Firedude’s humorous side of full-time camp hosting part #3

From the desk of Firedude…

This has to be one of the craziest weekends I’ve ever seen. We were packed last night to the gills with not one single site available. You would have thought it was a holiday weekend. Friday night was a disaster with park staff in the office and everything that could be wrong administrative wise was. I dealt with those issues nearly 8 hours, not counting the multiple ranger contacts throughout the campground Friday night for noise issues.

Then a young boy (about 12 or 13) was walking around in the middle of the road in front of Dennis’ site with his pants at half mast and no boxers on either and yep, the bare butt showing. He was walking around letting everyone (including children) see him and laughing. The whole time his parents watching and laughing about it. Yep, called Mr. Ranger, but before Mr. Ranger had arrived, his dad got in my face which he found was not a wise choice by anyone’s standards, especially this weekend. I told him, sir you do not know me personally very well because if you did you wouldn’t be getting in my face. He asked in a smart tone why’s that?  I simply responded with a straight face and my deep voice that I was one of the meanest, toughest fella’s to ever walk the face of this earth and if he pursued his current direction he was about to find out first hand. He then backed off until the ranger arrived. This was NOT the weekend to mess with ‘ol firedude! He was such a tough guy until I lit into him and then when Mr. Ranger arrived he became Fred Rodgers pleading…”won’t ya be my neighbor”! It was funny because when he told Mr. Ranger what I had said to him the ranger asked did you back off? The guy said yes and the ranger told him he had made a very wise choice! Man, love the smell of napalm in the evening!

Now as I always say just when you think you’ve seen it all you find out you haven’t. Never ever say that or you’ll jinx yourself big time! The city here operates a Trolley system that runs on the weekends until the first weekend in Oct then shuts down. It comes into the campground and stops near me and goes downtown and makes its run about every half hour. Well last night the trolley driver comes to me a bit mad. It seems some teenager wearing a beanie in one of the first campsites as you drive into the campground turned out to be a direct descendant of one of my genetically declined camping buddies. As the trolley drives in this genetically declined teenager begins chasing the trolley barking like a dog!! When he catches up to it he starts banging on the side and the driver immediately stopped thinking he ran over the guy hearing the thumps. Realizing he hadn’t, he came to my place to report it. The campers down there all sat with mouths wide open. When Mr. Ranger arrived the humor for this idiot and his family suddenly disappeared. I told the trolley driver the minute the guy got near me I would have slammed on the breaks letting the guy run smack dab into me.

By dark there wasn’t a campsite left here or within 60 miles and you would have sworn it was Memorial Day weekend! I kept getting people coming in and I’d have to tell them we have no room left. I think some people’s comprehension skills are often left at home when they leave to go camping. They would plead with me and of course my reply was I’m sorry, but as I said we’re FULL! They would plead more until I started foaming at the mouth and they would only then begin to comprehend what I was saying.

I then have this camper come up to me “concerned” over this lady camping here and thinking she maybe in need of help and homeless. OK, so after a long, weird, tough weekend I decide to go over there just to see. Well after talking to the woman for a few it is established that she is an off duty deputy sheriff and I sat down at her table and began laughing along with her. Too funny. Well we decided paybacks were often fun so we went over to this (yes genetically declined camper) and the deputy ID’d herself to this woman and asked if SHE needed help. By then I was rolling on the ground hysterical! This woman hid the rest of the day and evening! The deputy and I walked off in total hysteria.  There was nothing that would have indicated this deputy was in need of anything. I think the gal was just a busy body and “pet the wrong dog” so to speak!

Speaking of dogs, I was behind my rig doing something (really hiding from all the weirdo’s) when I turn around and see this huge dog staring me in the face!  My heart skipped about 47 beats until I realized it was friendly. I got one of the leashes out of my rig and took her into “custody” until the ranger arrived. We called a number on her tag and the owner who lives nearby who was out looking for her came by and got her and thanked us. He had left the gate open by accident. Turned out to be a really sweet dog and he was very thankful. At first though I had trouble distinguishing this dog initially between some of my campers!

This has just been a short excerpt of my weekend. One guy who saw a lot of this told me “man you’ve had a rough weekend”!  I said, ya think? I said look at me. Look what this place has done to me. I’m only 29 years old! He rolled with laughter.

Today is HOOVER DAY!!!! The day the huge giant Hoover vacuum comes along at around noon and sucks everybody out of the campground! I’m like a kid waiting for Santa!! I hope and trust your weekend went better than mine! I hope this coming week all I have to report to you all is an empty campground and pure heavenly boredom!