Land Between the Lakes, Kentucky
Lesson learned: before heading out to the next night's camping spot, figure out where to buy groceries. Don't count on the town nearest the campsite to have a reasonable selection of goods at reasonable prices. We arrived in the small tourist town nearest our intended stopping point for the night and we were tired and grouchy and definitely ready to be out of the car. We found what seemed to be the only grocery store; almost everything in town was closed because it was the off-season. The store was small, expensive, and the produce on hand was scant and wilted.
Another lesson we learned: if the gps device says the day's trip will x hours, we need to tack on significant additional time, since we're driving more slowly than we would be if we weren't hauling a trailer.
We suspected we wouldn't have much signal if we went too far down into the park so we ended up at an enormous but mostly empty campground close to the northern end of the park. It was our first night in a campground with our trailer. And the first attempt to back the trailer into a campsite. I thought it went well, though both of us were about out of our minds at that point because the dog makes this horrible, continuous high pitched whine whenever the car slows down. His anxiety about being left alone in the car has been getting worse, not better.
We paid for electric hook up without intending to (too tired to care at that point, let's just pay the nice man so we can get out of the damn car....) but this ended up being a good thing since it was freezing cold and we used the electric heater all night and we could charge all the devices. A storm with lots of rain and wind came through the next night and lasted into the following day. We decided to stay put rather than brave the weather. And the bad weather meant the solar panels couldn't get any use.
Even though we stayed there for three nights, I didn't enjoy it as much as I'd been imagining I would. It was, after all, our first real time of doing what we went on the road to do: be out in the nature in a new and interesting place. Before this we'd been at people's houses or in Walmart parking lots. But it felt bleak to me. There was garbage scattered all around, the sites and roads were eroded, and everything felt like it had suffered from too much human use. There was a lot of construction going on (to prevent further erosion) which made for a not very tranquil experience, and park employees idled their pickup trucks right next to our campsite while they had a long chat. There was a team of workers cutting down large trees in our camping area, with constant buzzing of the chainsaw and the periodic warning yells and whumps as the trees were felled. It was also hunting season and when I went out for my morning walk I was startled to see a deer hanging upside at one of campsites, while a hunter worked at removing its hide. On my way back by, it was just a skinned and gutted body. The next day, another deer was hanging next to the first and it too was being skinned. I'm not opposed to hunting but I was surprised to see the butchering happening right there at a campsite. The shower wouldn't drain and I had to stand in several inches of water, though the water was good and hot and the pressure was awesome.
We met another rving couple the second night at the campground. They'd been on the road in North and Central America as well as Europe for the last 15 years. They had lots of great advice for us as newbies that I very much appreciated them sharing.
There were some definite moments of bliss during this stay (looking out over the inlet in front of our campsite at the heron fishing for its dinner as the sun set and the sky changed from bright blue to orange to deep blue. Still, I could feel the cold all the way through me whenever I went outside and I craved the warmer weather we hoped we were heading for further south.
Comments
Post a Comment