Adventures At The Beach

In my last post I showed you our new-to-us home-away-from-home.  Thank you for your sweet comments.  Yes, it seems like a palace instead of a travel trailer.  I’ve already begun to add a few of our own touches here and there but there will be many more.  I’ll share them with you soon.  It will be an ongoing process.

We picked up our trailer from the dealer on a Friday.  We were given a tour of the trailer, complete with explanations of all most of the ‘systems’ involved.  Some things we knew from our years with our little trailer.  Those things weren’t new to us.  Other things were new because our little trailer didn’t have all the bells and whistles this one does.  That was Friday.  On Saturday I moved things I wanted to use from the little trailer to the big trailer.  It wasn’t long and we had everything we would need for the first trip in the new trailer.

In September we made reservations to return to our new favorite campground on the Oregon Coast in October.  I shared our late summer adventure at this campground here.  We planned to take our little trailer for one last excursion this year before putting it ‘to bed’ for the winter.  Then, before that happened, we bought our new trailer.  I quickly called and changed our reservation to a bigger site that would accommodate the longer length of the new trailer.  When we arrived we were thrilled to spend a few days with wonderful views of the sea from inside our cozy dwelling.  I spent a lot of time looking out the big back window. 

At times I opened the door and just stood there to savor the view.
That area was our own little ‘yard’ – just for our site.  It was just a few steps from the door of the trailer.  We could stand at the fence along the edge of the bluff and see –what seemed like - forever.
We had some pretty amazing adventures with our new-to-us-trailer.  Things didn’t start out well!  Because we are seasoned trailer people we knew the basics.  We knew exactly what to do to get a trailer ready to roll and we knew how to work most of the systems in this big trailer.  Or, at least we thought we did.  The dealer had walked us through the trailer and around the outside and explained everything.  Or, had he?  There were still lessons to be learned:

• Not everything in every trailer the same.
• Be sure that the refrigerator and freezer doors are firmly latched before you take off!  Don’t take anything for granted.  Just because the refrigerator door looks like it’s closed and latched securely doesn’t mean it is.  You have to check it to be sure.  Double-checking wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.
• When the refrigerator door opens and a dozen eggs fall out on the floor while you’re going down the road, they roll – and break.  And scramble.  And get all over anything in their way.  You may be surprised how far broken eggs can run in all directions as you merrily make your way to the beach!
• A good egg wash shines vinyl floors!
• Don’t assume that the fresh water pump works exactly the same way as in the old trailer when you are ‘dry’ camping (camping without being hooked up to a water faucet – drawing water from your big fresh water tank that you fill for times like this). 
• Water pumps  in trailers need to be primed when they’ve been ‘run dry’ when tested by the dealer. 
• The service manager at the dealership where you bought your trailer will be happy to talk to you on the phone and tell you the ins-and-outs of priming your fresh water pump.
• You can go for a day and a half without water in a travel trailer – especially when there’s a water faucet across the street and you have a couple of big pans or a jug to carry it to your trailer. And it’s a good thing you are parked just across from the very nice restrooms!
• Not all hot water heaters work the same way in all trailers – but, with another call to the dealer’s service manager you can learn what someone should have told you when they walked you through and showed you how all the systems work.
• Once you have fresh water pumping through your faucets and hot water you don’t have to heat on the stove – be grateful!  Don’t take it for granted.  There are people in the world who would give anything to have the luxury of fresh water.
• After all the lessons are learned – LAUGH!!!

We had guests visit us while we were at the beach.  We didn’t expect them but they must have decided that we were pretty nice people because they came by more than once.  One little kitty seemed a bit braver than. . .
The other two.
We saw them resting in the sun near our trailer.  Then we saw them again when we returned from a walk on the beach the next day.  They were waiting at the door for us - relaxing in the sunshine on our welcome mat!  They let me get fairly close before they scampered off down the road and into the bushes.  We wondered if they belonged to someone who lives in the homes next to the campground.  One evening we saw a mama cat strolling through the campground like she knew where she was going.   Maybe, she was rounding up those babies to come home for dinner.

Our last day at the beach was different from our first two.  The weather changed and dark clouds rolled in.
It rained in the night and we woke to a gray day the next morning.  As I looked out my little kitchen window I was glad to see that the rain had stopped.
There was time for one more walk on the beach before we packed up and headed home.
We enjoyed our time on the beach but it ended too soon and it was time to head back to our trailer to get ready to head home.  From the beach we looked up and saw our trailer.  It was hard to believe it was really ours.
We have a process for getting things ready to travel.  My sweetheart takes care of the outside tasks and I make sure everything inside is situated so it will travel safe.  This time I made sure the refrigerator door was securely latched – now that I knew what to do! - and I checked it several times. My sweetheart came inside and he checked it, too.  We’ve had enough experience cleaning up raw eggs that have broken all over the floor.  We don’t need to do that again!  Just to be safe – I hard-boiled the remaining eggs shortly before we left.  Just in case!  Soon everything was securely in place, the trailer was hooked up to the trailer and we were ready to go.
I never want to leave the beach but I always know I will return again.  A piece of my heart is there and there’s no doubt it will call me back again.  Each time is special.  We’ll always have sweet memories of those few days at the beach with our new trailer.  And lessons learned.