Longest trip home ever...

Camping for a week has certain advantages, one of which is a total news diet. It's great to get away from the doom and gloom, but sometimes I miss things, like severe weather on most of the east coast. I got to the Sarasota/Bradenton Airport very early yesterday afternoon--3:30 for a 7:00 flight--thanks to our friends who helped us pack. I noticed a lot of people around the ticket counters, but I didn't think too much about it. Then I heard about a delayed flight going to Atlanta. I figured it was a mechanical issue until they announced a second. Then a third. That's when I asked someone if there was a weather issue in Atlanta. Fortunately, the lady I asked was very gracious and didn't look at me like I'd been living under a rock.

Long story short, my 7:00 flight out of Sarasota got canceled about 9:15. All of the Delta flights out of Sarasota were booked until Tuesday, so the nice man helping me re-booked a seat on American. The catch was that the flight was for 8:15 this morning, leaving from Tampa. I had been up since 5:45 and must have been more pitiful than I gave myself credit for because he comped a hotel room and a taxi to Tampa when technically the airline wasn't at fault. Even the taxi driver asked if I'd be all right when he dropped me off in Tampa, which I thought a little odd until I got to my room and looked in the mirror.

I can state unequivocally that the Marriott at the Tampa Airport is very nice, and it made life easier when I had to be up before dawn again this morning to get through security again. Honestly, I'd have been happy with a Motel 6 as long as it had a hot shower and a bed, so a Marriott in the airport with room service for breakfast was icing on the cake, even if I was only in the room about seven hours.

I finally got home at 2:00 this afternoon, only fifteen hours late. We could have gotten here earlier, but it took a little time to file the lost luggage claim. Yes, of course my one checked suitcase got lost! I changed not only flights, but also airlines and airports. That's a trifecta if ever there was one. Hopefully it will catch up with me tomorrow.

I have some fun stuff to post later, but it will have to keep a day or two. I'm going to curl up with my cat and a book, and I'll be going to sleep early. I'm just this side of mature for long days and short nights.

Almost ready!

My sewing is done and I'm almost all packed. In 24 hours I'll be on a plane heading south for a week in stays and petticoats.

Eric bought me a little present to take with me. Since this trip is more about research than shopping he decided I needed more than my little Moleskine notebooks and picked this up:




The smallest size is just right to fit in my haversack (what passes for a purse in costume) and the pages are blank so I can sketch pictures of stuff if I need to. Not that anyone but me will recognize what I'm drawing, but it's my research so it's all good!

The thing I'm looking forward to the most right now (besides the warmer weather) is surprising my friend Peggy. I told her I wouldn't be coming this year, back when I wasn't going, and I haven't e-mailed to tell her my plans changed.

I hope to have some stuff to auto-post this week, but if I get into a time crunch and don't get to it, y'all behave and I'll see you a week from Monday!

Home again

I was barely out of bed this morning when Eric reminded me that I hadn't updated the blog. When I asked if someone was waiting for me to do it, he said, "Yeah! Me!" Not sure why; he knows what's going on in my life.

The rendezvous was fun but very wet. We set up camp mid-day Monday, and Monday night it started raining. It continued on and off until Thursday; we definitely got our share of April showers, and we won't be there to see the May flowers. We did see a lot of friends, though, and I got to prove to my Florida rendezvous friends that Eric really does exist! They all asked where Dad was, and were surprised when I told them he had a conflict and that we were camping sans parents AND kids. That part was nice, not having to be accountable to anyone but each other for the first time in 18 years. The kids did fine without us. In fact, I was a little offended that they did so well without me!


'Someone' was concerned that we wouldn't be able to haul our stuff in the van without a trailer or a shell on top. This is the van in the driveway before we started, and everything is inside (even poles) with room to spare.


Here's my 'dandy'. He's cute and he cooks!


Pisa has its Leaning Tower; Georgia had a Leaning Shower. Incidentally, that's entirely home made. We ordered the ropes and stakes; everything else came from Lowe's. Well, almost. We bought a shower bag (not shown) at the BX, and the grommets for the canvas came from Michael's. Eric put it together after only having seen Dad's shower once. How it didn't end up going down the hill is beyond me. The back stakes were barely hanging on, thanks to the wind and rain.


Mr. Aflac was our neighbor to the west. We were tucked back out of the way at the north end of camp, and the view was lovely. Even with all the rain, it was a nice second honeymoon site.



This is looking south at the west side of camp. That's probably a third of the camps, including about half of Trader's Row.



It was chilly. I bought the cloak in Florida; the voyageurs cap was picked up the day before.



This would be a darn-near perfect 'period' photo except that I didn't think to take off my modern glasses. At the very least I should get extra credit for posting of picture of myself in which I'm wearing no make-up.
We were fuller going home than coming in, but we still got everything, including poles, inside the van. I will confess, though, that when we stopped for the night in Chattanooga we took the poles out and strapped them to the top so we could see out the back.

Total tear-down time was about two hours, and we weren't as minimalist as I thought we'd be. It all fit in rather compactly, but spread out and set up I still felt like we had too much stuff. We've already taken notes about what we want to do better next time. Note to me: The notes are in the Moleskine notebook. The big one.

Pix

Sorry to be so tardy posting pictures. I've been under the weather with sinus issues. It seems to be an allergy, but there may be a touch of a cold involved. The allergy meds seem to be doing the most good, and my symptoms improve when I'm away from home. Those seem like good indicators to me. I've managed to do some deep cleaning to try to get the pollen or whatever it is out of the house. Right now, hardwood floors are looking mighty good.

So, about the pictures: I didn't get to take nearly as many as I wanted to. I didn't realize when I packed the new camera that the battery wasn't fully charged, and it died mid-week. If I'd had the old piece of crap pictures I could have popped in new AA batteries and taken fuzzy pictures. I think I'd rather have fewer good pictures!

I'll start you off with a couple of the sunset over our neighbors' camps. They were taken Monday night, I think, just ahead of the cold front that came through Tuesday.
































I braved the cold to get some shots of the opening of the Highland games. Eric is interested in exploring a Scottish persona at some point so I thought pictures of the costumes would be in order.
























I snuck a shot of the group photo. I thought the two little ones in the front, wrapped up in Dad's plaid, were adorable.










I got this one mainly for weapons reference. This is the closest I've come to a targe (the shield), and if I'd known who he was I would have tracked him down for an even closer look. As it was, it was just too cold to hang around for the end of the games. I didn't even notice his mixed plaids until I got home and looked at the pictures!













This gentleman was kind enough to pose for me when I was out shopping. It's the look I'm working toward for Eric. The only part Eric wasn't crazy about was the tricorn hat.

244 e-mails and 17*

I'm home! We got back from the airport about midnight, and Chloe woke me up for breakfast at 6:30. I've managed to clear out 244 e-mails (mostly junk) and would head back to bed for a while except that I have to leave in a little over an hour to get a mammogram. Woo hoo. I see a nap in my near future, though. I also see a sugar and olive oil scrub; my hands are like sandpaper, and I just found a splinter I must have gotten when we broke camp yesterday.

It was an interesting week. When I got to Florida it was 74*. That didn't last. Monday and Tuesday were in the low 60's. Tuesday night the bottom fell out and we got down to 17*. When I got up Wednesday morning there was frost, and our firewater bucket was frozen. I crunched over to the Portajohns and was not surprised to see frost on the outside, but I knew it would be ugly when I went in and found frost on the inside, too. The wood stove in the tent ran most of the week and firewood was getting to be an issue. Fortunately we didn't have to start busting up furniture, but when we packed out yesterday I was starting to wish we had. It was cold enough that we didn't get as much socializing in as we usually do, but I did manage to connect with most of my friends and saw a couple that don't usually go to that rendezvous. As the week went on, it warmed steadily, and it was 78* when we packed up yesterday. When I got home, it was 15*.

I did get a lot of shopping done, and I came home with money. The only thing I didn't actually buy Eric was footwear, although I did order a pair of custom-made mocassins for him which should get here next month. He has trouble with his feet, and I didn't want to buy shoes without him there to try them on. One of our friends is a trader and has promised to bring shoes Eric's size to the Southeastern this spring. It's actually a good thing I put off the shoes. My suitcases were pretty full.

I probably won't get around to posting pictures until late in the week. Alex and I are supposed to do a campus visit tomorrow (assuming the weather holds--it's supposed to snow), and I'm back to work Wednesday. It was great to get away, and I'll have more stories, but I'm looking forward to getting back into some semblance of a routine.

Crunchy Sunshine

I'm not a competitive person. I like to win things, of course, but I don't go out of my way to participate in competitions, especially when it's 97* and I'm in multiple layers of clothing. A dessert contest was a little too much temptation. My friend Linda and I collaborated on an entry based on something we make at The Day Job. The required ingredient was kiwi, which we mixed with tropical mixed fruit, vanilla yogurt, and trail mix with nuts parfait style in fancy candle votives. We were pretty pleased with the way they came out, and very pleased that the judges had to work to pick winners. In the end, we took 2nd place. 1st place had chocolate, and that's a little hard to complain about!


















(I'm actually a little amazed that the photos are as clear as they are. I had to snap them quickly so we could cover them up before the flies found them.)

The Last Straw

Saturday night the rain moved out for good. We had breakfast and started trying to dry things out before Eric and the kids packed up dirty clothes and headed home for work and the last week of summer school. I walked them out to the parking lot, and when I got back, Dad was spreading straw over the mud. Turns out he’d talked to the guy in charge, who talked to the nice people at Rockome, and we were able to buy two small bales of straw to soak up the mud. We spread it carefully to cover as much mud as possible without clogging up the trenches, which we’d already begun calling The Moat.

The straw made a huge difference. By evening, the high traffic areas were evident and we knew the straw was working. The next morning, I went looking for a pitch fork, which caused a fair amount of amusement among the campers and park staff. We moved the dry straw aside so we could get the wet straw out, and then covered the still squishy spots with fresh straw.

There was one draw-back to all that fresh straw. The flies loved it. I think we inherited a few stow-aways in the bales, along with all the other flies in the area. That’s when we learned a very important lesson. We’d bought a box of borax when we’d shopped for groceries, which I’d sprinkled around the tents to try to keep the ants down. What we learned was that a mild borax solution used to scrub tables and other surfaces deters flies from landing on them. We don’t know if the flies don’t like the borax itself or if the borax cleaned so much better than plain water that there was nothing left to attract them, and frankly we don’t care. The bottom line is that we decided that borax needs to be a permanent part of the camp kit. Fly strips are good, too, but not period correct. In a pinch, scrap strips of fabric, tied to tent ropes and soaked in honey with a little water will also work, but hang them where they won't get rained on.

In spite of our borax miracle, by Tuesday we were rather tired of flies and went to get the pitch fork again. The mud was as absorbed as it was going to get, so the straw was pitched out away from the tents. The ground was just damp at that point, and the sun finished drying out the mud. Luckily, it was indeed the straw the flies liked and not us!

A River Runs Through It

Friday started sunny and humid. Eric and the kids were due late in the afternoon, and we had plenty of work to do. We got camp set up and headed out to buy groceries. By noon, clouds were beginning to gather and the humidity was high. Eric and the kids arrived about 3:00. We got their gear stowed and took the van out to the parking lot just in time for the rain to start. Perfect timing!

We didn’t think much of the rain for a few hours. When the ground under the fly started to get soggy we realized that although we’d chosen what looked like the best site, it wasn’t as good as it could have been. We had a little ridge going through the middle of both tents, but overall we were on a downhill slope, and the rain was going under the tents and through what was, effectively, our living room. It was the start of my latest learning curve, and the first lesson was Do Not Be Lulled Into A False Sense of Security.

Saturday morning was sunny, for which we were grateful. The ground was saturated, and we were glad to have a shot at drying things out. For the first time since I started camping, we had earth worms in the ‘living room.’ You can see from the picture why we thought we were camping practically on the river bank. The kids shucked their shoes and went off to find others of their kind, coming back to eat and stomp through the mud under the fly.

Late in the afternoon, the rain started again. The quagmire deepened and my morale plummeted. Dad and Alex collaborated on a civil engineering project and dug a trench to drain water away from the tents, which worked somewhat but might have been more effective if it had been done sooner.

Dinner was cooked in the rain, and as soon as the food came off the fire, the big coffee pots went on to heat shower water. It stopped raining while we were eating.

Dad assigned the order of showers based on the ‘snit scale’. I got second and promptly passed it on to whoever was behind me. I just couldn’t handle the thought of getting clean and stepping back out into the mud. Instead, I toughed out the evening and washed my feet just before I went to bed. I almost cried when I crawled into bed and heard rain on the canvas.

At least the kids had a grand time.

Sea Horse Spawn

We arrived in Arcola Thursday afternoon. Our host was Rockome Garden, in the heart of Illinois Amish country. The site we chose for our camp overlooked what we thought was the Kaskaskia River. (Turns out it was a Kaskaskia River flood plain, swollen from recent rain.) We set up camp and went to have dinner. Before dark, the neighbors began to call. There are no strangers at a rendezvous, only friends you haven’t met.

As we chatted, we could hear a horse trotting, but the sound was coming from the river. Logically, we concluded that beyond the river and the tree line was a road down which someone was heading home. Of course, that’s not the explanation we gave to visitors to the park through the week. What we told them was that it was sea horse spawn season. No one believed us, of course, but it makes a good story!

Back a little early

Yesterday, when the nice man came to pick up our trash before we opened the gates to the public, he told us about a change in the local forecast--rain and thunderstorms Saturday night and most of Sunday. Literally, I was standing there chatting, and the three remaining adult heads behind me came together and decided to pull stakes a day early. Took them about fifteen seconds to decide, which blew the record for the fastest decision all week. (The previous one was when I suggested that ice cream at 2:00 in the afternoon would not spoil any meals and pointed out that it's served in air conditioning.)

This was my longest rendezvous yet, and as usual I've come home sun burned and bug bit. We brought home easily twice what I went out with, which we expected, and I'm pretty sure that now we could camp on our own. We need to buy a shower and a fire bucket. Vicky has decided to become a pirate, so I need to make her some britches, but I have to wait for the pattern to get here. Eric had fun and is looking toward the logistics of going to Ohio in October.

Today we have to spread out canvas and floor coverings to make sure they get dried completely (it rained some while we were packing) and figure out how to store the new toys. I think I might be especially glad today that we have an extra day to do that. I have posts planned on the particulars of the week, so check back with me through the week.

Yikes! And away...

I'm off too rendezvous in the morning. It's been a crazy couple of weeks. The Boys left over the weekend, and first thing Monday morning I commenced packing. Eric and the kids will join me on the weekends since this is likely the only event that we'll have in Illinois for the next decade or so. Since it's close, I'm taking clothing for everyone with me and some extra gear to lighten Dad's load. Thankfully, I finished the sewing Monday. We'll be here, so if you happen to be in the central Illinois area, stop on by and say good day to all of us crazies in costume. ;-) Behave yourselves, and I'll be back the 20th.

Beat the weather home!

I got back in last night, and today is dreary and windy. I'm glad the wind held off until today--it would have made flying in far more exciting than I could have managed.

It was a good rendezvous, but I underestimated the power of a certain vendor. While I was packing, I thought I'd probably buy some patterns and maybe some notions from my favorite fabric vendor. If they had linen on sale, I thought I might pick some up, but I bought a lot of fabric last year that I haven't worked with yet. This year they had lots of treasures in the remnant basket. Since my friend Linda was in camp this year, we talked about making summer dresses for the Midwest, so of course we had to get the patterns for that, too, and the fabric recommended. What it boils down to is I spent more money than I intended in 96 District Storehouse! I think Linda and I and one of the other gals probably paid the owners' expenses from South Carolina to central Florida! Of course I got some good stuff and probably have enough sewing to keep me off the streets until the Midwest in July.

The weather was decent--hot, cold, wet and dry, as usual for a rendezvous, and fairly windy a couple of days, which is par for the area. I got to catch up with some friends from last year and made a few new ones, and it was just good to get away. I did burn the crap out of my thumb cooking dinner Saturday night. The pot of egg noodles was about to boil over, and I when I reached for the handle to take if off the heat, my hot pad slipped. Our 'snake oil' remedy seems to have worked; one of Dad's friends swears by yellow mustard for burns. Yes, the kind you squirt on a hot dog. Cover the burn liberally with mustard and wrap in a wet paper towel. Refresh either or both as needed for several hours; Dad's friend says five, but I left it for about four. After I washed the mustard off, I put an herbal salve and a bandaid on it, and today it's not even blistered or tender. I did put more salve back on to try to speed the healing a little more; I have to go back to work Wednesday.

I have some pictures to post, but that will have to keep until I get unpacked.