When my summer travel plans to Maine were canceled due to the COVID-19, I had to make other plans.  Who knew what parks would be open?  I knew pools and bathhouses might also be closed.  Some are some aren’t.  Pools are closed.

What about campground hosting? 

I contacted the Virginia state volunteer coordinator and got lucky!  Previous hosts get the first choice, but many hosts were making other plans.  Thus, I found myself hosting at my first choice Westmoreland State Park in Montross, VA.  The beauty of an RV lifestyle is the ability to change plans on short notice.  Thankfully, I had not yet paid my FL space for June, so I gave notice, packed up, and arrived on June 2.  Westmoreland is just down the road from Washington, D.C. my old stomping grounds.  The bathhouses are open, and VA has hired cleaning staff for additional protection.  Unfortunately, the pool is closed.  Westmoreland is described as:

On the Potomac River’s Northern Neck, Westmoreland is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and has an Olympic-sized swimming pool and an adjacent bathhouse, meeting area, snack bar, camp store and power-boat ramp. You’ll also find a visitor center, campgrounds, camping cabins, cabins, a playground, a fishing pier, boat rentals and 6 miles of trails. Fossil collectors enjoy hunting for ancient shark teeth along the Potomac. Offshore breakwaters are great for fishing. Birding enthusiasts find the park an excellent site for spotting American bald eagles, ospreys, kingfishers, great blue herons, common terns, green herons and gulls, as well as wintering waterfowl. Its waterfront location provides docking space at a boathouse. Murphy Hall, atop Horse Head Cliffs, offers a superb view of the Potomac River.

Hosting is easy duty.  I do twice daily campsite checks, making sure campers are in their proper spots, and after campers leave I clean the fire pits in the handy utility golf cart.

In July I will move to Occoneechee State Park, in southern VA on the NC border, near Clarksville, Virginia. “Occoneechee State Park is 2,698 acres in size. It is named for the Occaneechi Indians, who lived in the area. “Bacon’s Rebellion abruptly ended their prominence in 1676”.  So much history in VA and NC, and everywhere.

In August I move across the border to host at Kerr Lake State Park in NC.  If you read my earlier post I was supposed to go to Cliffs on the Neuse, but decided cleaning bathhouses was more than I wanted to do.  I again got very lucky to find hosting slots on short notice.

Three visitors have come to hang with me around the campfire.  Dave and Annie in their brand spanking new Airstream maiden voyage, and Tim in his not so new VW popup!  It is great hosting in VA, so friends can come and visit outdoors and still be socially distant.

There is nothing nicer than friends around a campfire, and marshmallows.  Last week we had exceptionally wonderful weather with no humidity.  It didn’t feel at all like June.

Occoneechee has Forty-eight campsites available for tent and RV campers on the shores of the John H. Kerr Reservoir, better known as Buggs Island Lake. The park also has 13 cabins for those of you who don’t own camping gear, that provide the comforts of home as well as beautiful views of the lake.   Come VISIT!

I am not ready to live within four walls, and trade in my two tires.

After consideration of sister Becky’s generous offer of an empty 3 bedroom 2 bath house in Raleigh, I have decided to stay in my 20′ of living space and the outdoors.  Living in an unfurnished house, after just getting rid of the last of my housewares and 5×5 storage space — I just couldn’t do it, virus or no virus.

Fortunately, Becky was able to quickly rent the property and I have started to explore becoming a campground host.  In August I will be at Kerr Lake (pronounced ‘car’).  Kerr Lake State Recreation Area is a North Carolina state park on Virginia’s southern border. Located near Henderson, NC, the park includes 3,376 acres of woodlands along the shores of the 50,000-acre man-made Kerr Lake reservoir.  Hundreds of campsites among five of the access areas offer a range of outdoor experiences from RV hookups to group camps, and several swim beaches, according to the webpage.

Public campgrounds often have campground host positions.  Hosts serve as off-duty hour monitor when park staff isn’t working, greeting campers, some light maintenance such as trash collection, raking campsites for arriving campers and this summer monitoring social distancing.  For the month of service, I will have a full hook-up campsite (water, electric, and sewer) FREE.  At $30 per night, and a limit of 14 nights, for campers, a campground host can stay the full month at a savings of $930.

I am looking for other host positions in NC, South Carolina and Virginia for July, September, October and November.   It isn’t the trip I had planned for the 2020 summer, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin, but it will allow me to continue my Road2Reinvention lifestyle and not have to worry about park closures.  That is of course if parks stay open and campers are responsible for social distancing and wearing masks.  Who knows what the future will be, but for now this is my plan for our new normal.

For those of you who enjoy camping, I hope you will consider coming to a campground where I am hosting this summer.  I’ll keep you posted on other assignments.  But for now, I am in Florida through June and will head north in July.

Please subscribe to this blog by adding your email address on the right side of the page below Maggie’s picture. Stay tuned.

I am not ready to leave the beach, and my friend Michelle and Duane’s pool.  So I have extended my stay until June 1, before heading north.  If I needed a sign I made the correct decision, yesterday as Maggie and I walked onto the beach for our evening walk, what did I find?

A sea bean! 

To be exact: Thick-Banded Hamburger Bean.  Yes, they look like little hamburgers, but they are seeds!  They have traveled long distances from  Jamaica, or even as far away as the Amazon River.  Falling into a freshwater river traveling downstream into the ocean, only to land thousands of miles away on a south Florida beach.  The bean is a bit larger than a quarter.

“Mucuna fawcettii, was named by Ignatius Urban in 1908, from specimens found in Jamaica. Presently, it is a bit of a dilemma to those interested in drift seeds. The problem: This species has been described as being endemic to Jamaica… i.e., it grows ONLY in Jamaica. Additionally, there are statements that it is probably extinct from Jamaica (see: Perry & Dennis, 2003:179)… i.e., it probably doesn’t grow there…IF it no longer exists at the ONLY place that it grew, then why do we keep finding these seeds washed ashore?”

I will never know where my little sea bean came from, but I was so very excited to find it, these are very rare.  Could it be a sign?  Also, I shot an 89 golf score on Sunday.  A good sign of things to come?

Regardless, I am staying put on the Treasure Coast of Florida until June 1, enjoying Michelle and Duane’s pool, daily beach walks, finding shells and seeds, and improving my golf score.

Stay healthy everyone!

If you have never seen the 1959 movie On the Beach, this is probably not the time to watch it.  After a global nuclear war, an American submarine surfaces and heads to Australia where the cloud of radiation circling the globe has not yet arrived.  Australians must come to terms with the fact that all life will be destroyed in a matter of months.  Based on the book by Neville Shute, an English novelist and aeronautical engineer he also wrote A Town Like Alice.  I have always loved the movie because it starred Gregory Peck as the submarine captain, with Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire (plays a serious scientist, not a dancer), and Tony Perkins (without the knife).

An unforgettable scene shows the streets of San Francisco deserted.  Last night the PBS News Hour showed deserted streets in Paris, Rome, Venice, and Time Square reminding me of One the Beach.  Peck and Gardner have great on-screen chemistry because they had a true-life steamy affair while filming the movie in Australia.    

I have grown up in the era of fearing nuclear war practicing “duck and cover” under my elementary school desk.  Since 9/11 we are bombarded by news reports on terrorism and possible dirty bombs – “If you see something say something”.  But, I have refused to live in fear.  I continued riding the Metro daily or city buses to get to my job in downtown Washington, D.C.  Remember the news article that a 40 something single woman was more likely to be killed by terrorists than get married?  I do.

Sure there are movies about plages and pandemics, but we didn’t really pay attention.  Did we?  Radiation and viruses don’t explode or make for great special effects of visual mayhem and destruction.  The vacant streets of our cities today prove it is the things we can’t see we should fear.  Billions of dollars spent on the military-industrial complex, and it is a natural unseen virus that has brought us to a stand-still.  Don’t mess with Mother Nature.

How can I put into words my feelings, what we all are experiencing, and dreading?  It was just a few months ago I was hanging with Michelle and Duane; and, sister Kerry and I were enjoying the beach together and planning trips.  We were all living our lives looking forward to summer plans, travel, graduations, vacations, weddings, public parks, and swimming pools.  Now we are anticipating funerals we may not be able to attend.

Yes, I am depressed!  Aren’t we all? 

Mom and Erv are locked down at Carolina Meadows retirement community.  So far so good, except we cannot visit.  My summer plans to travel to Ohio, Michigan, and Maine, gone.   I spent a week making reservations and now I am spending time canceling and in some cases losing $10-$20 cancellation fees.   Thankfully many campgrounds are giving full refunds because they too are closed.   I hoped for at least another five years on the road, maybe more.  Now, who Knows?  I really am NOT YET ready to give up my traveling lifestyle.  But what am I to do?

The Martin County Commission closed golf courses to non-residents last week.  I am not a resident, but I am a snowbird and have a lease for the Venture III community where I have been since December.  My favorite course has accepted my seasonal residence and allows me to play golf.  Otherwise, I would go nuts.  Golf courses are taking virus precautions, removing rakes from bunkers, singles in all carts, and turning the cup upside down so there is no need to pull the pin or touch surfaces.   Golf is a game of social distancing, I prefer not to talk when I play, and I am always single.

Becky to the rescue!  My eldest sister Becky has offered me one of her many rental properties, a house in Raleigh with a big lot where I can park Scout.  Seems like the practical thing to do is go there and camp-out until the quarantine is lifted and a vaccine is available.  It is ironic that I just got rid of the last of my housewares and now I might be living in an unfurnished house. 

I wish all of us good health.