Tuesday November 17, 2009-Rayford Crossing

I woke late this morning. I guess its because it was pretty cold this morning and I was warm and snuggled up in my blankie in the recliner. I woke about 3AM and was reading the news on the computer and went back to sleep.

We had gotten an email about an open house on "work kamping" that was being held today at the Woodlands Marriott hotel where a KOA convention was being held. We are just starting out in our work camping experience, so we are looking for any information we can get. We found the hotel after parking a couple of blocks away, following the directions of our GPS that I named SWMBO-She Who Must Be Obeyed. I don't know why she directed us to the parking lot where she did, but we had a short walk to the hotel.

We were immediately put off by the number of people wearing KOA shirts or vests that did not speak or would not even make eye contact with us. A few were friendly but many were not. There was no one at the table in front of the room where the open house was being held, so we just walked in. There were numerous tables in the large meeting room where different KOA locations had set up to talk to prospective work kampers. We spoke with one from Montana and were told some of the details of working at their location. We continued around the room but were soon directed to a lady who was the greeter. She explained the KOA policies to us. She said that We would have to pay $35.00 each if we wanted to work for their company to access their website to find job opportunities. We would be paid minimum wage, which is $7.25 for between 20-35 hours weekly. We were also told that the fee would also get us a card worth 10% off at any KOA park. After talking to her for a bit longer, we went back inside the room and talked briefly to some people from a park in Oregon, but I think our minds were made up at this point. Why would anyone pay to get a job for minimum wage? Most of the people we know are not big fans of KOA anyway, so I don't think we are interested in work there, so we left.

We decided to go to the Post Office to get our passports for a trip over to Mexico when we go back down to the valley in February. Stella had put her birth certificate away somewhere in the trailer for safekeeping and could not find it, so she had looked up the Harris County Clerk's office where we went and got certified copies of our birth certificates. We took these and the applications that Stella had already filled out to the Post Office in the Woodlands where we met a very nice lady there who took all of our information as well as taking our photo for the cards. It took her about 45 minutes to get everything done, but now we are finished and should have our passport cards in 4-6 weeks.

All in all, it was a very productive day. We learned that we don't want to work kamp for KOA, and got our passports squared away. The problem was, I forgot about having a committee meeting this afternoon. I'll make it up to them somehow.

We came home and Stella fixed us some leftover beans and cornbread and I watched my TV show. I went to bed early tonight so I hopefully won't oversleep in the morning.

So long.