Work Camping

In March of 2011 Jay decided to post his resume on Workamper.com. He was really hoping to find some mowing or light work in exchange for our site expenses. A few days later he received a call that would change our summer and impact our entire family. The call was from a campground manager in Missouri. She was looking for an Activities Director and wanted to talk to me. (Hey, I wasn't even on the resume. I wasn't looking for a job! ) Hesitantly, I agreed to talk to her though and we hit it off great. We signed a contract and agreed to work at Mark Twain Landing for the summer season. I worked in the Activities building organizing events for the resort. We had crafts, games, scavenger hunts, outdoor movies, contests, trolly rides, water fights and even a chocolate slip-n-slide! The kids came with me to work each day and participated in all the events that we had. They made new friends and spent a lot of time painting ceramics.  Their favorite part of the summer was the water park though. As part of our compensation package we received season passes to the waterpark. We rode waterslides, the lazy river and played in the wave pool for hours on end. I've never seen the kids so tanned. Jay worked in the store waiting on customers and making reservations. He also took the weekly newsletter that I wrote and put it on the resort's closed circuit tv channel. This was in addition to running our online business. So, he was a busy man. It was tiring at times, but also invigorating. We loved being busy.

While we were there we worshiped with the Hannibal Church of Christ. What a sweet congregation of believers. We enjoyed getting to know them. They helped us by recommending restaraunts, giving us directions and telling us about the best mechanic shop to get our van worked on.  That is what family is all about! We were very blessed to meet each of them. 

Hannibal, Missouri is the home of Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain. We enjoyed visiting his house and museum as well as hiking up to the see the town's historic lighthouse. Another famous Hannibal resident was Molly Brown. Of course Parker was so excited about that. We drove by several times and he wanted to go all summer. We were finally able to visit before we left for the season. We enjoyed seeing some Titanic history and learning more about the "Unsinkable Molly Brown".

On October 1st we said goodbye to all the sweet friends we had made and pulled our rig out of it's summer home. What a fun and memorable summer!