When you are on vacation, all the dull day to day chores are put on hold. You say, I'll get to that when I get home. Well for those of us that live on the road, that is not an option. We need to weave in the everyday chores with our travels and sometimes that is a challenge. Over the past months, we have gotten alot of questions about these various tasks, so I will try to address those all hear in hopes it might help someone else who is considering this lifestyle, or who is just wondering.

​First, mail. How do we get mail if we are always traveling, especially since we no longer have a sticks and bricks home?  Well there are actually several different options. Some folks use a relatives address and arrange to get it from them. Some use a P.O. Box and others use a mail forwarding company. We have chose the later. Since we have decided to establish residency in FL, we chose a mail forwarding company there, St. Brendans Isle, and they also are very helpful in helping to establish residency and change license, etc.  So far we have been very pleased with their service. They are a very popular company with RVers but they still have a personal service perspective of a small town business.  It is nice to call up and get the owner on the phone who chats with you about his earlier years in WI, how we should orchestrate our visit to establish residency that will be the easiest and then checks to see what and how much mail we have so I can decide if I need them to forward it now or hang on to it until I get something I really need.  Now there are some companies that are more tech savvy and you can have your mail scanned in and see it on your online account and give directions for them that way to send or shred. Most who know me would think that I would have gone for the online conveniences and I did think long and hard about that but at the end of the day, St Brendan's won me over for 3 reasons: low price, rural county for cheaper insurance and good old fashioned nice!  Coming from a customer service background, I cannot say enough about good customer service and that is a big plus for me.  I know that if I were in a jam to get some mail in a hurry, they would have my back and find a way to make it happen.  Another thing that they just jumped into with both feet on helping their customer is to advocate for our right to vote.  As being unconventional residents, FL is looking to block our ability to vote.  Well St Brendan's Isle has a legal team working in coordination with other mail forwarding companies to fight on our behalf for our right to vote.  Now, to me, they are good people.  We will see how that turns out.  They are keeping us all well informed of the progress.

As for the laundry side of things...I sit here writing this from the lovely Maytag laundromat in Sturgeon Bay, WI.  We make the 45 minute trek here every week and a half now because I cannot bring myself to pay $3.75 for a regular size washer when I can get a double washer here for $2.25.  Door County has only one other laundromat up in the peninsula where we are staying, which is only 10 minutes from us, but it is extremely expensive.  Plus, when I come here, we can visit the Walmart and get our groceries cheaper.  The peninsula has a little Piggly Wiggly which is good for when you need something in a pinch and then another little novelty grocery, but if I need my staples of laundry detergent, shampoo and such, Walmart it is! 

As I eluded to, Walmart is a travelers best friend.  I usually find the lowest prices there and I also use their Savings Catcher on the app to scan for any possible lower prices elsewhere.  I have been lucky in getting back a nice chunk of change.  Saving money there, then allows us to splurge for some things, like good meat, wine and when in WI...cheese!!!  We have also been visiting the farmers markets and orchards for some fresh fruits and veggies.   We have certainly done our part in supporting the local economy here.  Door County is known for its cherries and we have certainly taken notice.  It seems we cannot get enough of the Cherry Splash wine and the dark chocolate covered cherries!!!   Now we need to balance that with some more walking and kayaking!

We have been getting out to visit some of the areas and live a bit more like a local.  We've visited some lesser know county parks and cute wooded city walks that lead to amazing little beaches.  We'll leave you with some of those pictures.

​As we are wrapping up our first couple weeks here, we have had our share of fun stuff we have had to address, met more folks and got out a bit more.
Without going into gory details, our campground happenings included still cleaning up the aftermath of 4th of July fireworks including sparklers and poppers, even though there are signs everywhere stating fireworks are not allowed in the park.  Do you know how hard those little pieces of paper are to pick up with a grabber???  Rick has settled into being the firepit cleaner and I walk the site to pick up trash with my little grabber and grab the tags on the post.  Rick loves to drive the gator, so I let him enjoy that task.  It is amazing what people throw into the firepit and we recently had a site with mounds of peanut shells all around the firepit.  That took some time to clean up and then Rick likes to also rake around the firepit, sometimes making pretty patterns.  I think he misses his pattern making when he mowed lawn at the house.
We have had some other camper assist issues like loaning out a battery jumper for a dead car battery, keeping an eye out for a lost wedding band, helping a flustered camper who was turned around find her site and a late night missing child search that ended before it began.  We even had a site of drunk, singing young men at 3am.  Thankfully we were told about that the next morning and not at the time.  They did quiet down when another camper mentioned to them that this was quiet time and others were trying to sleep.  Knock on wood, we have not had anything worse than that.
We also have grateful campers who go out of their way to tell us what a great job we are doing to keep the campground clean and even gourmet smores made for us by a family who Rick helped to repair a bike.
We also continue to have plumbing issues throughout the campground.  It seems the piping throughout the park is pretty old and is in need of updating which is on the horizon.  We met the maintenance person in charge of plumbing that had come by to fix our plugged sinks that we reported when we arrived.  Only 4 days, not bad.  I was expecting a week or longer.  Those issues have seemed to subside, knock on wood.  We did hear today at a camp host meeting that there are several improvements coming to the park.  Exciting stuff but obviously, they do not happen overnight.
As for outings, we got dressed up Tuesday night, the 17th and headed out for my birthday dinner.  I am a Beef Wellington fan from way back to my days of bussing tables when I was 15 and I would beg the chef to make me a tiny Wellington on Sat nights after a long night.  That usually meant that I would have to devein some shrimp for him, but it was well worth it!  We went to the English Inn not far outside the park and dinner was wonderful!  We were both soo stuffed walking out and promised that we cannot eat like that again for some time!!!  It was a splurge since it was a birthday dinner.  We are trying to limit our dining out to cheaper breakfasts or lunches, or not at all!  We are really trying to get within a budget that we developed from looking at many other full-timers.  We will see how July shapes up and we will share that on this blog as I know there are other full time dreamers that would benefit from the information, just like we did.  Plus it keeps us accountable!
Our other evening out was to see one of the musicals here at the Northern Theatre in the park.  I mentioned in the previous post that we received complimentary tickets for all 3 shows.  The first show we went to was Dairy Heirs.  A funny, heartwarming musical about life on a farm in WI and coming back home.  It was a beautiful evening in an intimate setting and the cast was very talented!  After the show we grabbed a pizza and salad at Wild Tomato, which is a Door County favorite, right outside the park.  OK, I just realized we have not taken pictures of any of this awesome food.  Wow, that is not like us!  We will try to rectify that in future posts.
We have also had some visitors.  Rick’s Army buddy from Germany, who lives north of Green Bay, stopped over with his wife for a delicious dinner creation that Rick just whipped up off the cuff.  We then topped if off with a yummy cherry pie, baked with fresh Door County cherries.  The next day friends of ours from home stopped by to say HI and see our new home and where we were working.  It was good to catch up!  We also have some others stopping by in August and topping our time off here in Door County with a big family camp out.  Looking forward to it!
By far the majority of our camper interaction has been with folks who are curious about our camp host position, our RV and our new lifestyle.  We spend quite a bit of time answering questions from other campers about what our plans are, where we are planning to go and how the heck we can do this soo young.  Some really entertaining conversations.
One of the things we have had to solution for is the dumping of the tanks on the RV.  Unfortunately, the host sites only have electric, so we needed to figure out how we would refill the fresh tank and dump the gray and black tanks.  For us to pack up the RV and take it down to the dump station would be quite the  undertaking, and that would also mean we would have to repark it.  NOT!  We talked with other camp hosts and they gave us some suggestions on what they do.  For filling the fresh water tank, we were able to stretch all of our hoses, 85 ft worth, to the bath house clean up sink.  Good deal.  Now the crappy part…LOL.  To dump the tanks, we have a man hole/sewer cover over by the bath house and Rick would fill up our lucy lu dump dolly and roll it over there and then dump.    We picked midday to do this as that is when most of the campers are out and about.  The black tank and one gray tank went well but the last gray tank proved to be our first big RV issue.  The gray tank gate valve pull, which is a cable, would not release.  Rick tried spraying WD-40, pulled off the back access panel to make sure the cable wasn’t binding anywhere, which it wasn’t.  He then checked the manuals for info, called and left a message for a contact at the manufacturer, Grand Design.  He then went to the Grand Design facebook groups and posted the issue, wondering if others had the issue and how they solved it.  One suggestion was to spray PB Blaster, a penetrating oil, on the valve assembly by the pull handle.  Rick then let that soak with a ziploc bag over the top.  A tech from the manufacturer then called back and confirmed that what he was doing is what a repair tech would do.  After a couple hours Rick went back to it and tried to release, hit it with a hammer, which didn’t release and then took two wrenches and twisted and it finally came loose.  He then cleaned it off thoroughly and lubed all three valves and after all of that, a lesson learned that lubing the cables will be on the monthly list of maintenance things to do.  Amazing how rusty it had gotten after only two weeks!
Overall this campground host position has been a wonderful first workamping experience.   The campers have been very friendly, it is a quiet and peaceful campground and the weather has been beautiful!  We could certainly get used to this!  Enjoy some pictures of the park.

We headed north Thursday to our first workamping experience.  We left our moochdocking spot at my Dad's and headed 3 hours north to Peninsula State Park-Welckers campground.  The journey was uneventful, except for a little rain, and we pulled in around 3pm.

This state park is located in Door County, which swells with tourists in the summer from all over the world, but mostly from IL.  LOL  Fellow cheeseheads will get that reference!  Peninsula State Park is one of the states largest and busiest state parks with over 3700 acres, with about ¾ undeveloped. It has really everything within the park.  There are 5 different campgrounds, a full golf course and restaurant, a lighthouse to tour, a beach complete with store and all sorts of water rentals, lots of trails and a wonderful outdoor playhouse in the summer that has some great comedy musicals.

When we arrived we checked in at the office and found that our contact had gone home sick.  We met one of the rangers who gave us a bunch of keys, a Rubbermaid bin and manuals and said everything we need is in the bin and at the site, including the Gator that we are able to use for our duties.  They were very nice to call one of the other seasoned hosts to come over to our site to answer any questions.  I have to say, I was a bit nervous about being handed the materials and being let loose to figure it out.  The questions were mounting as we drove to our site.

Most of the park is wooded, as is our campground, Welcker's Point.  I was nervous about getting down the roads with our tall, 42 ft 5th wheel, hoping we would not be scrapping too much on trees aside or above us.  We did pretty good with just a brush of leaves here and there.  Our site is quite wide and Rick was able to wiggle the 5th wheel in to fit lengthwise.  Being the hosts, we do get a larger site and electric.  Unfortunately, most WI state parks are set up the same way, with only electric.  The good thing is, in talking to other hosts, we can get additional water from the water fountain in front of the bath house next to us and use our little wheely dump tank and dump in the man hole near the bathrooms.  Not ideal, but we will make it work.  Being next to the bath house helps in that we can use the showers and bathrooms there most of the time.

​Our campground consists of 81 non-electric sites in a large loop with another cutting through the middle and a small loop of 7 sites off to the side.  We have 3 bath houses, one of which does not have showers.  Dumpsters are at the entrance road to our campground.  We also have responsibility for Welcker’s Point, the small day use area across the main road from our campground.  What are our duties as camp hosts you ask???  Well that was sort of vague but we knew we had to check sites after campers left, making sure to empty trash and ash from the firepits and check sites for trash and take down the departure day tags.  Ok cool, we got that.  We do have a cleaning crew that comes through daily, in years past it used to be twice a day.  They clean the bathrooms and stock them.  We then check them periodically to make sure there is no issues and they have TP.  After that it gets a bit fuzzy.  In talking with a couple other hosts that have been here for years, it is very loosely managed.  There is no micro-managing of campground hosts.  We had another camp host come over and took us to show us where the maintenance shop is, supplies, where to gas up the gator, etc.  You can imagine we had a ton of questions for him.  He has been a campground host for over twenty years and was a wealth of knowledge.  He introduced us to the lead maintenance man and gave us pointers as to how to write up maintenance tickets, etc.  We also have responsibility for the day use area and our guess is that we check for trash there and empty the grills.  We also set up a charging station at our site on the extra picnic table we have.  That has become very popular and our campers, young and old appreciate the ability to charge phones, ipads and batteries.  After that, we are just learning as we go as to what other “duties” are.  SO far, we have checked some sites for the office when they called, helped campers with directions, posted the daily weather forecast on our information board, trimmed a branch for a camper concerned about it brushing his camper when he left and answering A LOT of questions about our RV and our full-time lifestyle.

​There has also been a change in who enforces and monitors the park.  In years past it was the park rangers, this year it is the DNR wardens.  We get the distinct feeling that some folks, including other hosts are still getting used to that idea and have not quite warmed up to it yet.  We were given a flip phone with pre-programmed numbers for us to call, such as the office, multiple people’s names…not sure who they are or what they do and the rangers.  Umm, no Wardens!  So what happens if we need them???  We were fortunate to have the supervising warden on duty our second day and he was very nice and answered some questions for us and came back with a print out of the wardens schedules and all their phone numbers.  I then promptly programmed them in to our phone.  Scary thought was that we are not the first hosts this year using that phone and who would have had to contact a warden.
Once we had the 5th wheel set up, we got our first host issue.  We didn’t even have a chance to read all the manuals we were given.  Geeesh.  One of the three bath houses had both sinks in the women’s bathroom plugged and overflowing with water still running.  We knew we needed to wear our safety vests when riding on the gator, so we grabbed those, found the gator key and drove down to see what we were dealing with.  By the time we arrived, the water had stopped running and both sinks were full.  Now what do we do???  Well that is up to you, there is no clear direction in all those manuals.  We were told by another host to just use common sense.  Ok then.  Rick tried to take saran wrap and unplug them but that did not work.  Most of the water on the floor had gone down the floor drain and there were no puddles.  We then hung an out of order sign on that bathroom and locked the door.  Getting back to the site we filled out a maintenance ticket we found in the bin with the manuals and looked through the manuals for what to do next.  Do we call maintenance on a Thursday night?  Do we call the office? Do we wait until the next day and give it to someone? How fast do they come out to fix it? Are we supposed to do more to fix it?  All great questions with no answers in any of the manuals or bins.  We decided to wait until the morning until the seasoned host was coming over to show us around.  We had the bathroom out of order and locked so the issue couldn’t get worse, however it was an inconvenience to the campers on that end of the park.  We still do not know how long it should take before something gets addressed from a ticket we write up, because there are some tickets already in and some other showers and toilets out of order.  When we asked another host, he just said, it is not real speedy.  I guess we will see.  This is certainly a departure from our corporate lives where there were step by step action plans and set expectations.  I have read from other full-timers blogs that this is an adjustment that will take time.  I do however want to mention to the office staff who we have been communicating with prior to starting, that it would really be helpful for a new host to have some sort of “A day in the life of…” or one document that gives you and idea of what your daily duties would be and some examples of other tasks that could pop up AND what the maintenance ticket process should look like.  I don’t think this has been too much of an issue with many of the folks being return hosts but it sure would help us newbies out! 
Ok, thanks for letting me rant for a minute.  Don’t get me wrong, we like camp hosting and talking with folks.  We even had one camper stop by while we were emptying trash and chat for just over an hour!  Campers love the park and are happy to see a friendly face to answer questions and just say “Hi.”  We love toddling around on the gator, checking sites, writing down the site #’s of those that will be leaving in the next day or two so we know how busy we will be on a given day.  That really helps us to plan our personal stuff and sightseeing.  So far we have only gotten out to do some laundry, visit a winery and orchard for some much needed “supplies”, visit the little local grocery store and a quick breakfast to use their wifi.  That brings up another issue we ran into…cell and internet.
Being the campground that is the furthest out from the entrance and the rest of the village of Fish Creek, our cell and internet is pretty much non-existent.  Our Verizon phones may get 1 bar of 4G intermittently but my AT&T phone is non-existent.  We recently switched to a unlimited plan for the AT&T phone and also received free TV (think mini-Directv Now plan) that did not count against our data or hotspot. Well, so much for using that while we are here.  We did find out that if we go down to the concession store at the beach, they do have wifi, albeit a bit weak and VERY popular.  We are managing and it has given us a bit of a break from being contantly “on”.  Apologies to everyone if these posts are a bit further apart, but it is difficult to get down to the beach and we are a bit gun-shy after our first trip down to read a couple emails and check FB.  We took a ride down on the gator and had our camp host vests on while we sat outside the store checking our phones.  After about 10 minutes an older gentleman wandered over and began to tell us about how long he has been coming to this park and everything he felt was wrong with it, what is not working and just general complaining…over and over and over again.  We listened, painfully and throughout the discussion we mentioned that the park really wanted visitor feedback and suggested he fill out one of the suggestion cards, saying that if they didn’t know about his concerns, they wouldn’t have a chance to address them.  Little did we know, and we were told later by other camp hosts that he is very well known and this is his usual MO.  They also mentioned that him and his wife go through all of the campgrounds looking at the campsites and complain when the camphosts take any wood left behind.  We think they are looking for leftovers for themselves and sure enough, we saw his wife in sites at a campground they are not staying in.  It certainly takes all kinds.  I would say they are the exception and not the rule, as most campers are very friendly.  Since that encounter we have not had a chance to get back to the beach for some wifi and we are very keen to watch for places that offer free wifi, like the cute little restaurant outside the park entrance, Julie’s Café, that offers it.  We have already visited them for a breakfast to take advantage of that little luxury.  As for TV, we have been fortunate to get several local channels, although at times they fade in and out.

We left St Louis Sunday, in the morning, to try and escape most of the heat, however, we were never able to escape it as our next destination was just as hot with temps in the high 90's and very high humidity.  Driving through downtown St Louis was very jarring to say the least.  I-64 was quite bumpy all the way into IL for several miles.  It finally started to calm down a bit after getting out of the greater STL area.  

Our drive today was about 3.5 hours, straight east on I-64 through southern IL.  We arrived at The Rest Up Camping and RV Coral in the early afternoon.  This is a brand new RV park that we have been following through the building progress on Facebook for a couple months.  It is a full service, western themed resort with a wonderful restaurant and bar, store with yummy ice cream, a very cool playground and put put golf course with more amenities to come.  We were lucky enough to snag one of the 10 full hook up sites they opened at the beginning of July.  We stayed 4 nights through the fourth and had a great time getting to know the owners and staff.  They are really doing a great job with the place and we can't wait to come back to see the finished product.  Quality shows all over the park from the beautiful buildings right down to the really cute barrel sinks in all the restrooms.  The food and drinks in the saloon were very good and they will be expanding the menu as they open more RV spots and have more quests staying with them.  The most interesting part of their story is that the land was earmarked for a prison and the state had invested alot of money several years back for all of the infrastructure, but then as the IL political landscape was sort of, shall we say, "Shaky", the money was no longer available to finish the job and the idea of the prison was abandoned.  The new owners were able to purchase the land and use the utilities already installed to support the campground.  With only 10 sites open, we had very little noise, which made for a nice quiet stay.  When fully developed, they plan to have 200 RV sites and several cabins.  They have plans for a splash pad, gathering room, laundry, store and an arcade type shooting range.

For the rest of Sunday, we stayed at the RV and had dinner and drinks in the saloon. It was all very good and we planned to go back for a lunch because the burgers looked and smelled amazing!  With it being soo hot, we skipped our evening walk and retired back to the RV. 

Monday was a day of exploring and household chores.  We found a little laundromat in Mount Carmel, 15 miles north of the campground, called Sudsey Dudsey.  I continue to be tickled by the cute names for laundromats that we have come across.  While I was taking care of the laundry, Rick went to wash the truck.  The trip so far proved to be a very buggy one, so he was hoping to get those little critters washed off.  Once finished with the chores, we drove through a very nice little state park, Beall State Park outside of Mount Carmel, along the Wabash River on the IL/IN border.  The park was very well kept with a boat landing and small campground, most sites with electric, that looked to be very underutilized.  They do not take reservations and the park staff comes around to issue a permit.  We couldn't find any information that led us to believe they even charge for camping.  Once back at the RV park, we packed everything away and went to get groceries at the little local IGA.  We just love supporting these little grocers and try to whenever we can.  We also needed to go over to the Liquor Barn, which had a drive-thru, to get some wine for dinner.  Let's just say this is a popular stop for folks and they did have a decent selection for a tiny country town.  That night we broke in the brand new fire pit with some corn on the cob and marinated pork chops.  

Tuesday we took a drive into Evansville, IN and took a tour of the USS LST 325 docked there.  Evansville was a major contributor to WWII, as they produced many of the LST ships for the war as well as ammunition.  Our tour guide was very knowledgeable about the ship and the history of the LST's in WWII.  Rick enjoyed sharing his knowledge about them as well and even had a nugget or two for the tour guide. Our tour lasted about 80 minutes and it was a good thing we opted for the very first tour of the day at 10am, because it was very hot and spending time in a big metal ship just amplified that!  Thank goodness they had fans throughout and really stressed the importance of taking water with you on board.  We had worked up quite an appetite, so after the tour we headed to the Acropolis Greek restaurant for a good gyro sandwich.  

​On our drive back to the RV park, we took a more scenic route and stopped in New Harmony, IN.  This quaint little town has a long history.   Established in  1814 by the Harmony Society, the settlement was home for those Lutherans who separated from the original church.  Later in 1825, the town was purchased by Robert Owen, a Welsh industrialist and social reformer.  He set out to create a new Utopian community.  Unfortunately, this social experiment fell on hard financial times after only two years.  This little town has alot of interesting old buildings and art and the visitor center has developed a really nice walking or driving tour by using your cell phone to go through the different audio information for each site.  One of the more interesting stops was the roofless church.  It was essentially a large garden area surrounded by a brick wall.  The first picture is of a curved parabola dome that houses a sculpture underneath, seen in the second picture.  The third is the gates to the open air church.

On the fourth we hoped to see fireworks since the sky was soo dark but unfortunately, we had a little storm roll through earlier and then just complete darkness at night, perfect opportunities for some more RV porn pictures.  At the end of the evening, we had a chance to talk with Mike & Mindy, the owners of the new RV park.  We shared some feedback with them and Rick also gave some ideas for the restaurant.  They were very eager to hear input from the campers and thanked us for being one of their first guests.  I must say that everyone at the RV park was very friendly and went out of their way to make us feel welcome.

We left Rest Up early Thursday morning to make the long trek back north through IL.  6 hours later we pulled into Blackhawk Valley campground.  We were able to score a full hook-up, pull-thru site for half off with our Passport America card. $17.50, yes please!  Once we got cleaned up, we ventured out to see the old stomping grounds.  Rick & I lived in Rockford for about a year in 1995 before we were married.  Rick came down to start his Exec Chef career with The Machine Shed restaurant.  We then moved back to WI where he opened the new Machine Shed restaurant in Pewaukee, WI.  We ended up having dinner at The Machine Shed and there were some folks still there that Rick worked with 23 years ago!  Dinner was delicious and the apple dumpling for dessert topped it all off.   The next morning we woke to much cooler temps in the 70's and we decided to take a walk around the campground prior to leaving.  It is such a nice, well kept campground with a mix of well-kept seasonal sites and overnight spots.  As we were walking around, we saw a seasonal couple working outside and upon getting closer, we saw they were working on their outdoor train track.  They had an amazing setup complete with a tunnel, village and a firepit in the middle.  We talked with them for quite some time about their train, trains in general and our RV plans.  What a sweet couple and nice little park.  We will certainly put this park on our must stay when we travel through IL.

As I write this, we have now made our way back to WI and are moochdocking again at my Dad's.  We are catching up on laundry and spending time with family.  Our next adventure will be to Door County, WI to start our first workamping experience at Peninsula State Park as campground hosts.  Stay tuned for more adventures...

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