Thursday, January 14, 2010

Campground Volunteering

1/11 - Dennis woke up with a slight head cold today - bummer! Nancy went to the weekly info meeting alone as he did not want to expose a room full of people. Took a late morning walk in the desert and then went to Wal-Mart for some needed supplies. This trip was to the super Wal-Mart, but right nearby it there is a Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market. This is a grocery store only - never saw one of those before. These stores are 15 miles from the campground (yes, we are out in the boonies!) so these shopping trips to eat up a chunk of time. We can get into downtown Tucson in 20-30 minutes.


Spent the rest of the day just chilling out and watching TV - we have become addicted to NCIS reruns.


1/12 - Slept in this AM and then went to the volunteer workers meeting. One way this campground keeps the rates reasonable is using volunteer labor to accomplish a lot of fix-up and upgrade projects. There are a lot of guys here with a lot of skills and looking for things to do, so it works out well. The major project this week is building a new library in an unused building. Nancy & Dennis and Curt (another camper) are taking the lead in building the library shelves, others are doing major modifications to the building - tearing out a shower, changing exterior doors, etc. Curt had another obligation this afternoon so Nancy & Dennis took measurements and laid out the shelving to determine how much we need. Once we get our materials list put together, and get approval from Pericles (the campground owner) for the expenditure, we will use our truck with the deck to go and pick up the lumber, then we will start in building the shelves. Other groups are rebuilding a bridge over the fish ponds; building a new set of mailboxes for the 240 RV's here (Nancy is also working with the mailbox crew); building a new shower house; etc. Kind of fun and a good way to get to know people.


Later in the afternoon we made a run to Trader Joe's for some necessities. The only stores in the Tucson area are on the NE side of the city and we are on the SW. One nice thing is that we can drive up through Tucson Mountain Park and over Gates Pass to get to the north side of the city, so it is a scenic drive. Traffic was nasty on the NE side though, guess we need to make the next trip over there earlier in the morning!


Took our daily walk in the desert right at sunset this afternoon. Once again it is surprising how different things look at different times of day. Still shirtsleeve weather here, sunny and in the mid seventies every day.


1/13 - A nice walk in the desert again this AM and then a late breakfast. We met with Curt on our library shelves project at lunch time, thinking we were going to go pick up the materials and get started, but he had another commitment. He is going to price the materials based on Dennis’ calculations and then we will get approval for the purchase. So we ended up just goofing off this afternoon. Nancy did some laundry and Dennis finished cleaning the outside of the truck and trailer. Went and had an early dinner at Papa Johns Ice Cream Parlor which is in a small shopping center near here. A bit overcast this morning, but it cleared off and turned into a beautiful afternoon in the 70’s. We sure are enjoying this great weather! Forecast is for cooler and rain next week though.


1/14 - Off to Tucson Yoga first thing in the AM for a “Gentle Yoga” class. A bit different than the ones we go to at home, a little slower and relaxing, but still a good workout.


After yoga we went back to the Fourth Ave shopping district and walked through the area looking at the shops, a fair number of head shops and tattoo parlors. Browsed through Antigone Books. We should be prohibited from walking into independent bookstores, at least this time we got out with minimal damage to the old budget, but we already have a shelf full of un-read books in one of the new cabinets we had built last fall. Had lunch at World Wide Wrappers, then we stopped into Food Conspiracy Cooperative Grocery. What a great find! A nice (and nicely stocked) natural foods and organic grocery. Found a number of items that Nancy has been unable to find elsewhere in the area. As an added benefit it is close to where we are going to be going every Thursday for yoga. A lot easier to get to than the Trader Joe’s that are all on the far NE side of the city.


Back at Desert Trails Nancy headed off to help paint material for the new mailbox project while Dennis got together with Curt and his wife (who is the campground volunteer librarian) to finalize design and materials calculations for the shelving. Spent the rest of the afternoon just puttering around and watched a Blackhawks game in the evening.


Another beautiful day here, clear blue sky and 67 degrees.

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