Last night at Cedar Point Campground
The sky has been dripping like a dirty wet dish rag since Monday. I was lucky on Sunday to see 60s and sunshine. I’ve seen no sun since. Tomorrow I head to Huntington Beach State Park, South Carolina, 150 miles farther south, where it promises to be a degree or two warmer (only 41 here today). Cedar Point at Croatan has nevertheless been nice. There are about 50 spots here and only 4-5 other campers, so it’s quiet.
Today after work, with only an hour of daylight to spare, I drove to a nearby nature trail and walked for 50 minutes. I saw a sink hole in a forest of tall longleaf pines. The sinkhole was called “Bob’s sink hole,” and I wondered if Bob was in there, and how far down he was. In the forest, the pine needle smell I love so much was muted, but it was there. After that I drove up the coast to Atlantic Beach, then back 30 miles through the barrier islands, including Emerald Isle again. Some homes are elevated a level, on stilts. Some not. Some are huge, 4 levels high and no doubt multiple millions of dollars. Some within a stone’s throw away are one level and tiny. The architecture is playful and open and generally adorable.
I didn’t talk to a soul today, not with my mouth anyway. I still can’t believe I’ve only been gone for just one week. About the only thing I miss is the fitness center, but I wouldn’t miss that if the weather was nicer or I had more time in the daylight.
Last night I started re-reading my favorite travel book, John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley, where an aging Steinbeck travels the country in a camper with his dog, Charley. Early in the book, Steinbeck says (paraphrasing), “We find after struggle… that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”
Issue: Today the camper had moisture all around where the ceiling meets the walls. I think it’s part condensation and part leaking, exacerbated by an RV tarp I purchased off Amazon for $150. This tarp had one job: to be a tarp. It failed. I put it on before the first snow fell, and when I left Minnesota I spent an hour chipping it off the camper, as it had an inch of snowmelt turned to ice under it and was frozen fast. The water no doubt got into the seals in the camper and, freezing and thawing in the varied temps, expanded everything. Perhaps it was a wind tarp, or a sun tarp, although it wasn’t advertised as such. Next time I will join the ranks the world over and buy a giant blue tarp from Walmart for 50 bucks, which I should have done to begin with. Sometimes you cannot improve upon a thing and should not attempt to do so.
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