Edisto Island, Live Oaks Campground
The day before I left, Jan. 25, I interviewed a University of Minnesota doctoral student, Natalie Warren. She’d just published a book, Hudson Bay Bound, and was getting her PhD in communication studies with an emphasis on environmental communication.
Her book details her account of canoeing 2,000 miles from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay over 85 days with her friend, Anne. They became the first (documented) women to make that journey. She was fun to talk to, and today I finally wrote and published the story. It was fortuitous to talk with her right before leaving on my own adventure, though my adventure consists of a warm bed (most nights) and indoor plumbing. She wished me luck, which was nice. A passage from her book resonated with me. She writes, “Everything that happens, good or bad, is a story. And life is just a string of stories that we collect, over time, and we might as well make them good ones.”
Today was a mild disaster. I took a half day and packed up camp so I could check out at noon, move down the road about a mile to a different campground, and then fish the afternoon away. I was moving because the campground I was at (Edisto Beach) 1) required me to move to some other spot within the campground anyway, and 2) the place down the road is $20 a night cheaper. The new campground, Live Oaks Campground, has lots of tree coverage, so Starlink wouldn’t work from there during the week, but I don’t need the web on weekends. The only drawback is that it’s not on the beach.
When I got to the new site and hooked up power, I didn’t have power. I couldn’t figure it out. I had a ranger come out and check the shore power (that’s what RV people call it when they hook up to an electrical box), and the power was there, but my trailer wasn’t taking it. I spent 3 hours messing around with the electrical connections, not knowing what I was doing, and, no surprise, shocked myself once, then put my head through the screen in the screen door because there isn’t enough room to work.
After 3 hours I still didn’t have power but I was about to start shooting sparks from my eyes. I started calling mobile RV places to have someone come out, resigned to paying $800 or whatever it cost to not have to deal with it anymore, but no one was available. Plus the nearest one is 50 miles away.
Finally I looked up what seemed to be the two electricians on Edisto Island. The first guy said, “I retired two years ago.” The second guy was a gold mine. His voice was so deep my camper phone was vibrating, and I told him what was up. “My buddy and I wired this—mostly my buddy. I think in driving it a mile, something jarred loose,” I said.
“Oh man, your buddy wired it so bad it jarred loose over a couple bumps? You need a new buddy, man,” he said. I said I would probably keep my buddy but what did he think, did he work on RVs? He said he could come right now if I wanted him to, but he’d rather we try in the morning, so we’re set for tomorrow at 9 a.m.
Pretty soon he started talking about how Edisto Beach campgrounds were real nice, and that he’d love to buy some land and charge people $70 a night to camp. “Hell, all ya gotta do is hook up 50 amp and 30 amp, some water and sewer, then leave ‘em alone,” he figured. That was his retirement dream. Right now he’s fixing up a 30 foot camper himself.
One time, he said, he was camping with his girlfriend, and in the morning they were laying around in bed.
“I started fooling around with her, and I’m a real big guy, you know. So pretty soon the camper was rocking. So then I get out of the camper and there’s this guy standin’ outside, looking at the camper. He says, ‘Is that a Bambi?’ “I said, ‘Holy shit friend, how long you been standin’ out here waitin’ to ask that? Yeah it’s a Bambi.’”
Then he went on talking about how he’d set up his future campground. It wouldn’t be like some campgrounds, he said, where the sites are so close together that you can reach out and hand the guy next to you a beer. And then there’s this campground called Lakeside Campground, he said. “There ain’t no damn lake.”
We talked for 15 mins, him going on like that. I like when people get really familiar with you on a dime. I felt we were friends and maybe tomorrow we’ll go get a beer. I really hope he can fix my camper. I didn’t need that stress today, or the sense of failure and incompetence after not being able to fix it, but after talking to him my mood did a 180.
People around here are friendly, and not in a fake way. It’s really something to see. Last evening I walked past another camper and he was grilling something. I said, “What’s for dinner?” And he said, “Chicken. It’ll be ready in about 5 minutes if you want to sit down for dinner.” I laughed and about 10 feet later I realized he wasn’t kidding. He was inviting me to dinner, just like that. Then this morning, I saw a guy and his wife walk to the bathrooms, and on their way back they started talking to another group, and that group invited them to sit down and have some breakfast. They all had Carolina license plates.
Sue, the campground host here, stopped by for a bit and we talked about how much she loves it here. She works about 25 hours a week and gets free camping. At $70 a night that’s about $2,000 a month. I told her the host at Croatan got $100 a month and free camping for 40 hours of work a week, and it’s only $17 a night. She said she wouldn’t do that. Then she wrote down “S-t-a-r-l-i-n-k,” because I told her about it and she has a daughter who she’d like to have come stay with her, but she would need internet.
I always thought being a campground host might be alright, but I used to clean restrooms at a job once, and I don’t think I’ll do that again. I like to do my business in a bathroom and be done with it. I’m gonna go have a beer now by the fire. I don’t know if I earned it today or not.
Leave a comment