Trek America, Tuesday, July 1, 2014 and Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

It was beautiful weather again today with the high temperature being about 70 degrees.  Chuck was assigned train engineer duties, but the train was not operational until about 2:30 p.m.  He drove co-worker Andrew around to collect garbage all over town this morning.  (Andrew is no longer allowed to drive the state vehicles because he drove one into a telephone pole last week and is lucky to still have his job.) 

Cindy worked at the Virginia City depot, and the train came pulling in around 3:00 p.m. on a trial run.  Chuck reported that it was running, but not running well so the mechanics will probably be called back.  Meanwhile, starting at 4:00 p.m. we gave free train rides to anyone interested and we had a full load. 

Cindy met a young lady today that works for Trek America.  She came pulling up to the depot in a large van with a trailer hooked up in the back.  Trek America is a travel company that caters to international travelers, but in a rustic way.  She met eleven young people two weeks ago in Los Angeles, California and began a cross country trip with them.  Though management plans the general itineraries for the trips, the total responsibility lies with the driver/leader of the group.  It is her responsibility to buy and cook all their food and arrange for campgrounds along the way.  All sleeping bags and tents are provided, so the travelers just show up with a suitcase full of clothes.  It is also the leader’s responsibility to tweak the itinerary and make sure the tourists have a great time and see many marvelous sites.  The leader told Cindy that none of these people knew each other before the trip, and that some groups are better than others about helping out in setting up camp and preparing meals.   They traveled to Virginia City today from Glacier National Park and will end their trip in New York City in two weeks and fly home from there.  Some of her current group has been traveling for six weeks as they took the southern tour with a different leader and made several stops in Florida.  After she drops this group off in New York, she will have one day to recover and make plans before meeting a new group that will travel west to Los Angeles.   She said the average price for a four week trip is about $3000 each.   Cindy took a picture of the group before they left, and asked where they were all from and if they were college students.  The general consensus was that they were through with college.  Some of them were from England and New Zealand, and several other countries were mentioned but Cindy was not quick enough to catch them all.   

We are low on groceries, so we went to Ennis after work to get pizza.  We did not see the inn mates upon our return, so we had another quiet evening.

 

Trek America

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Today was the hottest day we have had with the high temperature reaching 88 degrees.  Cindy worked at the gold panning operation and this was the first day any sweating was involved.  There weren’t too many customers, so she was bored stiff for most of the day. 

Chuck had the day off and did some errands.  He washed the car, did some laundry, and changed the bed sheets.  He went out to eat lunch with inn mate Daniel, and then watched a Netflix movie in the afternoon at the rehearsal hall.   

At 6:30 p.m. Chuck picked Cindy up from work and we went home to eat the very last food we have in the kitchen.  It’s a good thing we are off tomorrow and planning a run to the grocery store.