Eric’s Blog

We went camping this weekend. It was nice to get away from everything for a few days. We left the laundry, the cleaning, the cooking, and the other chores of daily life until we got back Sunday afternoon. Sometimes I hate leaving all the dangling chads I have at home. If I waited until everything was done to get away for an escape, I’d never go. My list never gets any shorter; I’ll get one or two things completed and add three or four more as I think of them.

This weekend, we stayed close to home but far enough away to relax and enjoy ourselves. We went to Castaways in Ocean City, MD. It’s been bought by a different company and is called something else, but it will always be Castaways for us. It’s a nice little beach resort area. We got in Friday and set up camp in an hour or so. We took the evening just to chill out. We were going to make mountain pies for dinner but we forgot to pack the mountain pie maker. We thought we’d buy one at the camp store but they didn’t have any, so we ordered from the grille instead. Adrianne got a burger, and I got a pizza to share.

Saturday, we got up and went to the beach. I’m not one for the beach most days, but Adrianne loves it, so I kept my gripes and grumbles to myself and went with her. It was a nice day with a little breeze going every once in a while. It wasn’t too hot or cold, it was just nice as the proverb tells us. The water was a bit chilly, but you got used to it once you were in. We walked out to the sandbar, chatted, and we had a picnic lunch of leftover pizza. We have a little shade house for the beach that I’d never set up before. Adrianne hadn’t put it together in a few years, so it took us a while to get it together. Once it was up, it was nice for keeping the sun off my head and arms, but my legs were left sticking out and I got burnt on my legs, knees, and feet. About 3:30 in the afternoon, I’d had enough, so we packed it in and went back to the camper where I took a nap until supper time. I got up and grilled chicken and veg for supper which tasted delicious. Everything tastes 20% better when it’s cooked outside. True story.

After supper, we played mini-golf and had hand-dipped, Hershey’s ice cream for dessert. We walked up to a balcony overlook to watch the sunset and listen to the band over at the tiki bar play. We had a Tetris tournament in the camper and an early-to-bed night. We were up the next morning and packed everything away for the trip home. It was only a single day of relaxing with a half-day of set-up and another half-day of tear-down but we both felt recharged afterward.

We had one small issue with the camper but I didn’t notice it until we were tearing down the campsite and had disconnected the city water line. The water pump wasn’t pushing any water from the holding tank. I waited until we got home and unpacked before I found the problem. A valve got missed when we de-winterized the camper and wouldn’t allow water to flow through to the pump. No tools were necessary to fix the problem and we were up and running at full readiness again in no time.

I want to start taking the camper out for longer trips. We were going to go for a week later this year but the family decided they wanted to do a big trip to the Outer Banks. We went in together on a big beach house for that trip, so we’ll have to find some time after that trip is over to take the camper out more.