Too Early!

This day started early. The canines have been sleeping later and we didn't make the first bathroom break until 6:30. I decided that I needed to stay up. The hot humid weather had finally broken overnight and I showered and went outside to enjoy the cool air. I finished restocking the bathrooms and was intent on looking at my garden, but stopped to chat with some campers.

Big mistake. This made me visible to any and all. Before I could excuse myself and go about my garden visit, I spied a couple pushing an umbrella stroller who spied me. I wear regular clothes, nothing to indicate that I am a slave to this park, but I must look like I work here.

I had a call late in the evening inquiring about a site suitable for a pop-up camper. The caller said they would arrive close to midnight and wanted to know if I would be here to check them in ..... I explained that there was a night registration on the front of the building along with instructions. I told her to choose a site in the 60's. The sites are all numbered and I even told her which side of the park they would be located in ...... pool side.

I always check my phone upon arising to see if I have missed a call. I had missed 2. Both were from the same number and occurred at 11:45 and 11:47 pm. I have long since stopped jumping from my bed to answer middle of the night calls. If anything serious was taking place, all of the full time campers have the cell number of HeWho is the fixer of all things electric or plumbing related. His phone is right next to him.

The couple with the toddler in tow were coming up to pay for a weekend of camping. The call the night before was from them and they were at a state park that was full and had found my park through my website. The answer to every basic question you could ask can be found right there on the website. This tends to make me assume that my pricing offers no surprises and the map has a legend telling you what can be found on each site.

When I asked which site they had parked in, they had no clue and pointed vaguely in the direction of the full hook-up sites. When I produced a map, she named 3 occupied sites before finally settling on the one they had taken. I asked if she might be the person I had spoken to late yesterday evening. She told me it was her daughter. I explained that I had told her daughter to park in one of the unoccupied sites in the area next to the pool. "Yeah, we tried that, but we had trouble finding one, so we pulled the map up on our phone and that's how we found the site we are on." "We saw all the color codes and it looked like this was a good site."

They parked on a 50 amp full hook-up site, instead of one of the sites with a regular 110 outlet, which is what they needed. The pop-up was quite old and had no air conditioner. She said they noticed the outlet was wrong, so they ran an extension cord to a "right kind". I asked if they would mind moving to the other side of the park and they agreed to do so.

The plot thickens ...... after she had painstakingly provided the necessary information on the registration and got to the area requesting your license plate number, she seemed to be baffled, so I told her to just leave it blank. I asked how many people there were in her party. This is a question I ask frequently and it is clearly stated in all my literature that my prices cover 2 adults and 2 children. After that it is $3 per person per night extra. They had 7 adults and 7 children in their party. This number was accomplished after much counting by names on fingers.

That is 10 extra people. This equates to $30 a night in addition to the base price of $26 ...... or $8 per person for a two night stay. I always say the amount out loud before I input it into the machine that takes credit/debit cards. I want to  make sure you are aware of the amount coming out of your account. I could tell she was not happy that she was paying for her extra guests, but the transaction went through and she agreed to move to the other side of the park.

This all happened before the office was open for the day. I realized my garden visit was not happening and I was busying myself with the making of my bed and general tidying up when they returned and asked for a refund. All of this and I was not even open for the day. I tried to void the last transaction, but because it was a debit transaction, I had to refund it. When I tried, the machine deemed it an unauthorized transaction.

Right at that moment, HeWho digs holes in the road happened into the office and I turned it over to him in order to let the dogs in and use the bathroom unhindered one more time before opening. I skipped my bathroom break. It occurred to me that they would just take the refund and not pay for the night already spent here and HeWho would be none the wiser because I had not specifically told him that.

My assumption was correct and I caught them just in time. Despite the very short stay, I took note of the huge amount of trash put in the dumpster on the way out. Confirmed my suspicion that people coming to camp brought all their household garbage along with them! It was just too early to start the day!