera, which we will probably never use.

Blustery day

Looked like rain this morning but it never came. Finally about 10:00A the sun came out and it was sunny the rest of the day, however it was pretty windy, and a bit chilly.

Perfect weather for Sail Boarding.

Tomorrow is supposed to be better. This place cleared out about noon but soon filled up again when the 100+ weekend campers started to arrive. I sure hope they are all well behaved.

I got one more morning tomorrow and then I am off duty for a couple of days. Our Grandson came down to spend the night with us tonight so tomorrow I will be playing ball, scooter riding, kite flying, playing on the beach, and other kid stuff.

Been quiet

It has been relatively quiet for the last couple of days. After the first day on the job I was beginning to wonder. All might change starting tomorrow though since it is the start of the weekend. We have over 100 campers coming in tomorrow. I am glad I will be working the morning shift because come 2:00p (check in time) it is going to be a mad house, then again in the afternoon when the others get off work. I will most likely head on up to the Kiosk to see if they need any help though. That’s just the way I am. Maybe since the weather looks a little iffy some will stay home…I doubt it.

I bought the coolest thing today. Susan does not like my digital camera because I take lots of pictures and download them into the computer. She doesn’t know how to view them in the computer yet so she never gets to see them.

Well I bought a Digital Photo Frame. This is a display screen that is framed just like a photo and it will hold about 150 pictures that can be displayed in a slideshow fashion. I can rotate the pictures as I take them so Susan can view them whenever she likes. It just sits on top of the TV cabinet like a framed picture.

First day on the job

Well, today was the first day back on the job as Campground Hosts this year, And OH WHAT A DAY. If it were our first time at this, I would be packing and moving on out of here. We had someone race out of the campground about 80 mph and on the way out hit a vehicle and almost hit another and never stopped. We had 3 homeless drunks that got into a fight, 2 went to the hospital and the other tried to catch a bus but instead got into a fight with the bus driver. He went to jail. The Ranger evicted the whole lot then later this evening the 2 came back. Apparently they don’t understand eviction. We had items stolen out of sites in broad daylight, they usually wait until the cover of darkness. We had people occupying sites and refusing to pay. All this and it was just our first day on the job. This should be a fun year.

Settled in for 3 months

We are back in Southern California for our Camp Host jobs. We got settled in this morning and went around meeting the others and getting reacquainted with some we have worked with before. We will be here until the end of the year. This year should be as interesting as the last 2 have been.