Christmas In Moss Park

Moss Park Camp Hosting stories continued:

Christmas in the Park

1st year for "Light up the Wild" event

Christmas comes slowly into the park.  This is the first year for “light up the Wild” in the park.  It’s never been lit up for Christmas until this year.  Stringing of lights  began on a small scale around Thanksgiving and has continued at a slow pace.  Very few of the lights are even visible during the daylight hours, all being of the mini-light variety and of course they are not lit during the day.  The first signs visible to the park visitors has been Santa’s sleigh and reindeer strung high up between a couple of tall pine trees and a grouping of Christmas trees made out of strands of Christmas lights.  Some of the smaller trees are white, pink and red.  Quite dreadful if you ask me.

Last week I was told they were authorized to spend about $10,000 on lights and the crew was off to Home Depot to make that happen.  Had to order some as the store didn’t have enough in stock.  Today, while checking in at the front office, I saw the park crew dismantling lights strung out front near the entrance and also installing lights along the concrete bridge.  Come to find out the supervisor of parks had authorized the 10k sum without checking the higher ups about the spending.  I understand some of the lights will have to be returned to the store and those being removed up front will be re-allocated to make better use of them.  Sounds like government working at its best to me.  Put up lights.  Take down lights.  Re-install lights someplace else.  More decorations will be arriving from a small Orange County park just before the “Light up the Wild” nights begin on Dec 19th.  Understand they have all the big blow-up decorations.

Fortunately our park manager isn’t at fault over all this mess, just the boss over him.  Oh, I finally got an Orange County Parks Hat.  No t-shirt but at least I look like I belong in the park.  Still using all my T-shirts from the volunteer work I’ve done at Florida and Arizona State parks and BLM land.

I'm not a fan of pink and red Christmas trees

Tomorrow we have a 10k run through the park and with so many workers taking time off to be with families as their kids graduate from college and grad-school, that leaves only one worker at the front gatehouse to check in all those runners and folks coming into Moss Park.  I’ve promised Jerri I’d pick up donuts and coffee in the morning and also stop by Publix to get a couple of their great home-made subs for lunch.  She’ll arrive at the gate at 5am tomorrow for all the festivities and work a 11 hour day.

Imagine all this lighting up of the park all for one week.  Then of course it all has to come down.  I’ve volunteered to help direct traffic on those nights.  Haven’t been asked to help put up any lights…. And haven’t offered either.  Mama didn’t raise no dummy.  Actually I'm sure I would have enjoyed putting up some of the lights, but since it's their first year, they are doing a lot of setting up, taking down and moving lights which doesn't sound like much fun to me.

can't wait to see how it will look at night

The weekend is in full swing.  We have 4 “family” campsites that can accommodate 3 rv’s each or multiple tents and up to 16 people on each site.  Because of the larger groups involved, I usually go over and suggest they be considerate of other campers and respect the 10pm quiet hour and turn off those super bright automotive repair spot lights and not turn them towards other campsites.  You know, the ones on an orange tripod and produce about 200 watts of light.  Well I was walking through the family section today because I had a small kids shirt that had been left out on the sidewalk and wanted to see if I could find the owner.  As I’m walking through the family campsites, the one group that has been real quiet and not giving any problems, decides to cause me trouble.  You see, as I was walking past the site, one of the guys had collected a few empty beer cans and was proceeding to bring them to the trash can.  He saw me, I saw him, he turns slowly and goes back to their fire pit and leans over and deposits them where I’m not supposed to see them.  Of course I have and well you know the rest.  Either dump the remaining alcohol or pack up and leave.  Seems it’s always the wife that decides they should pack up and leave rather than waste the beer.  After four of them started to gang up on me with arguments as to why they shouldn’t be made scapegoats, I call the front office and ask for reinforcements.   A couple minutes later, Randy comes and confronts the group.  The usual, "we’ve been coming here for years".  "If everyone was checked for booze, there would be no one in the park".  "Have we caused any problems while we’ve been here?"  A minute later, two more park staff drive up.  As I’m leaving, it just so happens that the Sheriff decided to do a drive through and the front office sent them to Site 1 where all the action was taking place.  Even though they had decided to leave and take their beer with them, the Sheriff convinced them that it would be in their best interest to dump the booze and stay.  Great.  Now I have to worry whether my camper will have 4 flat tires on it tomorrow morning.  Oh and as a final note on this bit of excitement, one of the vehicles on site 1 is a Budweiser Distributor vehicle and I didn’t even notice it until after I made the call.  Could you get more obvious.

Philosophical Question:  The group mentioned above are regular campers to the park.  They have never caused any trouble.  Should I have “let them get away” with drinking in the park?  The park has a strict no drinking policy but the manager says he'd let people get away with it if they don't cause trouble.  Signs are everywhere as you enter the park and the tag they give you to put on  your windshield clearly states “no alcohol in the park”  yet the park only confronts a group when they see alcohol or a group become rowdy.   We know many others have “gotten away” with bringing booze into the park.

What do you think?  

It appears our campers are all getting lit way ahead of the Light up the Wild week.  I have to chuckle or I’d cry in my beer.

Back to the Christmas decorations more are going up over the weekend as it gets closer to the big event next week with additional help from employees of other Orange County parks,.  Since it’s their first year they will have to use generators in many locations for electricity as the park does not have power along all the wooded route the lighting will take place.  Something they will have to address as the new tradition of lighting up the wild continues into future years.

Kids.  Why does it seem that every kid that goes camping has the need to try and break, bend and strip all the young tree sapling they can?  I see it almost every weekend.  I was sitting out looking into the forest behind my camper and saw four or five young tikes literally bend a young pine tree all the way to the ground.  Parents of course could see them doing it, but ignored it.  So of course I walked over to the kids and asked what they were doing.  Were they trying to kill the tree?  Break it in half.  So as I’m explaining to them how they need to be good stewards of the land, their dad comes up to me.  Bit of a redneck, big ring in one ear, a couple tattoos over his body, and proceeds to get real close to me, you know in that intimidating way a guy can stand.  I continued to talk to the kids trying to educate them on taking care of the land, the trees and our wildlife in the park.  We talked about the large sand hill cranes that are very tame in the park and one little tyke said, “can we chase them if we don’t catch them?”  The dad finally taking up the hint that maybe it was time to start being a bit proactive with his kids.  Telling them, no we don’t want to chase the wildlife in the park or throw things at them.  He had initially asked me which one was trying to break the small pine tree.  I told him all of them were climbing on the tree and the issue was more about teaching them what was right and wrong and how to take care of our land.  He finally thanked me and they all went on their way.

Another week in the park.