
We thought we found a paradise where we could stay for couple of days but at 9:00 pm last night, we were harassed by a very large local man with a trailer and his tiny, wordless, smoking wife. They had apparently reserved the spot by putting a broken chair and a broken cooler on a picnic table. We thought this garbage was left there by previous campers, and we were not going to move at this hour. They naturally called the police…
We thought ‘Oh no, as long as I manage not to curse at the sheriff, we are probably going to be ok.’ (Four years ago I got a ticket while camping at Harriman State Park in NJ, for saying ‘fucking fire’ and had to go to court to fight it…) And then we met the nicest sheriff ever – and he told us it’s ok to stay. And so the large man and his tiny wife with their big trailer moved on to a different area of the campground.
It was a beautiful spot. The kids took a swim in the lake earlier in the day. And you did not hear anything but birds chirping and kids laughing. We had a gourmet dinner of vegetable soup, grilled steak and asparagus and green salad with a bottle of red wine (which the sheriff luckily did not see). Then, after that minor war with the locals, we enjoyed the camp fire and a most beautiful full moon that was casting shadows of giant pines and was lighting the shimmering low fog above the perfectly still lake.
We were finally not cold at night, and I did not need a down jacket in the morning either. Now that we have warm breakfast I realized that Yelisei likes granola and we did not have it. It was very tragic. But he got over it. The morning was so beautiful that I was loving the packing as well as driving. I almost felt like apologizing to the large man, but I stopped myself.
Today we were going to go to the Okefenokee swamp in Georgia, but there was no campground around that looked promising. So we changed our plans and we are going to Jacksonville. FL instead. I don’t have high hopes for a tranquil campsite, but at least the boys will swim play in the sand.