Clayton Lake State Park to Dumas, TX

Kitchen Crew and Trailer Driving

It's been mentioned before how out kitchen crews work, but I'll spell it out briefly for those new to the site. All Walkers are assigned to a crew – usually 5-8 people in a crew. Right now, your duty begin after lunch and continues until lunch is served the following day.
I think (of course) we have a great kitchen crew. Myself, Kathleen, Carrie, Stanley, Ula, Bonita and Yanicut. Can't go wrong really.

Cooking dinner for 70-100 people seems kind of daunting, but it really is just a matter of creativity and working together to make it happen. Last night we had a great time figuring out the meal plan and making it happen. We also had a wonderful donation of Shepherd's Pie by Wilda – which people went nuts over. We also found a couple industrial size cans of beans which we cooked with green chiles. We had some fresh carrots and apples, so we made up a grated carrot and apple salad, adding some canned pears and raisins. What else, we had some grated cheese, Bonita chopped up tomatoes and we had some leftover purple cabbage from lunch. We had a great time making dinner .. there was much laughter and singing – later as we offered a prayer for the meal, Henry reminded us that food prepared with laughter and love should be eaten with the same intention.

Breakfast can be a little tougher, just 'cause we need to be in the kitchen by 4-4:30 am. The most important thing about breakfast is coffee ... of course. We were totally on it, and then a little mishap took place which set us back. As we were pouring the water into the grounds (wait...let me explain about how we make coffee at camp. Since we don't have a percolator or other fancy coffee device...we use a pillowcase as a filter, putting the coffee into that. We then take that and put it into a 5 gallon cambro, which we then pour boiling water over.) So..anyway, as we poured this scalding water into the cambro, filled it up and then too late noticed that someone had left the valve open on the pouring spout, 'causing the water to leak out...essentially ruining our coffee. So, that's how the day started..it ended up being fine, we made a quick new cambro full...it was a little weak, but it was warm and somewhat caffeinated so it worked.

After cleaning up camp, we took the truck with trailer attached, and headed into town to the hardware store to buy some bolts for the trailer and some screws for something they wanted to attach onto the RV – then we met the walkers down the road to serve up lunch.

Afterwards we headed into Dumas, Texas with the trailer to the next camp. It's sometimes fun to jump ahead and see the site and get it ready for when the walkers arrive. This essentially means unloading all of the gear off the trailers and lining it up for the walkers to go through when they get back. Then..we sit back and wait. We got to talk to the runners who had already finished their miles for the day. On our drive to Dumas we noticed how windy it was along this four lane highway .. it seemed like it would have been kind of a gnarly run..it was really gusty and the semis were blazing down the road at 70 miles an hour; but Kid said the run was actually pretty nice. Other runners of the day were Ben, Aiko, Jutta and Shun, who also all seemed to enjoy their 5 or 10 mile stretches. Have I mentioned how much we love our runners?

The walkers arrived to a lovely camp, the weather was balmy and we had a fabulous meal served up by the Japanese kitchen crew. A nice day, overall.