Finished

We are done here at the Corp of Engineer park in Virginia.  We have really enjoyed this work.  Its easy, only 4 days on 4 days off.  We have hopes of bidding on this job the year after next. If we could do this for a summer, we may be able to give up the Amazon.  Of course, there are COE parks all over so we may be able to work somewhere else in between. 
Tomorrow we move 90 miles up to the State Park in Chesterfield.  We have a busy week ahead.  Saturday, Kim and I have a yard sale spot at the local church.  $17.00 gets us a spot and saves us from getting up and putting up signs all over.  Sunday, we will be going to Busch Gardens in Williamsburg.  Its been several years since we have been there and Ed wants to ride all the new roller coasters.  Kim will ride them with him. Mark and I will watch.  I will ride some things but the big roller coasters I am not fond of. 
Tuesday is another repair for us, so we will have to drive up to Ashland for that.  Should not take too long, I hope.  Ed wants to play a round of golf some day, and we have some other running around to do.  Wednesday will be an early birthday dinner for Kim.  ( I always have to make her Chicken and Biscuits)  Hope to get to at least one of Savannah’s cheer practices also.  It will be a busy week.  We leave the following Saturday to move toward Kansas and Amazon. 

Our New Home

We have moved over to our new location.  We have worked one shift and are now into our second.  We used out 4 days off to finish setting up since when we moved over from our site at Palmer Point, we went right to work. 
 
We have a nice cement pad with a nice view of the lake.  We have 50 amp service with good water.  We will miss the deer over at Palmer Point but I was tired of having to turn off the air conditioner to run our microwave!
This is home until September 13th.  We will spend a week up in Chesterfield with Kim then on to Kansas.  Sooner we finish there, the sooner we can get to the west coast!!

Going to work for the government….what????

Before I explain that header, I need to catch up with some pictures here at Palmer Point Day use park.
Family came to visit over the 4th and had a good time swimming. Or should I say floating.


We’ve been feeding some other visitors. 






She has gotten so she doesn’t run every time we open the door. 




Now for an explanation of the header.  We received a call last week from the head ranger in charge of all the facilities here at John H Kerr Dam.  The biggest area is called North Bend and they have a large campground but also have a lot of day use people there.  They have 2 gate houses over there, one for the campground and one for day use.  One of the couples working the day use has had to leave for medical reasons and Sherri called us to see if we were interested in applying for the position.  It’s a paying contract so I have had to go jumping through hoops to get all the paperwork done.  It’s not like any other job where you go and fill out W2’s and I9’s.  We had to first get a DUNS number.  We have actually had to create a business (Edward Lavin). We will become contractors of the government.  Next I have to register with SAMS and get a gate number.  Most of the time you have to bid on these jobs, but since we are already here and they need us, all I had to do was tell her what we wanted as pay. 
Starting on the 22nd of July until September 11th, we will be working 4 – 14 hr days, and then have 4 days off.  We can still split the time, we don’t both have to work at the same time.  A total of 29 days work and we will make a decent paycheck.  Next Sunday is moving day and we have to leave our sweet little friend.  Just bought a big bag of deer corn too!
The good thing is, we will now have all the process complete and can start looking at other COE parks throughout the country to work in.  We will have the choice of volunteering or bidding a job for pay.  It’s a lot easier work that Amazon, so we are hoping this will be our last year.
Any of you know of some good Corp of Engineer parks where you have camped?