Lake Tahoe

Yesterday I helped to run the MWR Morale Trip to Squaw Valley and Granlibakken in Lake Tahoe, CA.

It was a VERY long day, I was down at the departure location at 0530 placing reserve signs on seats, loading the bingo game and prizes onto the bus, and finally checking in the passengers and getting their cell phone number (just in case we needed to contact them in event of an emergency). The bus pulled out promptly at 0600, one of the missing passengers ended up running after the bus right as we started, we were nice and let him board.

The ride there went smoothly, I helped pass out breakfast (danish, juice/water, napkin), then collected the trash. We had 11 Starbucks giftcards to award as prizes with our bingo games. I took turns with my boss Ken calling numbers and keeping track, amidst making jokes to keep the "B 14, B14" from becoming too extremely boring.

We dropped half of the bus off at Squaw Valley, I had to mark off those passengers on my list so we knew their location. From there the rest of us went to Granblibakken Snow Area (15min drive), once we arrived we* unloaded the bus and began to set-up our area on the lodge's deck. I was responsible for cooking the chili and hot dogs for lunch, luckily I had about an hour to get ready before the lunch rush.

At 1130 we served the Granlibakken group, at 1200 the bus returned from Sqaw Valley and we served them lunch and they left for Squaw Valley once again. Squaw Valley is a typical ski and snowboard area green-black runs, it was the home of the VIII Olympics in 1960. Granlibakken is a family centered area with 2-3 green/blue runs. The biggest draw though is their play area, for $9.00 p/per ($7.00 for our group, military discount) gets you unlimited access to the snow hill. They have discs and sleds available. My boss gave me 3hrs to enjoy it!



I also took pictures with the MWR's government issued camera (I'm so glad I didn't break it!) to document the trip for the intranet. Around 1600 we* began cleaning up and loading up the bus. We took a group picture, then loaded up the bus and headed to pick up the other half of the group at Squaw Valley. Once we had loaded up there, I took a final headcount and we were on our way back to TRACEN.

I was responsible for running the movies on the way back, we watched Evan Almighty and A Night at the Museum (The movies had to be PG because of the younger children on board). We made a stop for dinner, and arrived back at base at 2145. After unloading Ken, Nate, and I had to unload all of the MWR gear at the office. I finally got back to my room at 2215.

Once my head hit the pillow... I was out!

This next week is going to be full of meetings and briefs. I know of five, then Fri-Sun is the Nor-Cal Basketball Tournament. Talk about B-U-S-Y!

*Side Note: It is really cool for me that when we were unloading the bus, the Coasties and their families didn't just expect us to do it all for them. It was a joint effort, we had guys carrying ice chests for us, the bags of charcoal, and the propane stove. It may have been because we provided the trip for free, (including lunch) or just the type of people we were with. But either way, it was really refreshing to see the initiative and community effort that took place.