We are now settled in our new home for the next three months. We pulled in yesterday and were set up by noon. Of course, setting up the RV doesn’t take too long. We are on the Chickamauga Battlefield in Georgia, just a few miles from Chattanooga. We will be working two days a week at the Chickamauga Visitor Center and two days a week at the Lookout Mountain Visitor Center in Chattanooga.
We are in a beautiful spot. It is wooded but with a nice field in the back. There are monuments all around us. The park is technically closed at dusk, although they don’t lock any gates so people drive through on the main roads all night. We are not on a main road, however, and I didn’t hear any cars go by at all last night.
We have one neighbor, Judy, who is also volunteering. She is an expert at volunteering in the National Parks and has been traveling all over for the last six years. This is also her first time at Chickamauga and Chattanooga so we will all be learning together. The three of us are the only people in the park at night.
Yesterday, while we were getting set up, we met our boss, Will Sunderland, and his boss, Kim Coons. We also met the Head of Maintenance (we are parked next to the maintenance facility) and the Chief Law Enforcement Officer stopped by and gave us his card. He told us to call him if any alarms go off or if we see activity during the night. I didn’t know I would be calling him at 2 a.m. when the alarm at the Maintenance Facility went off screaming, “Burglary, Burglary, Burglary!” After Tom and I listened to it for several minutes I got up and called the Chief, who didn’t sound much more awake than I was. He told me there was an electrical short in the alarm in the lumber room and not to worry about it. Shortly after I called him the alarm stopped. I hope this won’t be a regular event because I had a hard time getting back to sleep after all that adrenaline from the alarm!
Our new home is a really pretty place: shaded, cool and private. We have especially been enjoying the deer. Tonight there was a herd of 19 of them in our “back yard”: mostly does with one or two fawns each. They spent close to an hour grazing behind us. I think we will like living here.
