On Monday, I meant to write a blog post. But I decided it needed a picture to go with it, so I got my camera out. Playing with my camera was so fully distracting that I never got around to the writing.
On Tuesday, I meant to write a blog post. But I’m using Freedom, an app to block my internet access, and I forgot to enable web exceptions, which meant I didn’t have access to my own website. Oops.
On Wednesday, I meant to write a blog post. But I started reading Debra Dunbar’s Imp series, quite casually — you know, just a quick hour of reading before I started my day — and I … just didn’t stop. Ten books in the series, and I kept going until I was finished.
On Thursday, I meant to write a blog post, but I was still busy reading books with demons and angels in them.
Today is Friday. I cleaned the van, washed and refilled my water jugs, dumped the tanks, refilled the propane, did my grocery shopping for the week, picked up the mail, and now I am finally writing a blog post. Mostly just so I can resist the temptation to keep binge-reading, though. My two days of reading have put me well behind on what I am supposed to be doing, aka writing a book. Speaking of which… I believe it’s time to get back to that. I’m still hoping to finish writing by the end of the month, but my daily word count goal is growing by the day. Despite all that I have already achieved today, I’d really like today to be a day that makes my word count lower instead of higher, which means it’s time to focus on Fen.
From New Hampshire, I headed into Maine, to my first big meet-up of fellow Travato owners from the Travato Owners & Wannabes Facebook group. (Serenity, the camper van I live in, is a Winnebago Travato, for any new readers out there.)
I arrived on Thursday, a day earlier than most of the others, because Gary, an online friend from the group, had offered to teach me how to change the oil in my generator. It was the first order of business when I arrived and involved raising the van on ramps, crawling under, draining the old oil, and pumping in the new oil. Gary did all the hard work, I mostly watched and chatted.
Conclusion – yay, I don’t need to change the generator oil for another 150 hours of generator time and yay, now I know I will probably not be doing that by myself. Ever. I paid $125 to have it done the first time it needed doing, which seemed expensive for an oil change, but now I’m thinking was a good deal. Of course, not nearly as good a deal as watching Gary do it, but I definitely owe him a bottle of wine. (Thank you, Gary!)
The rest of the attendees started arriving Friday morning and continued coming and going all weekend long. The spot was beautiful – a house on a hill owned by Trish, a stained glass artist, with incredible art inside, wide porches outside, surrounded by fields of wildflowers, and enough parking room for 20 or so vans to line the driveway. And the company was delightful — interesting people, doing interesting things, all of us ready to talk about our travels, the places we’ve enjoyed, adventures on the road, ways of living in our vans and mods. Many, many mods. (Aka modifications to the vans.)
The view from Trish’s hill.
Also, of course, our own lives. On the first day, I wound up sitting with two fellow dog owners, Deb & Ken, talking about journalism, editing, the dot.com years, raising kids with learning disabilities, writing books… and after a couple hours of conversation, Deb said, “Hey, we’re going to be on the road for the month of September, if you want our driveway, it’s all yours.” I think I probably blinked a few times. Seriously? They live in Maine, across from a river, with bald eagles living in their trees… so, so tempting.
That night, everyone brought out their camping chairs and we filled the porches while we ate potluck appetizers and desserts. The next day, some people wandered into town during the morning, while others hung around the house. In the mid-afternoon, Trish collected lobster orders and we all ate corn, grilled vegetables, and fresh Maine lobsters with butter. Afterwards, some people played cards, some played music, and some listened to the music. I was the latter, but there was lots of laughter from the card players — apparently, the Travato owners group’s card game of choice is called Five Crowns and I am definitely going to have to learn how to play someday.
The next day, a few more people arrived and a few people left. Trish made a delicious lobster chowder for lunch for us all, and in the evening, people set out salads and snacks for another potluck. After dinner, we all carried our chairs out to the firepit in the front lawn and sat around a glorious campfire, toasting marshmallows for s’mores and listening to Faith and Daniel Senie sing and play.
I feel like I spent a lot of my time following Zelda around as she roamed. She was a busy, busy wanderer, which was… well, interesting? My time with her feels so precious to me now and I want her to do what she wants to do. I don’t know how many days of wandering she has left, so I really don’t want to shut her in the van alone, which she is usually unhappy about, or tie her up. But I don’t know that anyone would ever have guessed she was an old dog from the way she behaved, except in that she stayed very clear of the more boisterous dogs. She didn’t want to play. But she did want to sniff every single solitary blade of grass and explore every corner. Fine by me. But one of the dementia problems is that she doesn’t respond to voice commands any more, although she still understands her hand signals, so I can’t trust her to come when she’s called. It meant a lot of interrupted conversations as I jumped up to follow her around.
On the last day I was there, I picked up some bruises. I actually took a picture of my bruised knees, which I am not going to post, because ugh, who wants to look at bruises? But whenever I stumble across it in the future, I am going to pat myself on the back.
So the story is: Trish had warned everyone that animals were welcome but that her dog, Rosey, chased cats and any cats would need to be kept in their vans.
On Monday morning, Rosey spotted a cat sitting in the doorway of her van.
As long-time readers know, last year Zelda was attacked by another dog. It was the fastest, most violent, bloody experience of my life — out of nowhere, aggression and blood and screaming and fear, and for Zelda, pain and shaky trembling and near-death— and I had some post-traumatic stress afterwards. I worked on it, because I didn’t want to be afraid of dogs, but I definitely became wary, aware of how quickly a dog could do deep damage, and tense around bigger dogs. I think my time in Arcata helped me get over the fear, because occasionally I had that reaction to Riley — when he moved fast or unexpectedly, my heart rate would soar, my breath would catch. He turned out to be the sweetest, softest, loviest dog imaginable, though, which helped me work my way through the anxiety.
And that was good, because when Rosey went for the cat, I went for Rosey. Even as I jumped on her, I knew that if she turned around and went for me — which is a not unnatural reaction for a dog in a fight who feels herself being attacked from behind — I was going to get hurt. But I didn’t let the fear stop me. And yay, Rosey didn’t go for me, and I didn’t get bitten, and the cat escaped and was unhurt and Rosey was unhurt, too. She didn’t even get scratched. A couple hours later, she came and snuggled up with me on the porch, letting me give her lots of rubs and scratches, so she didn’t hold a grudge either. I didn’t realize that I’d landed hard enough to bruise my knees until the next morning, when I rolled out of bed and said, “Ow, what the heck?” But I’m pleased with those bruises, because they are a symbol of recovery from fear. I like that in a bruise.
Moving on, later on Monday I headed down to South Gardiner and Deb & Ken’s house. I had a lovely afternoon/evening with them, sitting in their front yard watching for eagles and chatting, and then sharing their dinner. And temptation accepted! I’m going to spend September in their driveway, working on the book (finishing it, I hope) and watching the eagles. And the loons and the hummingbirds and the river. I’m pretty delighted with the change in my plans. I might even manage some kayaking.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, I drove to Rockport to spend some time with my friend Barbara (first pausing at a rest stop on the New Hampshire highway to have lunch with Pam and S). More about that later, though, because this blog post has gotten long and our lunch plans — steamers? not something I think I’ve really had before — are beckoning.
≈ Comments Off on Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site & Blackberry Campground
Augustus Saint-Gaudens was the son of immigrant parents. His father became a shoemaker in New York City, and Augustus became one of the most famed American artists of the late 19th, early 20th century. His bronze statues of Civil War era politicians and military generals are the artwork of public spaces in big cities, instantly recognizable. At Teddy Roosevelt’s request, he also designed the art on some of the classic coins of the era.
He had a retreat and studio in Cornish, New Hampshire and after his (untimely, early) death, his wife worked to make sure he was remembered, part of which entailed giving the land to the nation and turning it into a national historic site, New Hampshire’s one and only national site.
I, of course, knew none of this before I drove up and parked in a pretty grassy field for RV parking. I felt like I should have, though. Many times during this journey I have been confronted with my ignorance — about wildflowers, bird identification, geography, geology, plumbing functioning, electricity… Yeah, moving into a camper van is a good way to discover how very much you don’t know. But it’s also a great way to learn unexpectedly.
The historic house
I had a lovely hour at the historic site watching the video about his life, wandering around the studios and admiring art, and appreciating the gorgeous gardens. I especially liked the honesty of the historical information: Saint-Gaudens had an affair with his model, an illegitimate son, and a strained relationship with his wife, all of which was openly addressed in the displays about his life. Even though my opinion of him immediately plunged when I found out he’d cheated on his wife, the details made their story much more interesting than a generic recitation of dates would have been. They became a story, real people, not just history.
Post the historical site, I headed into the mountains of New Hampshire. I’d been told that the Kancamagus highway was worth the drive, so even though it was far from being the most direct route to my destination in Maine, I headed that way.
It was a nice highway. I am, however, lamentably spoiled. I think I should drive it sometime in the middle of autumn to be truly impressed, because I mostly drove along it thinking about all the other beautiful highways I’ve driven on in the past three years. Sure, it was pretty, but it was no Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
But I stopped at Blackberry Campground, a National Forest campground, around 3PM and paid $25 for a dry camping spot for the night. My spot was huge, had a cement pad and a nice fire pit and was surrounded by trees. I would definitely give it solid marks for pretty and secluded. But I totally picked the wrong side of the campground. Even though I couldn’t see the road, I could hear it. And sadly for me, big trucks drive that road making big truck noises as they go up the hills.
Even more sadly for me — well, sort of — the weather had gone quite dire. Fantastic thunderstorms and pounding rain. I say “sort of” because it’s still really fun for me to be in the van when the rain is pounding down. Even after my intense winter of California rain, I love the music rain makes on the van roof and the punctuation of thunder rumbles makes it all the better. But it did mean I didn’t wind up exploring the campground at all. I’d picked the campground because it was a Conservation Corps Campground and most of them have some beautiful old stone structures. This one had a nearby hike to a covered bridge, too. In better weather, it would have been a fun place to wander around. So it goes. Maybe next time. And maybe next time in autumn, when the leaves should be splendid and the mosquitoes should be frozen.
I headed out on Tuesday morning with last hugs all around — the hugs that said, “I am a world adventurer venturing forth on a daring and risky excursion that will last for months,” instead of what would have been far more accurate casual waves of “See you in a couple weeks/months.” I wasn’t sure how far I was going or where I would spend the night, but I needed to dump the tanks, after having spent most of a month sitting still in PA, and I wanted to spend at least a night in New Hampshire on my way to Maine and a meet up of fellow Travato owners.
Along the way, it started to storm. So many beautiful days in PA, and once I’m on the road, rain? Really? But I stopped at a rest stop and waited it out, because why not? As a result, I didn’t make it all the way to New Hampshire, but I decided that was fine, because instead, I stopped at an Army Corp of Engineers campground in the Green Mountain National Forest of Vermont.
Now that I’ve (almost) been to every state, I’ve been contemplating other travel goals and one of them might be to visit all the national forests. I’m not going to try to get to all the national parks; there are too many of them, and they’re too crowded. But I like the idea of visiting all the national forests, as much because I’ve never heard of lots of them, so it would be adventuring in the unknown a lot of the time. I had heard of the Green Mountain National Forest, though, and it was just as lovely as expected. Also very green.
The campground had a spot available in the hook-ups section, which I took because I needed water, so it was a good opportunity to fill up my water tanks. It was a great deal, too — dry camping (ie camping without electricity or water) was $20/night and with hook-ups, it was $26. Getting to fill my tank and charge my computer for $6 felt like a bargain. If I ever go back there, though, I will definitely aim to dry camp, because the campsites with electricity were a little more parking lot than I like. A nice parking lot, on grass, with trees, but sites close together. I spent the late afternoon listening to kids running around playing and my neighbors chatting. Perfectly nice, but all things being equal, one of the quiet spots overlooking the river in the much more secluded dry camping section would have been more my speed.
Serenity’s campsite: lovely for $26, but those neighbors are pretty close. The view from the back of one of the dry camping sites.
I didn’t use any of the facilities except the dump station, so I can’t provide a shower report, but it was a beautiful place. No internet, though, so I couldn’t research my next day’s travels. Oops.
The next morning I headed out early. I knew I was going to spend the night in New Hampshire, but I didn’t know where. Instead of picking a destination for the night, though, I let S’s voice (imagined, in my head, not her real voice) influence my destination. New Hampshire has exactly one site listed in the National Parks passport, the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site. I had no idea what it was, knew absolutely nothing about it, but off I went.
I think I’ve probably written about this before, but traveling in a camper van is adventurous; sitting still in a camper van is just living in a car. Tomorrow I leave for New Hampshire, then Maine and Massachusetts, and I am so looking forward to being back on the road again. I’ve had a lovely visit with family, but the annoyances of life in a van start to add up the longer I sit still.
However, this was sitting still for a very good reason: yesterday evening R & M arrived, on their way south from a summer spent working as a camp counselors in Vermont. We had sous vide flank steak, potatoes, and summer salads with sweet corn, tomatoes, avocado and pickled onion for dinner pretty much the second they got here, which I mention mostly so I remember that sous vide flank steak was pretty good. I’m not sure it was so much better than regular marinated flank steak that it’s worth the effort, but I think if I ever make it again, I will up the sous vide time to four or five hours and see if that makes it incredible. It might! But I was delighted to discover that R had picked up his own sous vide cooker at a garage sale in Vermont. I like seeing my cooking influence spread, I guess.
Blueberry season is definitely over, which makes me a little sad. It was impossible to pick it all, so we turned it over to the birds. It’s amazing to come back to the bushes and discover that all the berries that were left have disappeared but it’s nice to know that the birds feasted. And the end of blueberry season means that apple season has begun. Not today, but when I come back in a few weeks, I look forward to a plethora of delicious, crispness.
Meanwhile, today I have R & M to play with. I believe we’re going to try to fix a tail light on M’s car; do a little shopping; and go out to lunch. And I would rather be doing all of that than writing a blog post, so off I go. Enjoy your Mondays!
New Year’s Eve is usually the time when people look back and reflect on their past year, look forward and contemplate their next year. But three years ago today, I signed the paperwork, closing on the sale of my house, and drove off into the sunset.
If I was going to do this post justice, I’d add up the numbers: how many campgrounds, how many states, how many miles. But I’m honestly just not inspired to do that much work. Sometimes it’s fun to go through my calendar and make lists, but this past month has been filled with that kind of chore, so I’m not going to bother.
That’s a little ironic because I’ve actually been thinking about this post for months. What have I learned in three years of living in a van? What has 50,000 miles of driving taught me? But there are so many answers. Mostly that water is precious and that I really don’t like driving very much. I still miss my house sometimes, although not nearly as much as I miss Bartleby, and I still worry about the future more than I should.
Before I decided that I wasn’t going to make lists, I opened up my photos app to look at pictures. I was thinking that this past year wasn’t as busy as the previous two, that I did more adventuring in my first couple years of camping. Um, no. Not at all. Last summer was upstate New York and Vermont, followed by a delightful couple of months in Canada, then down through Maine and Massachusetts. Florida, then cross-country through Texas and New Mexico to California, and from California, a road trip to Oregon and Idaho, then north to Washington, and cross-country again. Lots of people, lots of places.
But not enough sunsets. That is, of course, not literally true — we all have exactly the same number of sunsets in a year, after all. But not enough appreciating of sunsets. When I consider the past year, especially in contrast to the previous couple, the real thing that strikes me is that I’m spending way too much time worrying about what comes next and not enough appreciating where I am.
I arrived at my brother’s house a week ago. Since then, I have picked a great many blueberries. Nowhere close to picking them all, though! We could easily spend three or four times as long and still come nowhere close. The blueberries are prolific this year. Also delicious. Even some of the bushes I haven’t liked in past years — too bland or too small — are good this summer. Maybe it’s because of all the rain? And my favorite bush, which in years past has only had scattered handfuls of berries, has hundreds of them this year. It’s blueberry heaven.
Every time we go pick, though, usually reasonably early in the morning, I both enjoy myself and am incredibly thankful that my life doesn’t actually require me to pick berries for a living. It’s a peaceful, pleasantly monotonous chore for about twenty minutes. And then I start to get hot and sweaty and the mosquitoes begin to attack or I put my knee down on a thistle or my hand into a spiderweb and I’m really grateful that I can stop whenever I want to. We walk away with our full tubs of berries and leave plenty on the bushes for the birds or for the next day’s picking.
Ironically, I woke up this morning with stiff neck and shoulder muscles that had nothing to do with berries. I’ve been spending a lot of time on my computer: working on a marketing plan, a mailing list strategy, some website updates, edits to A Lonely Magic, and words on its sequel. The last has been the least successful of those endeavors, but I spent hours on my laptop yesterday, trying to get back into the swing of it.
Along the way, I updated the Scribbles page with a couple of my favorite fanfiction stories, some unfinished stories that I like, and a scene that I cut from A Gift of Time long ago. It felt like a very productive day at the time, but this morning it felt like I’d been doing heavy labor. But having real internet feels like such a luxury — I want to take advantage of it while I can. One of the unfinished stories is so tempting, too — it’s always the way of the words: the story I’m writing feels like work, the story I’m not writing feels like temptation. (I was going to tell you which one, but I will wait and see if anyone wants to guess first. 🙂 )
And speaking of temptation, I think it’s time for lunch. Breakfast this morning was yogurt, blueberries, and granola. I think lunch is going to be a spinach salad with goat cheese, blueberries, and pumpkin seeds. Dinner will probably include some blueberries, too, in one form or another. Yay for summertime!
I could blame the weather or the bugs, but I think I should have thought twice about staying at Trout Lake Campground when the campground host casually mentioned that they were expecting a full house on the weekend because they were hosting a big off-road vehicle rally. I’d already handed him my credit card for two nights, however, and I really wanted a shower. If I’d known that the showers were the type were you have no control of the water temp and that the mosquitoes were sharing their meals with the black flies, I would have snatched my credit card back out of his hand. It was, however, only for two nights, so I will stop complaining now. And I’d had a long day before getting there so I really was ready to stop driving.
I hadn’t gone all that far, but I’d been driving through Pictured Rocks National Park and stopping regularly. Lots of scenic views. Also lots of bugs. I saw one guy wearing a mosquito net hat — clearly the apparel of the experienced northern Michigan hiker!
Waterfalls and rushing streams!Admiring the distant views — the deep blue in the background is the lake. Admiring the close-up views — the forget-me-nots are an invasive species apparently, but they’re really beautiful.
After a quiet (and grumpy) rest day at Trout Lake, I got back on the road again on Thursday with relief, but no real destination in mind. It turned into a day of minor errands — Aldi and Walmart and gas — followed by a somewhat ridiculous, but rewarding persistence.
I only had one night to spend wherever I decided to stop, so there was no reason to look for someplace special. A parking lot would have made sense. Maybe a night in a motel, so I could actually have that really nice shower? I was so indecisive. But it stays light really late in Michigan so instead of stopping, I just kept looking. I rejected one campground — too hilly. I rejected a second campground — nice for tent campers, but a parking lot for a van. (But while I was in the parking lot, I ran the generator and cooked some InstantPot chicken and rice for dinner.) I got lost while looking for a third campground and missed it entirely. Apple Maps sent me in a ridiculous direction for the next campground and I wound up in a dead end dirt road with minimal room to turn around. I still didn’t find myself a nice Walmart for the night. I don’t know why I was so determined, but at that point, I’d been looking for someplace nice for so long that I wasn’t going to stop until I was happy. Or exhausted, I suppose.
Fortunately, happy came first. At about 7PM, I found myself at Wagner Lake Campground in the Huron-Manistee National Forests.
Private, quiet, peaceful, beautiful. I could have stayed there for days (despite the mosquitoes, which were pervasive but not insane). Instead, I enjoyed a completely relaxing morning, and got back on the road around noon. For once, I knew exactly where I was headed — a weekend with friends that I hadn’t seen since college!
The morning fog on the water, as seen from the back of my campsite
I failed to call my dad on Father’s Day, because I had no cell service. I feel like that was bad planning on my part, but by the time I realized that my phone was lying to me — that the 1 bar of Verizon service really meant responses like “message failed to send” and “call failed” — I’d already paid $40 for two nights at Bay Furnace Campground. And not just that, I’d gotten one of the four nicest sites, the ones on the lake with water views and their own tiny private beaches. I was not minded to walk away for the sake of an internet connection. (Sorry, Dad. I hope you had a Happy Father’s Day!)
Even if I hadn’t gotten such a nice site, I would have loved this campground. All the sites are reasonably spacious, with good separation between them. I can see my neighbors — and actually overhear some of their conversations — but my site still feels private. I left the shades up to watch the night sky when I went to sleep last night, which I don’t always do, if it feels like people might be driving or walking by.
Although speaking of night skies… Michigan is very far north. I know this not because I can read a map or know anything about American geography (although I actually can and do) but because it stays light ridiculously late and gets light ridiculously early. My instincts are to stay awake for a couple hours after it gets dark and then wake up with the sunrise. That’s not giving me nearly enough sleep in Michigan. If I lived in Alaska, I don’t think I’d get any sleep all summer long.
The ducks didn’t seem to mind the cold.
Back to the campground — it’s dry camping, no electricity or water hook-ups, but there are bathrooms and a dump station and places to get fresh water. Also unexpected ruins and fog on the water in the morning. Also, I am fairly sure, forget-me-nots growing wild in the forest. Seriously, forget-me-nots and fog together make me feel like I’m living in L. M. Montgomery novel.
The writing is still not going well (translation: not going at all), but Amazon finally gave the Kindle app a useful organizational tool: the ability to mark books as Read, and then filter by Unread and Read. I’ve been working my way through my Kindle library, finding the books that I downloaded on impulse, when they were on sale or free, and then never got around to reading. I currently have 302 unread books, which is probably enough to keep me reading for quite a while, although I suspect that plenty of them will eventually wind up in my DNF collection. I was surprised to discover, though, that of the 800+ books on my Kindle that I have already read (or tried to read), only 104 were in the DNF collection. I would have thought that number would be much higher because I give up on books easily these days. If my interest hasn’t clicked by the 10% mark, I move on to the next book.
There are some exceptions, though, usually the ones that I think will be good for me in some way. The virtuous reading. Most of those are about writing, marketing, or self-publishing. The current one that I’m working on is about newsletters. It’s entertainingly written, the author has a great voice, and reading it makes me feel like Sisyphus. The fundamental concept is using your newsletter as a way to connect with people — you don’t want to simply inform people when you have a new book for sale because that’s asking them to buy something, instead you want to charm them and turn them into your friends. Be authentic, be real. Send kitten pictures! … So that they will then buy something from you.
I get the concept. I even understand that if I ever hope to earn a real living at writing books, it’s part of the job. It doesn’t even make sense that I think of it as pretending to be a nice person, because my authentic self is, in fact, nice. But it feels so fake. I might have to pick one of you and write you an email every month and then send it to the rest of my mailing list as well. That might work better for me. Ha.
The unexpected ruins: an iron furnace that burned down in the 1800s. Many, many pigeons make their homes on top, so in the early evening it was loud with cooing and twittering. The white spot is a pigeon flying off.
Moving on, I’m currently writing this on my phone while sitting outside, using a tiny Bluetooth keyboard and a lap-desk that I bought a year ago, and my newly beloved camping chair. I love this chair. It was so worth the quest. I’ve been thinking about a post — or maybe a FB post to the Travato group — about what I’ve learned in my almost three years of van living. There’s an industrial concept about the virtues of constant incremental optimization. It’s got a Japanese name — kaizen, maybe? Anyway, it applies to life in a van, too. Three years and I’m still discovering ways to be more comfortable, to make life easier or more pleasurable. Being able to sit outside in the sunshine while I write is lovely. Lovely enough that I think I will now try to work on Fen for a while. Maybe I can break through my travel-inspired inertia and actually make some progress.
Oh, but one final note about Michigan’s upper peninsula — it was 38 degrees this morning. 38! I should absolutely not have packed my winter clothes away when I left Arcata.
The tiny silver speck in the background is Serenity. I’m not the only camper at this campground, but it’s a lot emptier than I expected it to be. Maybe that has something to do with the weather.
I am looking out my window at a beautiful, turbulent lake — white-capped waves hitting a sandy beach, distant hills so far away that they’re a deep blue line against the horizon. It’s gorgeous, but my faint hope of kayaking on it disappeared with the weather: according to my weather app, it’s currently 58 degrees outside, but I am quite sure they’re not taking the cold wind into account, because it feels a lot more like 48.
Z keeps trying to convince me that we should be outside, so we’ve been in and out — lots of beach walks, a couple of forest walks, some sitting in my comfy chair and admiring the view — but it’s cold enough that I keep retreating inside. If this were Florida, it would be mid-winter, probably February. Apparently, that’s what June in the upper peninsula of Michigan feels like.
But it’s a great view.
Sunset
(I don’t have much more to say about the campground than that: it’s $28/night for water, electric, and a fantastic view. The sites are close enough together that if it was crowded, I wouldn’t love it, but it’s reasonably empty for this time of year. But it’s camping literally on the beach, so, you know, not complaining. 🙂 )
