Dog for Sale - Cheap

Today we woke up to a beautiful sunny day. The fall leaves were spectacular in the campground. We had decided to have family church since none of the local churches had an early service and we had a travel day planned; to get down to our stopping point in Delaware would take about three hours. Not too long of a drive, but we had to check out of the campground by noon so we leisurely got up and around and all shared something we had read in our Bibles. Then we prayed together and commenced the getting ourselves and then the trailer ready routine.

When the inside of the trailer was "ready for take-off" and Brock moved outside to start unhooking the services, the kids asked if they could go to the playground for a bit. This is sometimes very helpful when we're concentrating on getting ready to go so I agreed. Brighton had to take Heidi for her last walk before the drive though. It wasn't long before we heard crazy duck and goose calls and kids yelling. Brock and I moved from our space through one more row of RVs and looked at the lovely picturesque pond from yesterday's blog only to see the ducks and geese being completely riled by Heidi swimming from one side to the other over and over again. We were all standing on the edges of the pond calling her cheerfully and trying to coax her with sticks or treats to no avail. She was singularly focused. Meanwhile, some guy (maybe just another camper, maybe a loop host) yelled at the kids and then evidently called the office because the lady from the office came down the drive to check out the happenings. I apologized profusely and told her that she had had her leash on, but that she'd gotten away from us. She tried to call Heidi too. Other campers kept walking by, openly laughing or smirking and saying how "Heidi sure was having fun." One guy said, "She's just doing what she was born to do." Grr.

After what felt like and may have actually been about an hour, without any success on her hunting expedition, Heidi finally tired out and drug herself out of the water and sheepishly approached Brock with her head and tail down. He took her up by the still-attached, dripping wet, leash to our site and completed the hookup tasks and we rolled out of the campground avoiding eye contact and offering to pay any fees since we were now more than a half hour late. The office lady was very nice and understanding and said since we didn't hold anyone up that we didn't have to pay anything. We had also offered to help with anything that needed doing, but we were refused. I felt like, "Let's just get out of here, please."

The rest of the drive was pretty uneventful thankfully. Just nice scenery and kind of backroadish since we'd asked Tom to guide us by avoiding tolls. We rolled into our campground a little after 3, I think and once we got set up, I started dinner pretty much right away since we'd skipped lunch. The kids enjoyed the playground which is very close to our campsite and Brock had a little nap.


Near sunset, Brock and I headed west and the weird thing was that it isn't over the ocean. ;o) We took a little walk, just us and Heidi while the kids played on the playground again. Today still felt like a stressful day and even though it was only about 7 when the kids came in, it seemed like it should be bedtime, especially when Sky let Heidi get out the door, in the dark. Thankfully she came back. Not 15 minutes later, Spencer dumped a whole pitcher of water on the floor and with all the happy, but hyper talking that came in from the playground, Mom and Dad had had enough. The kids got ready for bed. They were able to play some cards reasonably quietly and so salvaged their evening and were able to go to bed at their normal bedtimes while Brock did our route planning and I worked on catching up the family budget.

Bridge in daytime - ocean is on the other side

Not every minute of this trip feels much like a vacation, of course. It is nice that there isn't really any big sights to see here. Just kind of relax, but it IS pretty cool if you look at a map at to where we are. We are on a teeny strip of land off the coast of Delaware at a place called Delaware Seashore State Park. We have a marshy area and bay on one side and the ocean on the other. Pretty cool. As the kids came in from outside, I caught a glimpse of the bridge that we came in on and it was all lit up. Really pretty.

Same bridge at night-picture does not do it justice.