Lost And Found!

If you haven’t been following me on social media, you might not know that I just spent my first summer running our family campground. I had so many new and interesting experiences that it was mentioned often that I should write a book about them! But I figured a few blog posts here and there but be more fun!

I learned things this summer that I never thought I would learn. Things like how many days a sweaty human can sit in one spot on a bed before you have to throw away the sheets! Or children left alone at the free coffee station will in fact open 47 french vanilla coffee creamers into a cup and then drink the sugary liquid straight. I learned that there are a lot of really wonderful people in this world. And I also learned that there are a few people that are never going to be happy no matter what. Most importantly I learned that every single person that drove down our road to our campground had a story and a reason for finding us, and that was the most amazing part of my whole summer!

This past spring, as I set up the campground for opening day, I was pretty confident that I had thought of every last detail to make this the most magical experience for families, but I was wrong. I missed one crucial thing. I never thought of a Lost & Found box. So as you can see from the photo above, unlike everything else here that met the highest of standards, my Lost & Found box ended up being a random cardboard box that I scrawled “Lost & Found” across one flap on a very busy day when I needed something to dump the random pieces of life into.

And that really is what a Lost & Found box is. Those random things in our daily lives that end up not having much meaning because we are willing to lose track of them. So as I closed up the campground this week I found myself sifting through the items in the Lost & Found box and wondering how they ended up there.

Take this item for example. Not sure if this is really Ariel from The Little Mermaid or just a knock off but she wins the longevity award for residing in the Lost & Found box the longest. She has been with us since the 2nd week in June. I only know that because that’s the week we opened the pool and she got left behind on the pool deck that first weekend. It’s one of those mini boogie boards, like some kind of flotation device. You can tell when you grasp it that the styrofoam inside is cracked and broken. Not really sure why her owner just didn’t throw it away in the trashcan provided poolside. Maybe it held some kind of sentimental value to them and it was too hard to throw away. Here we are months and months later. It was a good summer Ariel, or Ariel wannabe, but I had to throw you out.

This hat wins the Furthest Traveled Award. I had to google Marten River, it’s located in Ontario Canada. I remember the woman who had this hat on. She came in the office as they were checking out to tell me how much she had loved staying here. They were quick stop campers, just here for a night as they traveled on to somewhere else. It was a busy weekend and I can’t always remember everyone by name. She ran in to use the Ladies Room before they hit the road and she left her hat on the sink top. It would be a couple of hours later before we found the hat and no way of remembering who she was. I put it in the Lost & Found box just in case she called looking for it. But that was in July and we never heard from her again. Maybe she lives near Marten River, or will travel there again, and can grab a new one.

These two pairs of shoes are my favorites out of the whole box! Only because I keep thinking of the family that left them behind. Did you really go home with two children in bare feet and not notice? I only say this because I raised 5 kids and I can tell you if I had been somewhere and then loaded everyone into the car and noticed that two of them were missing shoes I would have stopped everything to find the shoes! We found these shoes down by the jump pad, where kids are required to remove their shoes before jumping. We found a lot of shoes, sandals and socks there this summer. All of them got claimed except for these two. In all fairness to these RVing families. It’s possible, as the kids climbed into the truck to leave, that mom and dad thought the shoes were inside the camper, only to realize when they got home they were sans shoes.

Then we had a large assortment of these things. Toys. We found lost toys at the playgrounds, around the pool deck, left in the arcade, even in the bathrooms! I felt bad for these toys. I often thought of the toys under Sid’s bed in the movie A Toy Story. These were similar, the cast offs, the not loved, the not valued enough to keep an eye on kind of toys. In some ways I felt sorry for them. But the moment was fleeting and these all went in the dumpster.

Of all the things I thought we’d find this summer it was the lack of sunglasses and eyeglasses that shocked me. An entire summer and only this one pair got left behind. The good thing is that whoever left them also left the case so the glasses at least felt a little bit at home during their time in the Lost & Found Box. I will be donating the glasses to my local Lions Club International for their eyeglasses program. They don’t take cases so sadly this lovely sea themed case went to the dumpster.

And finally we have our winners. Of all the things that got left behind these were the only two that held enough future use value to join us again in 2025. The velcro toss & catch game went into the community lawn games box and the dive sticks will be out on the pool deck next summer just in case anyone wants to give them a try.

We also had some larger items that were casually discarded outside of the dumpsters. You could tell their owners felt they still had some value, but not enough value for them to want to keep for themselves. Things like two trash bags full of really great towels. So freshly washed that the scent of laundry soap gave me a headache! I donated those to the Humane Society. We also found two perfectly good trash cans, with their lids! Not sure who felt they needed brand new trashcans in here when we have 5 dumpsters, but when they pulled out they left them behind for us. Sadly we don’t need them either…we have 5 dumpsters! So I’m going to have to find new homes for those.

Bud was particularly thankful to whoever left a brand new oil filled electric space heater next to the dumpster!! See we have a really nice pool table in the Rec Room that he hasn’t been able to use much this summer because we’ve been so busy. He’s mentioned several times now that when we close up for the season he’d like to leave enough free space around the pool table so he can come over and use it. I pointed out that there is no heat in the main building, might be a bit chilly! Well now …. all of his heating problems have been solved.