That was the cry as someone was pounding on my door at 6:45 A.M. yesterday.We have to evacuate...and now....but I'm still in bed like most of the other campers.It had been raining steadily for a couple of hours and I was awake and had just finished doing my blog-post...and thought it was sure nice to have some rain to keep the dust down and freshen the air.
I opened the door and saw the Camp Host standing outside of my carpet with 6" of mud stuck to the bottom of his shoes and realized that.....Geeeze!....we are parked on a sea of GUMBO! He says if we don't get out now.....we wont get out for a week.
What to do first.....no time to stow everything inside...got to pack up 2 satellite dishes and barbecue,etc.......will the van even get into position to hook up?While I'm running around in circles,some of my neighbors were driving around in circles out in front of me,slithering and sliding all over the place making a bad situation worse right where I have to drive.One lesson learned....when you exit your trailer in this situation....make sure you don't have to re-enter for anything......I didn't have my van keys....sheeesh!
I was smart enough to wear my rubber ducky's and slipped out of them to grab my keys.Now the next big test....yup....the van doesn't back up very well in a sea of mud...I'm spinning and getting nowhere...A class A motorhome does a 180 just over a few yards,narrowly missing a trailer...I finally get out..Ron directs me to the ball...its a little better surface out in front of the trailer,thank goodness.Everyone else is gone now but us and the host waiting in his pickup(A guy from B.C. by the way.)
The weight of the trailer gave me enough traction to get out of the parking spot and up to a more solid surface....now the walk back and forth through the thick stuff to retrieve all my equipment..What a mess in the van...mud everywhere and on everything.At least the outside got washed off once we were on the wet highway.I was last out behind Ron and Sue,they were positioned better and had no problem getting out with the motorhome facing in the right direction for a quick exit and the car parked further out.The host closed the gate and instructed us to go 5 miles up the road to the Mecca Beach Campsite in the pic above.
We situated ourselves in one the few remaining spots in this parking lot styled campsite...but at least we were on pavement...but not worth $10. a day more than our other spot,although they have waved the increase due to the circumstances.But when renewal time comes,Ron says he's going to make some waves about the forced increase and wanting to be back at Salt Creek.We all spent the next 5 hours cleaning the mess of mud that was on everything from carpets to levelling blocks to the insides of the vehicles....and if you know gumbo...it really sticks.Luckily we had a water tap nearby....but....we had to walk through more mud to get to it.
We liked our old spot at Salt Creek,but going back anytime soon is out of the question.This spot has a few facilities but we prefer being parked at the waters edge and not back a few hundred yards out of sight of the water.
Now as promised in yesterdays blog...here are some pic's that Ron and Sue got on Friday down at the Sonny Bono Refuge...Above are hundreds of Snow Geese.And below they were taken just outside the Refuge by the host to see the Burrowing Owls. Great shot Sue.
I had asked them to try and get an "in-flight" shot of a Pelican out in front of our site the other day,so they were able to get this one below.
Today the 3 of us will have a group meeting and decide if we want to stay beyond our paid up time on Monday.We like it here at the lake and don't really want to backtrack towards Arizona with so Little time left in our journey.
Kinda freaky, gettin stuck in the mud!
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