Saturday, April 19th

We drove to Cody, NE on Monday afternoon. When we arrived we found their city park and RV sites. There were three electric boxes with 50-amp hookups. However, the water wasn’t turned on yet. The town of Cody is very small - however, it has a bar and grill. We thought about staying there for the night, but I decided to move on the Gordon, NE. Gordon was listed in my references as having a city park with hookups and was only another 50 miles of driving. We pressed on and couldn’t find the listed park. So, we ended up paying for a full hookup site in a local RV park. It was a good decision as I was able to wash the coach and the car to get the worst of the previous day’s rain and road crud cleaned off. We also had 50-amp electric and Dottie was able to wash a couple of loads of clothes.

Gordon is a quaint little town that has problems with revenue-raising and the expenses necessary to keep a regional center going. It has a hospital that has difficulty keeping a doctor on the staff. Most of the residents are retired farmers who have moved in to town and are reaching the age of medical problems. I heard a radio talk program about the challenges faced by the hospital board in retaining a good general practice doctor.

We spent the night and departed on Tuesday morning about 9AM. We drove to Chadron and the local Super Wal-Mart. There were a few things we needed so we stopped and spent some time shopping. When we continued our drive north on SD-79, we were fighting a wind the remainder of the way. We got Hart Ranch by 12:30 and checked in. It was good to be back and the park looked great for this early in the season.

We’ve seen lots of folks we know and have gotten the word on the new manager. She seems to have made quite an impression with all the supervisors by her management techniques. The Board of Directors will have some challenges in front of them if they want to retain their supervisory staff. I haven’t met her yet, but it sounds like she’ll either have some changing and adjusting to do or we’ll have a new manager in the near future.

I started working on Thursday and am anxious to get going. We have a new lawn mower to use that should cut down our mowing time. Instead of a 5’-cut zero-degree-turn mower, this is a John Deere gang mower with three blade housings and drives like a tractor. It is in excellent shape and should be a big help in the mowing task.

The park is still fairly empty but looks great. I am anticipating a fun-filled summer and getting a lot of projects accomplished much like last year. Our Maintenance Staff is shaping up to be a good one again this year and there is a lot of talent that will be available. We still aren’t out of the woods for potentially rough weather, but so far it has been wonderfully warm. We’re home for the summer!!