OK, so nearly 2 years has flown by and I haven’t written another word, but 3 weeks ago I broke my ankle and am laid up for several weeks so I finally have the time to get this blog caught up!
After our Cleveland trip, we went back to our favorite campground, Autumn Lakes in Sunbury. This time we got site W, which oriented the camper right on the lake, sort-of off by itself and parallel to the water. We had been wanting to try this space, and we used it for a 5-day July 4th weekend. We went back to Autumn Lakes later that month.
In adding these photos, I forgot we had a scare at Autumn Lakes. We found our small dog Tessie had a hair band stuck in her neck. We had to find a local emergency vet on a holiday weekend. Fortunately it worked it out. Also, I caught a fish for the first time since I was a kid.
I also forgot we camped at Mount Gilead State Park in the blistering heat. Nathaniel and I took a long hike around the lake.
Near the end of July we tried a new Campground, Back 40, which is over by Bellefontaine. We liked it a lot, but the kids were disappointed it did not have a pool.It did have a swimming as well as a fishing pond. As it happened, the entire campground and the owner’s house that went with it was all for sale for $400k, and it was fun to dream for awhile!
You can see the dry creek bed behind our campsite at Back 40 above. Also, coming home for the first time ever I nervously pulled into a gas station and gassed the truck. That overhead roof looks so low, but as you can see there was plenty of room!
In August we camped at Alum Creek again, and had a wonderful surprise where nearly two dozen family members and friends all independently suddenly decided to come visit us! Things were crowded there for a while, but it was nice having our family and friends there.
A few pics of the crowd!
Later in August we went back to Jellystone in Mount Gilead, which had been our other favorite place. When we were still 10-15 miles away, we began to hear a strange noise from the front right truck wheel. We made it into the campground and got set-up, and when I checked the truck I found there was grease leaking all over the right front tire from the wheel hub. I called my good friend Adam, who is a certified mechanic, and borrowed a jack. He ended up coming out with his wife Kristi and son Anthony and he and I had to work on the truck most of the day saturday and sunday morning. Turns out the outer wheel bearing shattered and tore up the hub. Adam replaced all the bad parts, re-ground the hub smooth with an angle grinder and re-packed the bearings and got us back on the road, one of many many times he has saved us that way! When we got back I took the truck to the shop and they verified the work was done right and did the other front wheel also.
Another thing that happened when we were there that weekend, our site lost power for several hours. It was an expensive, frustrating, and not very fun weekend.
In September we took our camper to the Delaware County fairgrounds for the fair week, which always coincides with my birthday. Julia and her mom and sister take this week off and have fun at the fair. My sister-in-law puts her camper next to ours and it is a blast.
In October we went back to Autumn Lakes one more time for Halloween. We were handing out trick-or-treat candy and talking to the campground owner. We had been on a waiting list to seasonally camp there since 2014. She said some sites were coming open over the weekend, and for us to look at a few potential sites to pick our preference as we were finally near enough to the top of the list that we might finally make it, and a few weeks later we found out we did! So starting in 2017 we would spend every weekend seasonally camping in the same site, something we had been wanting to do since we started camping in 2010.
Finally, we had one last fall fling camping trip at Cardinal Campground with my friends from work. We were done hauling and traveling for awhile, and looked forward to the spring of 2017 to find out what seasonally camping was like!
juliancampingfun 