It's The Time Of The Year I Dread The Most

It's the weekend I dread the most. It's the weekend every year where I close up camp and winterize my travel trailer. And that just happened to be last weekend.

Every year on May 1st, I am bursting with excitement. I take the day off and head into Pennsylvania to open up my travel trailer for the season. I call it the my most wonderful time of the year. There's a lot to do to open up camp, but it's fun and for the next six months, life will be good.

Every year, as we descend on October 31st, it's the opposite effect. I'm depressed that camping season is at its end for the year, and I have a lot of work to do to close up. Seems every year I find that I have more stuff to put away than the last. Might have something to do with the fact that I keep buying crap for the camper. Oh well.

This year certainly had its ups and downs. The camping season started a week late due to Covid-19, and many normal activities were cancelled or modified. On the upside, the weather this summer was great, so most weekends and all my vacations at camp were amazing.

Of course there were a few downsides to this year's camping season for me. I battled a few yellow jacket bees that had taken up residence under my camper. Those little buggers sent me to the hospital. My older than dirt golf cart kept breaking down on a weekly basis.

I accidentally set my riding lawn mower on fire when some leaves got too hot under the mow deck, resulting in flames shooting up on both sides of the engine. I think I burned up a safety switch since it won't stay running when I take my foot off the clutch. And one of the water lines in my camper failed, causing a leak. That was a challenge trying to find the source of the leak. Found out it was a flaw in the manufacturing process. Not happy about that.

Sunday, we winterized the camper. We forgot to bring a couple of the necessary tools needed to winterize, but thankfully were able to work around it, and then we had a bit of an issue trying to get the anti-freeze to pump through the water lines. Turned out we had an air pocket in one of the lines preventing the water pump to do its job. And after all was finished, I discovered a bit of water on the floor underneath the water heater. At that point I shrugged my shoulders and declared it an issue for next spring. I'm done with problems this season.

I bid the campground goodbye for the season. Those six months flew by fast. I just reset a countdown clock that sits on my desk at work, to May 1st 2021. As of today (October 26th) it stands at 187 days. It's going to be a long six months.