Opening Weekend At Camp First Half Challenge

Camp opened a week late. Yea, it was a tough seven days to have to add to six long months of waiting, but somehow, I made it through.

The first weekend on May was absolutely beautiful. Warm, sunny days. So it would only stand to reason that the second weekend of May would be just as nice, or at least as warm, correct? Nah. That would be too good to believe.

I arrived late Friday afternoon to rain and temperatures in the low 40s. I shrugged it off, quickly hooked up the camper battery, plugged in camp power and water lines, opened up the slides, powered up the refrigerator and turned on the furnace. I was drenched, but that was fine, my camper was open and ready to be loaded with all the crap I brought from home.

Apparently, it's been a wetter spring than I thought, and it's a good thing I have a pair of boots at camp. The ground was saturated and muddy. The constant back and forth from my van to the camper turned into a path of mud.

I managed to get everything in rather quickly and began the task of putting everything back in place. Anything after that for the rest of Friday and all of Saturday would be nothing less than downhill.

Friday overnight was cold. Temperatures plunged into the low 20s. Even though I had the heat on, travel trailers don't have any insulation, so it was a three blanket night. I awoke on Saturday morning to a snow-covered winter scene. And to add to the fun, I had no water. The water hose from the camp water faucet to the intake on my camper had frozen. I was having a hard time trying to shut off the water valve.

Eventually I was able to warm up the valve enough to shut it off, disconnect the water hose and bring it into the shower stall to warm up and clear out the ice. The camp owners ended up shutting off the water for the remainder of the weekend as to not risk damage to their system. Good call. And that was just the beginning of my first weekend at camp.

I'll write about how later Saturday and Sunday turned out, in tomorrow's edition of my Opening Weekend At Camp...part two. Sorry, no spoilers here.