Monday, February 21, 2011

BACK HOME AGAIN

Came home yesterday - cutting my planned trip a little short. I began having kidney stone pain as well as muscle pain from all the pulling of the trike up over the sand levee and the dogs pulling on me, too. Every muscle in my body aches and today I had to take a pain pill. Really don't feel good. Hoping I just need to rest my body a few days. I noticed that I caused more damage than I thought to my slide-out. The inside frame was pulled completely out on the right side tearing 2 screws out of their holes at the bottom. I tried to push it back in but one screw is completely broken off. I guess that will have to be fixed at Camping World. I boiled some shrimp with potatoes, onions, garlic, and lemons and gave some to my neighbors from Virginia who were camping in their small station wagon. They ate them right up and thanked me saying that they were delicious. They left the next day and I got new neighbors. This couple was from Quebec and were camping next to me in a camper conversion van. The woman could not speak English and when I asked if she was enjoying her visit to the island she quickly called out to her husband to come out and help translate. His English was very good and he explained that there is no English spoken in his town - only French. So I began speaking to them in my broken Cajun French and they seemed to like that. They have been on the road for a month and will soon head North to go back home. On my bicycle ride around the campground I noticed that there were no license plates from Louisiana, except mine. I saw Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois, Virginia, Missouri, and even one from Germany. The couple shipped their coach and flew to the US. That had to cost a pretty penny. Had no trouble using the Dump Station. My holding tank and grey water were almost full after 5 days. So it seems that the longest I can go is about a week without having to dump the tanks. It was so nice to have been hooked up to city water which gave me great pressure out of the faucets. I used the fireplace the first night then it warmed up and when I left I was using the AC. The day before I left, I asked the Camp Host if he could help me with my TV as I could not get it to work on the external antennae. He explained to me that I would have to run Auto Scan every time I parked in a new campground. He had a hard time using the Universal remote as it did not have the corresponding buttons needed. Eventually we figured it all out and I was able to catch 4 local stations. He informed me that the off brand TV that I have is the reason I am not able to catch more stations. He is using his external antennae and his Samsung TV can catch over 20 stations. I think I may look into getting another TV. The dogs and I really enjoyed the beach and the weather was great. However, everyone seemed genuinely happy to be home again and we all slept till 9:30 this morning.