Tuesday, 19 through Friday, 22 October 2021
This campground turned out to have some plusses and some minuses. On the minus side, I can't get a signal either for my cell phone or for my hotspot. And I don't have water.
My internet connection is entirely through the campground. It's not bad but in the afternoons it's crazy slow, which is a nuisance.
I want and need to make some phone calls, to set up future travel plans among other things. But I'm not sure how far I'd have to go to do this. Maybe everyone in this town has AT&T, or maybe it's just that the campground is down in a slight bowl, too low for a signal. Whatever it is, it's inconvenient.
The water situation is because of below- or near-freezing temps at night, and I don't blame them for asking us to stow our water hoses. But on the other hand, I wish they'd give us a slight discount since we don't have access to a utility we were promised.
On the plus side, the campground is well-run, well-managed. It's clean and constantly maintained. There's no litter as I often see at campgrounds, and the nice-sized sites are cleaned up after each camper leaves.
They've got all the other amenities besides water at our sites - laundry room, showers, propane, waste dump. Not every campground, not even every KOA, has all these things.
In addition, they've closed off almost half their campground for the season, so now there're only 33 RV spots, 6 cabins and a couple of tent sites available. This means lots fewer campers, which means lots fewer dogs for us to deal with. And the campsite they gave me is positioned so we can go for walks without going near others also out for walks.
Because it's been reduced to such a small campground, I've been more easily able to watch my fellow campers. This is mostly a safety measure, and it's become almost automatic after all this time. I started several years ago out of a vague feeling of insecurity, due to being an older woman traveling alone with no protection but Dexter. Most campgrounds are open at night to anybody passing, let alone to those already here, and after even a short time in a campground, I can't disguise that I'm alone. So I try to assess who's in the campground with me, trying to stay safe.
So here I noticed that people from Illinois left the campground around 4:00 AM each day for several days. I finally saw them when I went to Bryce Canyon - they were coming down the mountains when I was going up, so had apparently come here for the sunrise. And they told me so when I mentioned it to them in the campground later.
I noticed that a 40ish couple from Florida with 3 large dogs, a large expensive RV, staying in an expensive campsite, never seemed to go anywhere or do anything. I finally heard the woman telling the campground manager that she and her husband had been suffering from altitude sickness. Yeah, for sure Utah's at a higher elevation than Florida - almost everywhere is. But I didn't hear if they'd driven straight here and that's why it was such a big adjustment. Seemed like an extreme reaction, but I understand it's a common problem among tourists.
I noticed one guy who'd parked his camper and then not come back for a couple of days, only coming back one night and then leaving early the next morning. Don't know where he'd been or why he'd bothered paying to have his RV here. His car had Virginia plates but his camper had Florida plates.
I talked to another man who, with his wife, had been staying in one of the cabins. They had an unusual configuration with their vehicle, from Oregon, so I recognized it at Bryce Canyon and we talked about their visit later.
I saw one family with a big batch of kids, and all the boys wanted to play basketball all afternoon and all evening. Good idea except Gracie freaked out. She goes berserk at the sound of a ball, and we had to walk past the basketball court to go on walks. They finally left the campground and Gracie went berserk again, apparently because she thought the lack of the ball sounds meant she was going to be ambushed. Poor little thing. She's so damaged.
The site we're in is likely one of the best in the campground in the summer, because there's a nice big tree on the east side that blocks the sun until well into the afternoon. Unfortunately, it's not summer any more and all that sun-blocking means we've been really chilly most of the day. I actually had the heater on until mid-afternoon for a couple of days, just trying to stay warm. But there's still a nice grassy patch right here that both dogs have enjoyed rolling around on.
In the afternoons we've gone for walks into the closed part of the campground, which ends up close to the hills.
These 2 photos show different parts of the same branch of mountains. The color difference comes from the angle of the sun - the top one with the sun in front of me and the lower one with the sun behind me.
What's interesting to me is that the stripes here are lower to the ground than the ones behind the campground - at least they are on the left end. I imagine this shows something about the earth's movement and the rise of mountains. Yet another good reason to take a geology class before I redo this trip.
While we've been here, I've written 7 blog posts and have mostly caught up, which is a relief to be leaving here with. I've done the usual chores: shower, laundry, empty waste tanks, fill propane tank, clean the windows. It's all important but it all takes time.
One thing did happen that I'm kind of pleased about: I advocated for myself, for my health, in a way I don't remember doing before. The laundry room here is about 8' wide and 20' deep. I was at one end taking my clothes out of the dryer and folding them when another camper came in to put his clothes in a washer. He looked in his 60s and wasn't wearing a mask. I, of course, was wearing one but tried to stay as far away from him as I could, but 6' distance is hard to achieve in a small place like that.
Then a 60ish couple came in together to move their clothes out of a washer and into a dryer. They weren't wearing masks either. And I started to get really nervous. It came on suddenly, but I quickly got really anxious - I couldn't even get out of the room without squeezing past 3 non-mask-wearing people - and I said out loud that I was getting really nervous because there were 4 of us in there and I was the only one wearing a mask. The single man left almost immediately, which seemed odd but was the result I wanted. And the woman asked if I wanted them to leave and went to prop the door open. I told her I could take 3 of us, especially with the door open, but it was having 4 all crowded together that was causing me problems. She told me they'd been vaccinated, I told her I had been too, and that was somewhat reassuring, but I didn't point out that fully vaccinated people can carry the virus to others and can be afflicted with it themselves.
Still, I was proud of myself for having overcome my fear of being rude to others and upsetting them. I guess I just needed the stakes to be high enough - and not catching a serious respiratory illness when I already have a serious respiratory illness (asthma) is apparently high enough. Odd, the many changes, large and small, COVID has made in our lives.
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