I know it’s not nice but if you’re an experienced RVer, you have to admit that watching newbies set up is always fun. Yesterday morning some folks pulled in next to us with the requisite shouted directions, managed to get the campground utilities hooked up, and then spent the next 90 minutes trying to aim a tripod TV dish. Three people, all doing something different, and sometimes undoing what the other guy just did! I told Terry I couldn’t decide whether to go outside and offer advice or just set back and watch the show.
They weren’t quite as funny as the couple we watched right here at the Pima County Fairgrounds a couple of years ago that had Terry and I and our friends Greg and Jan White in stitches. They had half the fairgrounds to park in and a couple dozen pull through sites to choose from, and still couldn’t get it done! You can read about the show at this link to my blog post about it. It was so funny Greg grabbed my Kodak Zi8 Pocket Video Camera to film the action!
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Yeah, we’ve all been there. Soon after we began fulltiming we spent a week at a campground somewhere along Interstate 5 in California and got to know quite a few people. The day we left, a bunch of them came out and started waving at us and I mentioned to Miss Terry how nice they all were, coming out to see us off that way. I honked the horn and waved right back. It wasn’t until I pulled through the gate and happened to glance in my side view mirrors that I realized that ALL of our window awnings were still out! Of course, there was no way I was going to stop then! At least I did drive slow enough along the freeway frontage road that Miss Terry didn’t have too much trouble leaning out the windows to unhook the awning straps. Who says I’m not a considerate husband!
If you’re too sympathetic to spend your time laughing at newbies but still need a chuckle, check out Michael S. Hunter’s Beat Down 1 – Clones, a fun little book about a larger than life wrestler who can breathe underwater, chew through steel, and send messages in radio frequencies only a dog can hear, with a cast of characters that includes beautiful women, arch enemies, and a talking shark. Yeah, it’s goofy, but I bet it will make you smile. Especially if you drink a couple of glasses of wine first. It’s free on Amazon.
Today I go back to the VA hospital to get my stitches out, and tomorrow we plan to head for Yuma. A lot of people have asked why we’re not going to Quartzsite to join the hordes of dry campers already there. The hordes of dry campers already there are pretty much why we’re not. We’ve been there and done that, fought the traffic to get across town and been crushed in the crowd inside the Big Tent. It’s just not our thing. Once we get parked and settled in in the Foothills, we’ll probably drive up for a day trip later in the week to try and touch base with some of our friends.
Thought For The Day – I’m a dyslexic, agnostic insomniac. I stayed up all night wondering if there was a dog.
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Nick Russell
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I loved all the comments to this experience on Facebook. We always watch…discretely…but we watch, and laugh. And, while we are far from newbies, I know others watch us and laugh when we’re trying to get our 40’er into a site or out of some kind of a predicament. Laughter is the best ice breaker, though. We laugh at ourselves all the time. That makes it easier for others to come out from behind their tinted windows and laugh with us. In most cases DH does NOT like people to come to help, so through my laughter I just put them to work or tell them that they can help best by “standing over there” sort of like out of gunshot range! It’s a script we’ve developed over the years. I have to admit though, that there have been some situations that were no laughing matter until years later!
I thought Ms Tioga and George had a good idea of having a check list of some sort for setting up and taking down camp!! As one ages, tis so easy to forget something or other and it might be important!! If ever we get on the road, I hate to think what funny situations we may end up in ourselves!!
Hope to see you when you drive up to Quartzite. The crowds aren’t like they were in the old days. Can get across town in 10 minutes instead of the 1hr 15 min it took me to go 1/2 way across town in ’04. It still fun to see lots of old friends and make new ones. We did the whole big tent thing in less than 1 1/2 hours. The longest part was waiting in line for my ice cream cone.
They now have a trolley in Quartzite but I think there are a lot less people driving around Quartzite. The Big Tent wasn’t as crowded as usual. We’ve been able to park beside the tent every day.
I think there are so many groups together that they don’t go into town. We’ve with the Circling of the Wagons (Montana Owners) and there is so much going on lots of people haven’t gone into town.