Campground Host end of the year

[Gerry]

Well the end of the year is coming now and I feel that I do not want to stop camping, although it gets real lonesome up there during the week all alone.
We have maybe 5 campers during the week and 2 of them will be one nighters and 2 others will be there just to sleep and the last one will be some nut-job who you would rather stay away from anyway so sitting at the camp-site reading the complete works of Sherlock Holmes has been the norm for me the last few weeks.
This week promises to be busy. We have all reservations sites full, but one, and with the forecast for good weather it may fill up.
I can see alittle trouble may come to my end of the campground where there are 4 sites reserved under the same name so I am sure there will be some sort of gathering on one site but maybe it will be ok.
I have had some where you think trouble is eminent and nothing at all happens.
Last week I had a visit from the bear on my site.
It was kind of scary because the door to the camper, being so old, can be open with just a tug, without the latch being touched.
Anyway, I had made some noodles with meat sause for supper hopeing the high carb diet would warm me up after a chily low 50 degree day with no sun, and it being the begining of my work week I had no room in the small fridge for the left overs.
Knowing it would be down in the 30's that night I reasoned that the left over food would be just fine on the floor of the camper down by the door.
I have a lounge chair leaned up against the camper in the same area and around 5 AM. I heard some noised outside and though for sure someone was maybe stealing some wood or maybe the chair so I got up and held the flash light to the window and saw the bear right by the door sniffing.
Now as said I know the door is touchey and even when getting out of the bed and walking across the floor will make the latch click and the door will be open,
Thank God it is just one step to the door because I was out of bed and my hand was on the latch before it openend and with that little noise the bear was walking away.
I then tried the lock on the door and even with that set I could just give a push and it would open.
I need to extend the latch so it catches better.
I do have a hasp and lock that I put on while I am away or traveling down the road that keeps the door locked and safe.
Another thing happend at camp last week that made me kind of laugh to myself. (nobody to laugh with).
Being so empty, one of our campers who was staying an extended stay asked if he could run his generator until 8:00, an hour longer then regular running hours and management said sure if nobody's around it would not be a problem.
Well, it was one of those real noisy generators and you could hear it quite a ways off.
A young couple came in and started to set up and I did my walk around and they asked if that generator was going to go all night and I had told them that he would be shutting it off at 8 and they kept on insiting it was "real anoying" to them and I sugested moving to another site where they could not hear it and I would change thier slip to the proper campsite and they said that would be the thing they would do.
So wouldn't you know it they came up and took the site next to me.
Well that was OK but they had th is old beat-up VW Desel bus that had no muffler it seamed. No wonder they didn't like that genoerator it reminded them of being still on the road. anyway I vowed that if they started that thing during the middle of the night, to warm up I was toing to be over there in a flash because there was another camper just to the other side of them too.
Well around 8 PM they start to play the bongo's.... not even in tempo... I had enough so I turned on my radio and after about 20 minutes they stopped and no more was heard from them until 7 am when they left.
Well, the wife and I may take a trip up to Grafton Notch in Maine to go leaf peeping today but I fear that they have all gone by or fallen off with the wind.
Hope all of your camping season was as interesting as mine and hope to see you on the road sometime in the future.
Gerry the canoebuilder

[Christi V.]

your chronicles of your hosting has been very fun to read....!! As the end of your season they will be missed! Are you planning to do this again?

[Gina D.]

oh fun.. staying with the wackos

It's wierd to wind it down, eh?

I spent last weekend at home.. doing nothing. I was nice to actually have a day or two off!

I am sure you will get used to it.. and NOT loading toilet paper.

[Connie M.]

Isn't it funny how, with all the space in the world, some people will crowd right in!

[Ron H]

Isn't it funny how, with all the space in the world, some people will crowd right in!

Some people have no courtesy for their fellow campers. Hubby and I were on holidays last week and decided to take our Li'l Bigfoot for its last outing this year, so we camped about 2 hours away from our home. We stayed at a nice campground in Alliston, Ont. Nice place that had a river running through it and a nice area of trees that were glorious with fall colors. We were able to park in a spot where no one else was and were able to enjoy our solitude while looking out of the trailer and seeing the colors. On Thursday of last week, a couple - with a dog, arrived in a van type camper (which by the way was bigger than our trailer - but then again....what isn't?) They decided to park [b]DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF US. As I came out of my dining tent, I said (politely, I might add)..."you really aren't going to park right there...are you?" The reply was...."we've been here before". OK...now, I believe that we are normally really nice people and usually very friendly and would welcome most but I couldn't believe that he said that....since....the park was [b]99% EMPTY. He knew we were not happy and with that, decided to leave and go to the other side of the park. You could still see their tire tracks in the grass so I decided to see how far away they actually would have been. I stepped out of my door and it only took 10 steps for me to be right on the butt end of where there camper would have been and they weren't big steps either. We would have lost total view of the trees from anywhere on our campsite. I know that as soon as we left on the Saturday, they changed spots. There were over 70 sites and they had to stop right in front of us .

I could see if the park was full or was busy or even if there were others around our area and they wanted to park there, that would have been fine but there was no one else in the park (other than 2 very large RV's) and there were other spots open around us (we were on a curve) that were just as nice if not nicer - and we both would have been able to see the trees. I guess it gave us something to complain about that day. God love em for that.

People are funny though...aren't they??

[Donna D.]

I think it's the human herd instinct. Same thing happens in a vehicle parking lot at the store. Huge empty parking lot and invariably someone parks so close to me I can't get the dang door open to load groceries.

At least you're camping "friends" took the hint and left for another spot...

[Barbara Gardin]

Before I sold it a couple of years ago, I used to drive a 1965 Chevy Impala SS Convertible as my regular driver. I was at the mall and as usual I parked way in the last row, several rows away fom any other cars. As I'm getting out a lady pulls up in her car probably about 5 years old at the time, pulls in about 2 feet from my car gets out taps the side of mine with her door and says I thought if yours is safe back here mine should be too. Sometimes you just can't win.

[Dan R]

That's how I got my Scamp from a friend who was bringing it back from southern CA to the Bay Area. Her and the husband stopped to get a bit to eat and parked on the outer perimeter of an empty parking lot. They were sitting in the restaurant looking out the window at their new purchase (Scamp trailer) when a pickup pulled in and went all the way over to park next to them but in doing so managed to hit the passenger rear end of the Scamp, putting a hole in it! Fortunately her insurance covered it and they totaled it. She got a Boler and gave me the Scamp! Of course I had to "salvage" it but 300 dollars later it was mine. Tom Haney came over and we removed everything and fixed the hole. Long term project. Years and many cards with phone numbers (of prospective buyers) later I am now working on finishing it. Yeah, the herd instinct! Bad for some, good for others!

[Bill K]

Maybe we need to buy about ten orange cones and set them up all the way around the trailer and tv.

Bill K

That's how I got my Scamp from a friend who was bringing it back from southern CA to the Bay Area. Her and the husband stopped to get a bit to eat and parked on the outer perimeter of an empty parking lot. They were sitting in the restaurant looking out the window at their new purchase (Scamp trailer) when a pickup pulled in and went all the way over to park next to them but in doing so managed to hit the passenger rear end of the Scamp, putting a hole in it! Fortunately her insurance covered it and they totaled it. She got a Boler and gave me the Scamp! Of course I had to "salvage" it but 300 dollars later it was mine. Tom Haney came over and we removed everything and fixed the hole. Long term project. Years and many cards with phone numbers (of prospective buyers) later I am now working on finishing it. Yeah, the herd instinct! Bad for some, good for others!