Camping full time has its upsides, and its downsides. Upsides? Nature, definitely.
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| Great Blue Heron Neighbor |
This is one of our coolest neighbors. At least he was our neighbor in Tennessee. The great blue heron is such a gorgeous bird. Such an ugly voice. But the racket he made isn't nearly as bad as the racket one of our last neighbors in Tennessee. They rolled in after midnight and proceeded to treat the entire campground to their immensely loud music and movies, well past 2am. Blech. Neighbors can definitely be a downside. Sounds travel in the great outdoors, especially when everyone else is asleep. One of our neighbors in NC came by looking for jumper cables. On our way out of the campground, we swung by and picked up the cables. They told Bill they were headed out that morning (toooooooooo cold!), and Bill let his pleasure show. They stayed up VERY late laughing and arguing over who got to use the seat heaters (thus the dead car battery).
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| Jason and Bill |
Another upside is getting to see family we don't often get to see. We chose our location in NC in order to be close to Bill's brother, Jason. I think that in the nearly 20 years Bill and I have been together, there have only been a handful of occasions where I've been in the same state as Jason. We all hung out at Discovery Place in Charlotte, another science museum with reciprocity through the ASTC program.
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| Nathan and Levers |
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| Chemically Enhanced Fire Colors |
A huge upside for us has been making use of the reciprocity program for science museums. There are so many different ways to present science, it's just been very cool to get to visit all these fun places. The hands-on at Discovery Place has so many things that we've never seen or played with before, it was a great way to spend a couple hours. The kids were begging to spend more time there, so you know it was a great choice for us. Unfortunately, they were under construction at the time, so only a portion of what is normally exhibited was up and running. So I think the couple hours was really a good amount of time for us.
Another upside to perma-camping? Getting to choose your weather. We've been having to make our plans at the last minute lately, because nighttime temperatures are getting below freezing in some of the places we want to go. It looks like we're gonna suck it up this weekend and hit a hotel for a couple of days so that we can get out of the cold front Canada is sending our way, but still get to camp again in NOVA for one last visit before the year is up.
All this travelling is also sparking a lot of discussion between me and Bill over what kind of place we want to live in when this is all done. I have really enjoyed being back in rolling hills with trees and water. Food for thought.
