Camping with Gnomes

Monday morning and part had still not arrived. Our camper battery was now completely dead.  We had no choice but to go to an RV Park.  

We'd known it would come to this eventually, but we wanted to put it off as long as possible That's why Ben had bought an inverter so we could use our lithium trolling motor battery (for the boat we hadn't bought yet) as a backup power source for the camper. Except the battery was a lemon, we finally concluded, after Ben spent weeks tinkering with the system.  

RV Parks just seemed like overpriced parking lots where people older than us got together to drink and boast about their rigs. 

RV Parks just seemed like overpriced parking lots where people older than us got together to drink and boast about their rigs. We made for the closet, cheapest park, the Wilmington KOA, where we scored a waterfront site for $50 a night. Unfortunately,  "waterfront" referred to a manmade ditch half filled with water.  The opposite side of the ditch was inhabited by gnomes and fairies, complete with gnome-sized RVS.

The KOA proved to be the Disneyworld of RV parks, featuring amenities like a gift shop selling junk food, booze and beachy bric-a-brac, a playground with a "gem mine" and a pirate ship, gaga ball, a "Bark Park,"  and a giant chess game -- everything to keep the kids busy so you could drink. Unless you kid was an 8-lb cat.  But to me the most exciting amenity was by far the laundry room and the water hookup, which meant a hot shower for the first time since we left Annapolis.

As of 10 AM Wednesday the vacuum break booster was “out of for delivery.” We waited at Greenfield Lake Park, on the banks of an atmospheric bayou just five minutes from Shannon's. We were ready to go the moment the part arrived.

 At 2pm Sarah finally called. The part had come, but Mike was booked solid and wouldn’t have time to instal it until tomorrow. We couldn't face the thought of another night in NC. We called every shop in the area, and found one that could do it that afternoon. By 4pm we were back on the road, headed south.