​All right friends, I’m not one to judge people getting outdoors and enjoying nature, but this past weekend the things I saw were just too crazy that I have to comment on them.
​
We’re still stuck at Fort Fisher waiting on a new debit card. When USAA said “Two days,” they meant two business days, which means we’re still here until Monday. The weather has been hot, way too hot. But since I had to buy an a/c unit while we were in Florida, I figured I’d put it to good use.

 

It fits nearly perfect in the rear window of our tent thanks to my awesome brother Benjamin who built a multi- purpose cradle for it. First in Florida, then in Texas, and now in North Carolina. As long as we’ve got some electricity, we will stay nice and cool.

The weather aside we’ve had an interesting, yet awesome weekend. Friends of ours made the two-hour trek down from Seymour Johnson AFB and we spent the afternoon at the beach. The waves were a bit rough, but the kids loved it!

And I got to see and help some people through some epic camping fails. A guy pitched up his tent just over from where we were and knew what he was doing, but then his friend shows up and it was like he completely forgot how to put up a tent. They flipped the rain fly (the part that is supposed to go over the outside of the tent and tie to the tent poles) inside out and tied it to the tent poles and pushed them into the ground, then when they couldn’t figure out how to put up the tent without the poles (because of course the poles were being used to hold up the rainfly) they opened the rainfly door, chucked the tent inside, zipped it up and left. I thought maybe they were going to go off and get a new tent or come back and fix it or something. But no, it stayed that way until the next morning. I’m not sure how the guy slept inside that night, but he did because I saw him come crawling out the next morning as I was enjoying my cup of tea.

 

​Another group of campers totally forgot their rainfly and with rain forecasted for the evening were fretting about what to do. I could hear them talking about how there weren’t any cabins available last minute and what should they do. So, I offered them the use of some painter’s plastic or a tarp, both of which I had used to cover up stuff on the roof before we had gotten our rooftop tent. They took the tarp and spent a dry evening. Then the next day, they gave the kids a free boogie board as a way to say thank you.

 

The third group had a really rough time of it. It was a mom and her three girls and it was only their second time camping ever. They had a massive two-room tent of the pop-up variety and one of the pins that holds the roof pole in place had snapped and the pole popped out causing the whole tent to cave in while they were sitting inside. Using their tools, my tools, and a drill from the office we got it put back together after about an hour or two of working at it allowing them to enjoy their weekend.
​
By Sunday morning, the novelty of people watching wore off as everyone started packing up for the weekend. So, the kids and I rented a golf cart for the day and drove around the recreation area. Unfortunately, everything was closed – the pool, the museum, the rec hall. Everything. Was. Closed.

So we just drove around and drove around and drove around. And since we weren’t allowed to leave the site with the golf carts, I got really bored, really quickly.

The kids though, they thought it was the greatest thing ever. It was an enjoyable weekend, but hopefully tomorrow we will be out of here and heading up the coast with a new debit card in hand. Who knows, maybe we’ll see some even crazier campers than the ones from this weekend.