Let Common Sense Prevail

Today was a busy day.  Our job as host campers at Greenbrier State Park is to keep our finger on the pulse of our assigned areas and to keep the area, including the bathhouses clean.  Here we do not enforce the rules; if a car is parked on the grass we can say something like “Make sure the ranger doesn’t catch you parking on the grass”.  But we don’t tell them to move the car.  We act as ‘the good guys’.  I spent a good portion of the day handing out notes with the camp store hours on them.  I also plugged the coffee and the fact that tomorrow will be near 80 and the ice cream cooler at the store has plenty left.  Apparently there was a good run on coffee today so maybe the camp store will give its best salesman a cut?

Between unclear instruction from a camp office and camp maps that are not clear, people occasionally end up in the wrong sites.  That is exactly what happened today.  As we are identifying our sites that are occupied we hit a site with no number on the post.  We look at the site next door (50), know the numbers are decreasing, and apply some logic to figure out that the site is a border site is #49 under the responsibility of the adjoining loop.  This logic holds until we travel through the adjoining loop and see a site clearly mark with the number 49.  The reason the site was unmarked is because it is an auxiliary site (basically an overflow/managers site for that last minute-no-reservation-and-no-where-else-to-go arrival). Trying to decipher the site map in my Host Camper’s Notebook and a listing of the sites assigned to each loop took some time but we figured out which sites were which.  A call to the camp office to explain the situation and we are told that they parked on an auxiliary site and would have to move to their assigned location.  Now I’m not the most experienced camper but, to move because the site I mistakenly hooked up in is reserved is one thing.  But to move me from a site that will remain empty after I’m all set up and have a fire going makes no sense.  A call to the duty ranger has the camp office temporarily switching the auxiliary site for one night and now everyone is happy.  Let’s face it – Rules are rules – but sometime common sense has to dictate a practical approach to a minor error. Let’s hope the rest of the night stays quiet.