I am a camper! I survived roughing it in the wilderness: with a 30A power outlet, running water, firepit, picnic table, 5G hotspot, and an uncomfortable night because I forgot to fully inflate the mattress before I slept. And now that I was a pro at lighting a camp stove, the morning saw me with coffee and Maggi instant noodles. The use of the communal restroom and showers triggered memories of boarding school and undergrad dorms.
My next destination was a place I was looking forward to for a weird reason. I have an explainer in a video below but if you are here and you don't prefer video, here's a text version. Many years ago, I read a book titled "The Creature from Jekyll Island". Given that the only place I had heard the name "Jekyll" was in the R. L. Stevenson classic, I was intrigued. The book is about the machinations of the Federal Reserve and what presumably formed the basis of the US banking system. Much later I found out that the author was a conspiracy theorist and generally crazy. I am not offering a link and only add the image so you can recognize it and avoid it. Anyway, since then I have been wanting to visit this place called Jekyll Island.
I learned some lessons from my first night out that needed a stop at a Walmart or likewise. Here are some of those lessons.
Flip flops over sandals. You are going to be spending a lot of time stepping in and out of the tent and flip flops win
Need a tarp under the tent if you don't want sand inside your car. I forgot to bring a tarp and had to get one.
Campsites have lots of power so why struggle with a tiny USB fan. Get a slightly bigger one.
A tiny cooler that can hold temperature for a couple of days is helpful. Especially in a humid place.
And then I stocked up on some miscellaneous food and drink items
Jekyll Island seemed to be in a different league from the previous one: they had golf carts escorting you to your campsite and all those frills. But they also had folks putting a lot of LED lights and the whole place had the ambience of a fairground. Not sure I liked that. Another thing I noticed was a ton of RVs. Let me explain that a little more...
When I set off on this trip I was wondering if I would feel a tad out of place going around in a compact SUV with a "fake tent", when everyone else would presumably be going around in fancy RVs and motorhomes. I felt I'd be looked down on -- for a minute I forgot this was the US. The first campsite had a few sedans also. Clearly going camping in car, or a non-RV, was not as uncommon as I had thought. Until I came to Jekyll Island. They had a caste system where car campers were only allowed in specific lots while others were reserved for RVs and larger vehicles. It made sense but I felt "small" as I was driving past the much larger RVs to my campsite.
But the site was nice and there was a frog in the power outlet. Yes, a frog. And that's not a figure of speech. I let the frog be and it reciprocated the sentiment. It was still there the next morning.
And there were lots of squirrels... As I was driving up to the campsite, I had just finished those chapters of the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (a must-read for all travelers) and had covered those chapters about the intelligent mice. And I couldn't help wondering if these squirrels were just putting on a dumb facade for our benefit and they had a really ulterior motive after all. Clearly this squirrel was plotting something.
Now that I was a professional in campsite cooking it was time to go for the big ones. Ready to eat veggie rice with a side of potato chips, with a round of hot instant tea (too lazy to make real tea). I walked down the beach to scope out the scene for possible sunrise photos the following day and the place seemed ripe with possibilities.
I slept well tonight. The mattress was well inflated. Two fans helped. And the flip flops did not flop.
And the daily video summary for the day is here. I am wondering if I will do this every day.
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