Grand Opening

Today was not just another day here at Llamaland Tent Camping; it was the grand opening of the pavilion. We have worked on that thing for a long time. It has taken several contractors and many different blue collar hard working people but we finally got it done. It feels so good to be able to say that the hard part is over mostly. Sure there will be maintenance that keeps having to be dealt with, and I know that there will be some more add-ons, but there is a solid foundation to upgrade on over time.

To celebrate our grand opening in the state of Texas we have guests from Dallas Baptist University coming. These great kids have come to our little city to kick off their new semester with camp here at our ranch. This meant Llamaland Tent Camping needed to be ready to accommodate a large group. With this being our first group to the pavilion I was a little nervous that things were not going to be functioning before the college students arrived.

We first got the idea to build this pavilion somewhere around June of 2024. It was a harmless, fun, and exciting idea at first. Soon we were planning our designs and picking out contractors. There were some good options that we decided were the right fit but in the end we ended up with Danny. This man took an idea and ran with it so far that we didn't even know if we were still doing a pavilion. First came the idea for a rusted tin / log roof. The idea was to have a place to get out of the rain and the sun I guess. All I know is the idea kept growing to the place where we were going to build it out of Cedar trees because they would look amazing. Then we needed a grand entrance and it had to be made out of Cedar logs also to match the pavilion; it does look good. Along the lines of the grand entrance is when Danny came to be work for us. He said he was going to build Mrs. Judy something special for an entrance. This thing looked like something strait out of an old John Wayne movie; we called it Fort Apache. With these two elaborate decorations we, for some reason, thought that we should pour more concrete and get a bathroom that matched the tin rusted roof. The madness has gone on long enough I think we are flat broke now and we will wait until next year to build anything else hopefully.

As much as I would love to say that we managed to get ready in time for the grand opening, I cannot. The bathrooms were not done completely. However, the pavilion was ready, and that is what the college had rented so we were techincally still on schedule. The problem was that it wasn't everything we wanted. I guess this project fell behind because at first i was scared. I thought if we decided to build all of this that something bad would happen. God knows what my mind was coming up with but it was things like liability insurance and Debt mostly. I couldn't let fear hold me back forever. I did take a while to get on the ball but never the less the project continued without my being ready. As time went on I realized that there were things I could do to overcome my anxiety. The little techniques I read about were useless. I mean we were talking about thousands of dollars worth of failure if things went wrong. I was new and scared but one thing I did have going for me; I was experienced at supervising. So I relied on what I could and went for it.

So, did we get everything done before the grand opening? No! However, we got close and for a family of ranchers who were just figuring out things on their own I think we did pretty good. The only incomplete project was the bathrooms and we had three porta potties brought in. Most likely we will finish up the bathrooms before the next week gets here, hopefully.

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