Mid-Season Review

RR has been open for more than 2 months and it’s time for reflective thoughts. Of lately, I bombard you with pictures, but I don’t often say much. Sometimes I don’t write because our life is fluid and things change by the minute. Plus, I like to let my thoughts to fester in my head before spilling them out. I admire bloggers who write in the moment, but I am more of a slow-cooker type of blogger. For example, this post has been festering in my head (and in draft mode) for more than 1 month! 

The other reason I don’t write is because we are busy. So darned busy. We literally get up by 6:45am, take a 30-min lunch break and then a 30-min shower break and don’t stop until 9/9:30. It is purely exhausting. This is not a complaint, but just to explain why my brain can’t string together words that make sense all too often.

So, my thoughts. Overall, things at RR are going as expected. This experience has been different than any of our other jobs for a few reasons, including the fact that it is really remote and has a quasi restaurant to run. 

The hospitality industry of course has its downside. People might be quick to guess it is the germ-infested toilets we get to scrub or the hairy shower drains we get to declog. 

Did you just vomit a little? Apologies. Welcome to our life. 

However, cleaning toilets and hairy shower drains is not the only challenge. Here’s our top 5 “moments” so far from this summer alone.

1) We are now on cook NUMBER 4. I swear, it’s not us or the fact that these people don’t want to work for us.  The food scene here at RR is pecular, compounded by the fact that the owners are particular. So in addition to toilet cleaner, J & I wear the “executive chef” hat in the interim periods. It is what it is and seriously if we get through the remainder of the season without losing another cook, I would be very surprised. 

2) We had a group of 10 women in their 50s who were here celebrating cancer survival. How sweet, you must be thinking. Well, apparently cancer survival is the thing to party about because they were up until 4am doing it and kept other guests awake and pissed.  One lady even fell in the fire!  All we could do was refund the other guests’ money and suck it up. 

3) We had a lady show up here and say, “why didn’t anyone tell me we were going to be staying in a tipi on the edge of the canyon??? I am deathly afraid of heights and what if the canyon falls?” 

4) One night, J had to scoop poop out of a clogged toilet in the middle of a dinner service for 20 people.  I am not even sure he could find gloves in time to do the task … 

5)  We are in the middle of nowhere. Literally, the first structure you see for 20 miles in both directions. We’ve had people stop because they have run out of gas, have had an epileptic seizure, hit a bear on a motorcycle, had their truck overheat with 35 sheep on board … 

Again, not complaining, just sharing how it is. And I still revert to our good friend’s quote about working in the hospitality industry: 

“As a job, there is nothing worse. As a lifestyle, there is nothing better.”

J & I work (hard) seasonally so we can quiet that constant desire for adventure and wanderlust, but also to build character through the different jobs and the different people we meet. This experience is certainly building our character. 

Stay tuned for a reflective post on what could be next … it’s already in draft mode!