Ah, the joys of camping...

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…ah, camping, one of the joys of life. 

(First of all let me explain that the F key is sticking on the laptop.  Has been for a while now.  So you may need to use a little imagination if either the spell check or I don’t catch it.  i.e. life turned in to lie in the sentence at the beginning – just bare with me.  Thanks!)

So, we survived our first night in the mini-tent.   It was cozy to say the least.  But it worked.  As I lay awake this morning waiting for the first light of dawn I realized a little shift in the mattress pattern might help things out.  Well, at the moment it seems to be okay.  We even have room for a few extra things. Simple pleasures.

The day was a good one.  We managed to survive a close call in the car when a giant camper with and elderly gentleman driver literally ran us of the road.  Thank God – literally -there was a usable shoulder.  Jerry did a great job of controlling the van.

Jerry drove first this morning while I did some chores.  First charging the phones, then charging the kindle, then charging the laptop.  I thought we were getting away for all of this.  Oh yea, Tom tom needed a charge also.   Then there was the map to look at since neither of us have a smart phone – thank goodness.

One of our main goals today was to make it to Crystal River (ele.4’) and to find a place to stay for the weekend.  It is a challenge when you don’t know where you are going or what you’ll find when you get there.  A couple of phone calls found us a few vacancies but nothing that called our name.  We visited one campground out in the middle of nowhere that was just a field, a no shade anywhere horse field.  No thanks!  All the places we called were $32.-$40. per night.  All we needed was a place to put our tent – mini at that.  We drove for a while hoping for the best.  Finally we found it – the best.  ‘Pine Valley Campgrounds.  Camping $16. 55+only’.  So here we are in our tent after another day of a lot of driving.  Hoping to hang here for a couple of nights, depending on how tonight goes.  We ate at Mama Sally’s (I mention that for my niece.) 

Another challenge of camping at this time is that the darkness comes around so soon and stays late into the morning.  When there is nothing to do after dark – no fire rings here – except crawl in to the tent it makes for some very long nights.  Not complaining – just reporting.