When we wrapped up my contract in Alaska last Labor Day (no work camping that stop), we rushed down to Montana. We had a deadline so I could fly off to lead a tour through Pennsylvania — Philadelphia and the Brandywine Valley. Mike stayed in Montana at his son’s house while I was gone. When I got back, we had a lovely weekend with Mike’s sisters in Big Sky. Those weekends with his sisters have become more frequent, and we love every one of them!
Yuma, Arizona
From Montana we headed south, and then WAY South! After spending some time in Utah, we landed in Yuma for the November–January stretch. We then moved on to Mesquite, Nevada for February and March.
We chose Yuma because several friends winter there every year and love it. Cocopah RV Resort is a nice park with a nice activities and a good pickleball group. That said, we found Yuma a bit too remote for our taste. It was three hours to the nearest airport, whether Phoenix or San Diego.
Cocopah also had a well-equipped woodshop and I spent a fair amount of time there. I decided to make a box for the salt rock I picked up from Redmond salt mines. (Read that post here). This box is to support the salt rock on the front windshield. This is the perfect location to heat in the sun and do good things to the air in the rig! I learned a LOT while making the box. I made a number of mistakes, but in the end I’m very happy with the result.
Yuma is also known for its proximity to the Mexico border. Plenty of people cross over for cheaper prescriptions or dental work. I went across with friends a couple of times out of curiosity. I did not find any drugs I wanted, nor get any dental work done, so it was just a fun outing.
And a chance to visit Sherry and Gary again.
Our friends Sherry and Gary, who we know from Alaska, spent January in Yuma too. It was great to catch up. We toured the old Territorial Prison. We took a day trip to the beach in San Diego (got within about 100 feet of the water before turning back — so didn’t really quite make it to the beach), And we drove up to Quartzsite during the big RV show to see what all the hype was about. They’re always great company for exploring and fun for a game of cards too.
Mesquite, Nevada
We spent the second half of winter in Mesquite. We’d passed through before but never really stayed. Since we have several friends there, it was a great home base for catching up.
Julie, the office manager from our old park in Heber City recently relocated to Mesquite. She took us out on her ATV a couple of times.
Julie, Todd, Mike, and I went to the lawnmower races (yes, that’s a real thing). There were plenty of card nights with them and with Heidi and Jim, friends from our Montana days.
Mesquite, Nevada, is close enough to St. George, Utah, that we got together a few times with friends there (Jeremy & Robyn, and Phil & Lynn). It is also close enough to Vegas for a day trip to see old friends. I visited Vivian from my IBM days, Steve from my MK days, and even Dan London a high school friend. Mike and I also took a day to visit the interactive “Arte” museum on the strip.
We had watched the RV park (which is visible from I-15) go up from an empty lot to a finished resort over the last few years, so we were curious to finally stay there. Overall it was a great destination. We even made friends with a work camper there and started wondering if that could be an option for us down the road.
La Verkin, Utah
One more stop on the way north was Utah. We’d planned to camp along the Fremont River near Fish Lake. There are free roadside pull-offs and great fly fishing. But it was 14 degrees the day we planned to arrive. Mike’s sister and brother-in-law were hoping to meet us there in their new camper. So we redirected to the milder La Verkin, Utah, instead for a couple of days.
While there, I also checked out the new Zion Canyon Hot Springs with a friend. It’s a fun facility with about 50 mineral pools ranging from natural mineral to globally-inspired soaking pools, plus cold plunges and saunas.
And.. one more stop on our way North…
… Layton, Utah
Mike spent a few weeks in Layton while I was off traveling for work again. It’s not the nicest park, but it’s convenient to his sisters and mom, and close to the airport for my trips. (Unfortunately no Work Camping). We had another lovely getaway weekend with his sisters, this time in Park City.
And I snuck in a slumber party at a besties house (Tracie Sullivan in Jordan).
Then the Summer in Worland, Wyoming
The weather was still too cold for our planned stop at Flaming Gorge. So we pushed on to our summer destination — Worland, Wyoming — arriving a few days early.
Something we learned early in our RV life, back when I was still working for IBM, is that Mike doesn’t do well sitting idle. Waiting around for me to finish work so we could go play was never very satisfying for him. That’s really why we got into work camping in the first place. The free site was a nice bonus, but the real value was giving Mike something purposeful to do. It provided a way to feel useful and be part of a team.
We forgot that lesson in Alaska. I was slammed with work. Mike wasn’t, and he ended up feeling a bit homebound and didn’t enjoy Alaska as much as he could have. I realized it on the way back down. It was too late to plan for that winter, but not too late to get back on the work camping track for the summer. We found a small park in Worland looking for summer work campers. Worland, Wyoming is right in the middle of country we hadn’t explored yet. As a bonus it was near some good fly fishing that Mike was already familiar with.
Worland RV Park and Campground
Worland RV Park is a nice little park. Nothing fancy, but you can tell the owners have put real blood, sweat, and love into bringing it back to life since buying it about 12 years ago. About 60 sites, and it reminded us in a lot of ways of Eagle’s Nest RV Resort in Polson, Montana. The summer promised to be peaceful and low-key. Mike got in some good fishing and got involved with the local pickleball group, and I was gone a lot, as usual.
We squeezed in a short trip to the Black Hills to renew our driver’s licenses. And we enjoyed another great weekend with Mike’s sisters, this time in Island Park, Idaho.
The work:
We worked as a couple. Mike worked outside, mostly escorting guests to their sites and cleaning up after checkouts. I worked inside handling check-ins, phones, and new reservations. Morning chores (laundry room, restrooms, etc.) took about an hour, and the afternoons had maybe three or four five-minute tasks scattered through. A big day was four arrivals.
A card game would spontaneously break out at least twice a week. If anything, there wasn’t quite enough to keep us busy. I honestly didn’t mind, since it gave me time to blog and read. But Mike, true to form, didn’t love the slower pace. I offered to handle the office solo and call him if I needed him, but he never felt right taking me up on it.
Wherever we’ve work camped, our hosts have loved having us back. We both come from backgrounds where thinking through processes and finding efficiencies comes naturally. Mike tends to spot things that need fixing and just jumps in. In the office, I can usually see their processes and improvements to make office work and training smoother.
The issue:
This time, that instinct didn’t line up well with how the park liked to run things. Every process here was done manually, by design, and suggestions for streamlining anything didn’t really land. Mike liked to joke that the owners worked incredibly hard but not necessarily efficiently — which, fair enough, it’s their park and their call.
Mike wasn’t permitted to use power tools for liability reasons, or take on anything that might get him dirty. So painting, table repairs, fixing water lines, even mowing were off the table. Every reservation was written by hand on paper. And each type — online booking (from two different platforms), phone-ins, walk-ins — had its own slightly different procedure. It was enough that I had to double-check the manual nearly every time the phone rang to make sure I filed things correctly. I found myself missing small details more often than I liked.
The park also had alarms that went off whenever a vehicle came or went. The owners knew every guest’s car by sight. They had expectations for us to learn them also. They planned to leave us in charge overnight while they went hunting that fall. Knowing the incoming cars that came in at any hour in the night would make that easier. I was honestly worried I’d sleep through it. Mike suggested a simple gate that closed at 10pm and opened at 6am, (since nobody was really supposed to come or go in that window anyway). But the owners preferred to keep waking up at 2am to check instead.
The crime:
I probably shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was by how our time at Worland RV Park ended, but I was — I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt.
Early in the summer, I had mentioned that the park reminded me of the one in Montana where we’d work camped before. I mentioned that I’d actually built the reservation database that park still uses. Julie, the owner, wasn’t thrilled about the idea at first — she wasn’t keen on anyone connecting to their computers. Once I explained the system runs entirely offline on a single standalone computer, with no outside connection, and that guests would still call in to book just like they do now, she warmed up to the idea of maybe trying it.
As the summer went on and I had a good handle on their day-to-day process, I decided to put together a demo for Julie. I honestly wasn’t sure she’d take me up on it, but I thought it might genuinely help her. If I didn’t at least show it to her, I might regret it. For the demo to run smoothly, I loaded in a set of existing reservation data. That included names, emails, rig sizes, site assignments.
This is the same information we regularly had access to. In fact, procedure required us to carry back to our rig every day at lunch. In hindsight, I should have given the owners a heads-up before doing that step, even though my intent was simply to show them a working system rather than to surprise them with anything. I am confident in my ability to handle data appropriately, especially as that had been my career.
The bust:
What I didn’t know is that the park records video throughout the office at all times. Furthermore, the owners review the footage regularly. The morning after I’d loaded the demo data, The owners asked us to come to the office and bring the computer and any backup devices. They were beyond furious. Quite unhinged really. I apologized for not looping them in first, but the conversation didn’t go much further than that. They asked us to delete the file and to be off the property by 4pm that day. They filed a report with the local police department, and I explained the situation to the officer who came out.
Julie told us she’d had a “complete loss of trust.” That phrase stuck with me for a while… Then I realized, she never had any trust in me to begin with. If she had this would have been a discussion, instead of a bomb. We left peacefully and without complaint. A couple of days later, when I texted to ask about an Amazon package still headed our way, Julie informed me it had already been returned and that we were not welcome back on the property.
We’re not likely to pass back through Worland, so we moved on. We already had a hotel booked in Cooke City, Montana, later that week (more on that trip soon). So we didn’t want to stray too far. We hadn’t seen the museum in Cody yet either, so we booked a week at an RV park in Cody. Cody is about 1.5 hours away from Worland. The park was a genuinely pleasant stay. Coincidentally, I don’t think the folks running it had ever heard the term “work camping” before!
And Yet Another Change in Plans
From Cody we headed to Mike’s son’s house in Butte, Montana for a week, but on our second day there, Mike’s mom passed away.
Everything changed in that instant, and suddenly we were headed for Ogden, Utah. It was especially bittersweet timing — Mike had just decided he wanted to spend more time in Utah to be closer to his mom, and his sister Debra was on the brink of retiring for that same reason.
On the brighter side, Mike’s mom was 93 years old and lived every day on her own terms. She was healthy and capable right up to the end. She stayed in the house she loved without ever needing assistance. I can’t imagine anyone more prepared for their death. On the morning she passed, she went downstairs, put out the mail, started the coffee, and put bread in the toaster. Then she simply died on the spot. No trauma, no fall — she slumped gently to the floor, where Mike’s sisters found her two hours later.
God’s Hand
We feel blessed that we had no commitments pulling us away, so we could head straight to Utah. We planned and held her memorial, alongside one for Mike’s dad (who had passed four years earlier). The service was two weeks to the day after her death. With many of the grandkids in town, we followed the service with a Celebration of Life. The party was at Mike’s sister’s house before starting the work of clearing out Mike’s Mom’s house.
The following weekend we held two days of garage sales. We are now down to a handful of items we’ll donate if they don’t sell by Thursday. The house goes on the market Friday. It’s been an amazing process to be part of, and a cathartic one for everyone involved. Mike’s parents were deeply loved and will be missed. Mike and I only hope to go out with that same grace ourselves one day.
On to Brighter Pastures
Since our schedule opened up unexpectedly, we’ll stay here in Utah for another couple of months before heading to Arizona for the winter. After that where will we go? — Wherever our Itchy Feet take us next.
