Campground Halloween

I had to go RV’ing in order to get into the Halloween Spirit!  Well, I’m not really in the Halloween Spirit but it seems that in Grenada MS I have no choice but to celebrate!

Our campground will be full this weekend.  As will some other campgrounds I checked on — Bayou Segnette, just outside New Orleans (and our next stop) is also fully booked this weekend.  I guess that milder Autumns may make this a more celebrate-able holiday ‘down South’ than it us in Milwaukee.

Peg and I aren’t big holiday people.  If I want to give my wife a present I do it,  and I don’t necessarily wait for the holidays… For us “holiday” is about having the family around the table and just sharing time with them – not about buying things.  And it’s OK that others celebrate in their own way — it’s a free country.  Some of the seniors who are here already — getting ready for their families to arrive look at things pretty much the same way:  it’s a way to get together with the kids and grand kids and great grand kids that they wouldn’t have if it weren’t for making a big deal about the holiday.  At least one camper near us is looking forward to seeing 9 of their 11 grandchildren this weekend.  It will be a +2 hour journey for them all — but they are coming and that’s what matters to the grandparents.

In our old home we sometimes just pulled down the shades and ignored the Trick or Treat-ers.  That’s not so easy to do in an RV!  So, we went out and bought enough candy for the 150-200 kids they expect to have here this weekend and Peggy is pondering what kind of simple decorations to make for the ‘holiday’s that  he’s willing to invest her creative energies into.  All I have to say is it feels weird to be getting ready for Halloween.

It’s interesting the way the Camp Hosts handled announcing the celebration to us.  A week ago when we arrived the three host couples were near the entrance to the campground stuffing faux scarecrows and setting out dummy tombstones — the host for our section came over and introduced himself as Charley and his wife as Dot.  After we had picked out our site they came around kind of sheepish like — we knew they came to tell us something but it was funny how apologetic they were about celebrating Halloween.  It seems that some of their church-going friends were all up-in-arms about the fact that they — as hosts — were having anything to do with such an “evil” holiday.  I mean they tried every way from Sunday to apologize for being involved but you could tell that they were having the time of their life with the other hosts as they started getting things ready.

I’ve always had a hard time with people condemning others for actions that differed from their own.  Ok — so you like Halloween, or you don’t like it, it’s a public holiday, and you can participate or not but why do you have to say other people are ‘wrong’ for their attitudes about the matter.   But, hey, this is the great US of A and we tell women what to do with their bodies and …. well, I’m not even gonna get started on the whole political thing….

But it just doesn’t seem right that these wonderful retired folks who are trying to make a fun time for a whole bunch of kids that aren’t their own have to put up with that kind of harassment.  Oh well…

Regrets, we’ve had a few

Don’t get excited.  I’m not going to say there are all these things that we wish were different about RV’ing…..

THE ONE BIG change for us when we came RV’ing is in the realm of heating and cooling. It falls in that ‘too few to mention’ category, but if I never mentioned things I was thinking about this would be an empty blog.  So here goes.

HEAT.  It’s important!  And when you’ve gone from silent hot water radiators (as we had in the school in Milwaukee) to noisy forced air ceiling vents I have to tell you — the shock of the noise can be surprising.  Serendipity is much quieter than Journey had been.  The actual BLOWING is no different but as you may remember the Winnebago heat pump system is installed beneath the bed so everytime it kicks in you not only get the mechanical noise, you also get the mechanical VIBRATION (think Magic Fingers hotel beds).  Serendipity‘s heat pumps are roof mounted and that makes for a huge difference in mechanical noise — but there is no sound abatement whatsoever.     Ah…. such are the woes of mobile living.  You have to put up with a little noise!

But for those of you who may not be RV’ers, if you were wondering about my periodic discussions about space heaters — the heart of the matter is this:  I’m in search of heat — sure.  But I’m also in search of efficient and quiet heat.  Over the next few years I suspect I may try a variety of different heaters and gadgets to achieve a warm and quiet living space!

I know one of my readers who lives in West Texas has commented that their A/C unit makes so much noise, and they run it for so many months a year that during the winter when the A/C unit is turned off that they need white noise to sleep — and to that end purchased a white noise generator.  Someday someone has to invent the opposite  — not a machine that manufactures sound, but a machine that absorbs sound and makes it go away!  I really do believe that sound pollution is changing humans on a fundamental level. But that’s another story.

Well, we’ll see whether we survive the night of ghosts and goblins.  I’ll try to have a few shots of the decorations tomorrow.

Thanks for stopping by and I’ll talk with you tomorrow.