Monday, August 29, 2011

Camping at the state park

Returning home from the weekend camping trip is always a bummer because it only lasts for the weekend.  It seems like we just arrived when we are now leaving......

But we had fun while it lasted hanging out at each other's camp sites and the kids spent all Saturday morning long in the motorhome with grandma.  With all four of the girls inside all at once, I busied myself outside and drove around the state park reminding myself of the surroundings.

It is horribly dry in Kansas now and the grass and trees are almost browned out.  It wouldn't take any stray fire to burn most of Kansas down.  We did our part and refrained from the campfire.   Heck it was in the mid 90s every day so I wasn't motivated to have a fire.

And as I reported in the cell phone post, we went to Emporia to drive the old downtown street, but didn't stop much of anywhere other than a quilt shop for Loyce.  The town is really old, and is rapidly becoming overcome with immigrants from our neighboring country to the South.  Loyce and I both wonder what will become of Rural America..........

We had the awning out and our portable sun shade canopy in the side yard next to the fire ring.  The sites are beautifully wide in the state parks here in Kansas.   We had an open grass field behind us that had been mowed recently.  It was at least 60 acres rimmed with trees.  Our site was a full hookup 50 Amp for $18.50, but there is a $4.50 vehicle daily fee.  And since we had the car, we were charged $9 for our vehicles.  Trucks with trailers only had to pay one fee, still $27.50 for FHU on such a large site isn't bad at all.

Sitting under the sun canopy late Saturday afternoon.

See that white 5 gallon paint bucket hanging from the mirror on the motor home?  I made a night light out of it by putting a compact florescent bulb inside in a lamp socket.  The bulb is deep blue and the white bucket glows almost purple.  It isn't really very bright, but almost has a black light effect to it in the otherwise very dark campground.  Several folks had to stop and check it out wondering where I got that idea.  From some other camper in a different CG......

Sleepy afternoon  (The latest watch addition LOL)
 We drove back to the campground and I became engrossed with cleaning out the under carriage lockers on the motorhome.  Since we had all 7 bin doors replaced in Red Bay in May, the body shop dust accumulated inside the lockers when the doors were off.  Stuff was covered in the gray bondo dust from the shop.  It was nasty hot almost 100 as I was doing this job, so going really slow was necessary.

Our family did gather under the awning at Chris' trailer for the evening chat session.  The kids were watching a DVD over at Ben's trailer so the big kids chatted up the night.  Slowly people wandered off to bed.  Of course Chris and Melissa and myself stayed up to past midnight.

Again Sunday it was quite hot, but I packed up the easy up sun canopy fairly early in the morning while it was still cool outside.  But before long we all rejoined the morning brunch and chat session.  Chris made Southwestern scrambled eggs and Mel did a monkey bread from scratch.  Umm!  We finally left the park by about 2 PM making it back to KC before 4.

Another weekend in the books........

Retired Rod

2 comments:

  1. Glad to see you got a good camping outing with family. We will be having some Rv friends in for a visit on the 6th of Sept, then I will probably plan a couple more weekends in the fall to the Lake and that will be it.Right now any winter plans are on hold until we get a new roof put on the house and see how the finances go. Be safe out there. Sam & Donna.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Weekend camping trips are short for sure but it sounds like you made the most of it with your family.

    Nice watch!

    ReplyDelete

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