Shortest Camping Trip on Record

Good morning, my friends, and surprise!!! We're back!!! An alternative title for this post might be "Fiascos are Fun!" So, if you haven't guessed by now, we're back home again. Allow me to tell this sad tale. Ahem...

Fortunately, we didn't go far. It was just 55 miles to the campground. Check-in was late in the day, and so we hung around the house until we could arrive at a reasonably early time of day. It poured rain the whole distance. Our weatherman tells us we're currently experiencing an "atmospheric river," and our response is...so, what else is new? When we reached the coast highway, we headed south and pulled off at this viewpoint of the town of Manzanita below. Behind and barely visible through the fog is Neahkahnie Mountain.

We still had about a half hour drive, but finally turned off the highway and drove to the campground.

And here's where things went way south. It seemed everything went wrong. When we found our spot, we realized the trees on both sides of our space had branches hanging too low. We couldn't get our fifth wheel backed into the space without damaging the RV. So we spoke to the camp host who offered some suggestions. We decided to try a different spot, two spaces over. That worked fine, except we realized after we backed in that yet another tree was growing too close to the RV, and we couldn't open our kitchen slide. Okay...so maybe a different space. Third time worked out.

So, now we're all set up, although we were drenched and cold from setting up in the pouring rain. No problem. We had the electric fireplace running, satellite dish deployed, furnace turned on. We even had time to boil some water for hot buttered rums (to warm us on the inside). Then...the power went off. Oy. Mike did everything his electrical engineer's brain could think of. We even plugged into the space next door. No matter what we did, the power would only stay on for about a minute before shutting down again.

Okay. We were tired of all this. We found a private RV park nearby, and moved there. We can deal with the state about our refund later. So we get to the RV park (only one space available, surprisingly), and we go through the same motions, and the same thing happens. Apparently, the electrical problem was with our RV, and not with the state park hookups. And, who the heck knows? Everything was working fine before we left home. 

It will take Mike some time to figure out the problem. Possibly water is involved since we were driving on such wet and potholed roads. It will take some investigation to figure that out. But long story short (although it's no shorter after telling it), we're back home again. It was too cold to be without electricity. Our furnace is propane, but we couldn't run our generator in the state park, and so there would be no way to charge our batteries. We have solar panels on the roof, but see that photo above. Sunshine was not going to be on the job for our camping pleasure.

Okay, so we've certainly suffered worse disasters, and this was just a disappointing inconvenience. It was 7:30 p.m., and we'd still not eaten anything since lunch. We stopped at the first restaurant we came to, and they happened to serve seafood. I ordered some fried oysters breaded with panko, and that was worth the trip right there. 

I know some of you will gag at the thought of oysters. I like them, and I especially like them prepared this way. Raw is not on my personal menu, however, so rest easy. Any oysters that pass my lips are going to be fully cooked.

And here's something else good that happened. Master Dominic received his quilt, and his dad sent me this picture. Is this precious, or what?

Okay, so it's back to the sewing room for me, although we'll have to unpack the RV. We'll probably bring things in piecemeal throughout the day, which is the way it usually works. I'm still going to prepare the same food, the same dessert that was planned, etc. We'll do most of the same things we were planning to do camping. Housekeeping chores have been erased from the calendar for the week, and we'll enforce our relaxation policy for camping trips...meaning, not much is going to get done over the next day or two. I know Mike, though. He'll have to be trying to figure out the problem with our electricity.

So, I still have three quilts that need their bindings hand-sewn. Also, another Tiny House needs constructing. After those things are finished, I'll get to work on my list of WIPs. At the top of the list will be to make the second block for "When Quilters Gather." This one:

While we were waiting for it to be time to leave, I made up the freezer-paper pattern for the block.

Right now, I'm going to go eat one of the frozen breakfast burritos I'd made for this trip. At least breakfast is already made. I can get busy on my hand-sewing right away.

Don't cry for us. Nobody died, and so it was a successful trip, short though it was.