Travels with Snowbirds, Quest for The Stamp continued, Thousand Trails Chesapeake Bay Preserve, Gloucester VA, September 29, 2017

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Kim left on Monday. Today is Friday. Her hearing with the town of Sea Bright did not go as well as planed due to some legal issue or another, and she will have a reschedule date once those issues get ironed out. It has not been an easy go for her since superstorm Sandy. I have had 5 days to do absolutely nothing and that’s what I have done; absolutely nothing. I did not make my Fitbit goal any day. I did stretch and exercise with weights once. I walked over to the rec hall 3 days to watch General Hospital, as the air antenna reception here sucks

Before I left home, I downloaded movies and entire TV series from both Netflix and Prime - thank goodness. Netflix’s “The Five”, a British crime drama, was really very good. Based on a Harlen Coben novel, I really liked it. Good story. I had to have closed captioning on as the British accents were too much for me occasionally. I must say, downloading so much was really a brilliant idea. I have unlimited Verizon data, so I have streamed some things, Dancing With the Stars, Survivor, and one live GH. The details on the Verizon app say something like the speed gets throttled after 15 G usage. I am at that now, after a week, and one week to go. I will keep you posted. Thursday night a reset the antenna and the only station I could receive was ABC. That meant I got to see the season premiere of Grey’s Anatomy, and I sure enjoyed it.

Much of my days were spent sitting outside watching the water and crocheting or knitting. I finally finished knitting the table runner for Kristine, 90 inches long and very heavy but gorgeous. Now I am working on the multiple baby blankets on my list.

Hurricane Maria took 2 days to pass by and brought high wind gusts constantly but no rain. The temperature was mid 80s with humidity to match - not fall like at all. The A/C was on most of the days, but it cooled down enough at night to turn off. We said goodbye to Maria Thursday night; the temperature dropped 20 degrees and the humidity is down in the 40%s. My campsite overlooks the water, so I have been sitting outside watching the whitecaps and sea foam and watching the birds ride the thermals. I haven’t seen any herons though.

Previous campers have joined the painted rock treasure hunt craze, and I found adorable hand painted rocks hidden all over the campground. I subscribe to the point and shutter click method of hunting, and left the art work for future campers. The campground has been relatively quiet all week. There has only been one other camper on my loop since Kim left. I have enjoyed the solitude.

I didn’t think I would write another blog this week, but sometimes things just happen that demand sharing. Today was one of those days. You can’t make this shit up.

Friday. A beautiful early fall day. Empty campground. Weekend warriors arrived early and in droves. A pick up truck came at dinner time Thursday night and dropped a 30 foot fifth wheel next door, then left. At first, I thought he was saving his site for the weekend, totally against the rules, but before dark a man came and started setting up the site. Winston barked and I had to go say hello. It was then I noticed the size of his dog pen - a 6-foot cube. He saw my eyes widen, and he said he had 2 large dogs that would be confined. Uh huh. Next, he set up 2 8-foot tables under an accommodating dining canopy, and another one over the campsites picnic table. A large grill, multiple chairs around the fire pit (thank goodness, it’s not on my side of the camper – the smoke and camaraderie would drive me crazy.) Friday morning he put up 2 tents. He obviously has not heard of the borders of your campsite are utility pole to utility pole, because one of these tents is on my campsite. I re-introduced myself, nosy me. He’s from Fredericksburg, VA, 1.5 h away, and waiting for a big party to show up for the weekend. Great. He drives a Ford Explorer and told me it has the same engine as my RV, a Ford V10k. His has 200,000 miles on it, I have 27K. I couldn’t get him to shut up, not that I wanted him to, this is the dream of all bloggers, you can’t make this stuff up. He’s an LP technician. He has 2 RVs. He has a trailer that he keeps on a site in Topsail, NC all year. He bought this 5^th wheel for $1000, put $1200 into the interior, stores it here at Chesapeake Bay and has his friend haul it to a site when he wants to use it. As I looked closer at it, it does need some exterior work, but he says the inside is gorgeous…..I didn’t see it. I guess it’s not a bad way to do things. As I write this there are now 3 cars parked on the grass in front of his rig. Campground rules say 2 cars and one camper and 1 tent and 10 people. Their corn hole game is set up on the site beyond him, so maybe he rented 2 sites. Damn rule breaker. By the way, this owner has one of those big booming teacher voices you can hear from anywhere.

Mid afternoon brought an obviously new trailer and new shiny red pickup truck pull in on the other side of me, into the spot Kim was in earlier. He didn’t pull in the site far enough. RVing 101. First things you do is walk around your rig and make sure you are situated ok on the site, then plug in your electric and make sure it’s working. Second thing you do is turn the water on make sure it works, then install the hose. You can do those last 2in reverse order, but those are the first things you do. This guy plugged into electricity, set up his hose then set up his sewer system. He had not unhooked from shiny red pickup yet. By my calculation he was not far enough back in the campsite. The truck blocked the street. And, the trailer pitched forward so far it looked like it was going to roll downhill if the truck was not blocking it. I was sitting outside in my usual position, view now partially blocked by this rig. Owner asks me if I had problems hooking up electricity, and I confirmed all was A-OK and previous camper did not have any issues. He fussed and futzed and angsted. He took his electric cable over to an adjacent empty site and plugged it in, but no power. He got on speaker phone to someone. By the way, this camper has one of those big booming teacher voices you can hear from anywhere. He ran around his rig like a little smurf pulling this, touching that, plugging here, screwdriver everywhere. I saw another neighbor who has been here a few days sitting outside at their picnic table trying not to be too obvious about watching. I leashed Winston and went over and introduced myself.

From their angle, you could really see how pitched forward this trailer was. We whispered that if he unhooked the trailer from shiny red it would roll downhill, pretty much straight to the river, or perhaps being stopped by another rig between him and the river. I was sitting with a realty sweet couple. They have been together 3 years, she’s divorced, he’s a widower. New rig, 26 foot Coachmen Freelander, Class C, (bed over cab), that they spent all day spit shining. They do not tow, but ride around in a cute little two seat golf cart with a handicap symbol on the back. I noticed he limped. Well, four months ago, he fell off the tongue of his hitch trying to hook up his boat, hit his head, went underwater and broke his ankle in many pieces. Good thing there was someone else there to help her get him out of the water. She finished hauling the boat by herself, got him into the car and off to the hospital for a multi hour surgery with pins and plates and screws. He has ongoing PT, is still supposed to be using a cane, you know the macho type. Well he saw red pickups tilty pitch and expressed concern for the woman inside. If this thing let go, she could get seriously injured. He hobbled over and asked red pickup if he needed help, ended up unloading the back of his pickup and when he found the chocks, he put them right underneath the trailer wheels. Tragedy avoided. We had a few good laughs at that owner’s expense. He eventually unhooked the truck and drove off, but not before telling me that his electricity was A-OK. He had a burnt neutral wire, whatever that means. I would be concerned how you burn a neutral wife……….Note: He came back a bit later and parked shiny red perpendicular to his trailer, yes, encroaching on my site so that I can’t back out straight when I leave in the morning. I told him I was leaving early, and just wanted to make sure I had enough room, and he said he would move it before he went to sleep. What don’t these people understand about camping etiquette 101.

I took Winston for a walk, and met other campers who had been all week as well. They drove to the nearest Camping World earlier in the week when they couldn’t get TV reception. They bought a portable Satellite dish and easily hooked it up. They pay a monthly fee of $36 for whatever months they use it, and don’t pay anything on the months they don’t. I wondered how that worked, and I wonder if you can get premium channels. I didn’t ask that. These 2 guys were travelling with their standard Schnauzer, Jagger, and boy was he cute. Feisty, like Winston, but really cute.

So, tomorrow I break camp. First stop laundromat about 20 miles up the road. Second stop there are 2 National Parks in Richmond. Both will get a visit and a stamp in my passport book. Then I will look for a Red Lobster or Outback, or something similar and work my way as close as I can get to Fayetteville, NC for an overnight at a Walmart campground. A long visit to Walmart will be necessary. On Sunday morning I travel to a week with my Loners on Wheels friends in Rimini, SC, on the shore of Lake Marion.

I heard from one of my relatives who discovered me on ancestry.com a few years ago, and she wants to come to Lake Marion this week from her vacation on Hilton Head Island to catch up. That will be fun, looking forward to it, EOS. (That’s code…..she’s a blog follower.)



Kat out

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Photos

Painted Rock in Mini Golf prop
Note Winston checking the boat out

Chaos
Tough to see here. My rig is on the left. You can see the rig and two tents in the campsite to the right. Now, at 10:00 at night there are about 10 people and four cars and the biggest fire in the world. It was hard to get pictures with so many people watching me walk by