What happened to the old saying that bad things come in 3s? After one problem with the RV and 2 problems with the truck, I thought it was time for some smooth sailing. I left north GA as scheduled and the drive north was mostly uneventful. Had a scare driving through Nashville where I almost had to lock up the brakes to avoid an accident. I-65 through southern IN wasn’t as bad as the last time (broken axle hanger). Stopped at a rest area south of Indianapolis and thought it might be a good idea to call my planned campground to make sure they had spots available.

That phone call did not give me any warm fuzzies. It sounded like I was talking to a trainee who kept checking with someone else. Oh well, everyone has to learn and there was someone else there. I got my site number (a back-in site) and was informed that my registration package would be taped to the office door. I arrived after the office had closed but one of the park employees just happened to be coming back from dinner and he told me how to work the gate and verified that they’d circled my site on the map. He did NOT offer to guide me to the site so off I went. I turned down the proper road and discovered that site numbers were not visible from the road. I stopped the rig and started walking through vacant sites looking for markings. The site numbers were marked on the electric meters and when I finally found mine, it had somebody else’s stuff on it. This was the seasonal section and apparently someone had ‘spread out’ from their site. Even if it had been empty, it was doubtful my RV would’ve fit. One of the neighbors offered to drive me back to the gate, where he thought there were workampers. Nope, just regular campers. I called the office and it went straight to an answering machine, no instructions given for emergencies. We cruised through the campground for a few minutes and I decided to just park in a pull through spot and figure things out in the morning.

Going into the seasonal section to start with was a giant mistake. The roads were very narrow, some twisty and trees were growing very close to the edge. I navigated several turns, just barely missing trees. On my next to last turn I heard something that I assumed were branches hitting my air conditioners. After pulling into my spot, I discovered that I had actually gotten close enough to a tree on my blind side to damage my main awning, destroy the patio awning and destroy the kitchen slide topper. I did a minimal setup (water and electric) and called it a night.

The next morning I was waiting at the office when they opened. It turns out the entire office crew was new and unfamiliar with the park (some unfamiliar with camping in general). Ownership had recently changed hands and all the experienced summer help had just gone back to school. The one lady who had previous RV park experience changed my reservation to the site I was currently on and gave me a 30% discount for my stay. I insisted we get in her golf cart and check out the site they had originally assigned to me.

I guess the moral of this story is to pay more attention to my gut feelings next time and not to put in such long driving days when heading to an unfamiliar campground.

The insurance company is doing their best to work with me on repairs since I’m only in this area for a short time. After determining that they wouldn’t be able to send an adjuster before I leave, I enlisted the aid of my brother-in-law to detach awning and topper hardware. It was relatively painless and the RV looks much cleaner now. During the phone call with the adjuster, he talked about transporting the damaged components inside the RV to the repair shop at my next stop. I immediately nixed that idea since we’re talking about 12-14 foot long pieces. But after thinking about it the next day, I realized I could strap them to my kayak racks so that problem was taken care of.

So now it’s Friday afternoon in the campground and I’m going through a bit of culture shock. For the last several years, I’ve been staying in 55+ parks. Tonight, this campground filled up quickly with young families and their young, screaming children, ready to make the most of the weekend. Fortunately, I’ll be spending most of the weekend visiting family away from the campground.