A Down-Day and Rain

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Caesar Creek Campground, Wilmington, Ohio

We had a down-day planned yesterday for a couple of reasons. An important one had to do with the need to do a dump-and-fill on the trailer. In simple terms that means we needed to dump our sewage tanks and load up on fresh water. It is a bit more complicated than that because, for us anyway, it means we have to secure everything inside the trailer, roll in the slider and awning, hitch the thing back up to the car, tow it over to the dump station, dump, then bring the trailer back and re-establish camp. Although we are pretty good at the whole process, having done it dozens of times by now, it still takes about two hours. Five days is about as long as we can go without dumping the tanks, so they were ready. But that’s done now until we are ready to leave here.

Since we had that little chore to do, we knew that we would be limited in our exploration options. But, additionally, there was a forecast of thunderstorms for late afternoon. It seems the forecasters are pretty accurate out here because it did indeed roll in almost exactly at 3:00 PM. It was a pretty good storm and poor Smoochie once again had the shakes. We tried to nap through the storm, but she wasn’t about to go to sleep and insisted on keeping us up too. It also dumped quite a bit of water - everything is kind of muddy again. It rained some more last night so this morning, the campsites are all pretty damp.

I don’t know how tent campers have much fun in this kind of weather. There’s a group of them in the campsite next to ours. Yesterday morning they were sitting around laughing, making breakfast, and having a whole lot of fun. This morning, one of their tents is down, and they are all very quiet, standing up against their vehicles. I got the sense they were debating whether to stay or not.

The Memorial Weekend influx of campers did indeed happen. The ‘Campground Full’ sign went up Thursday afternoon and most everybody arrived Friday evening - there are nearly 300 campsites. We went from being the only campers on this loop, and all kinds of privacy, to being just one of dozens. There are all shapes and sizes of trailers, tents, and a couple of motor homes. Lots of vehicles hauling boats too, which is to be expected given we are on a lake. For all the people here, though, it is pretty quiet. Everyone seems to be partying responsibly.

We had an adventure planned for today and were going to take the girls with us. But everyone is moving real slow this morning, so I’m not sure what we are going to end up doing. I’ll let you know tomorrow.

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Photos

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End of Loop F

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All sites occupied