Growing up I always remember Lone Pine campground as the seasonal spot that many locals go to stay for the summer. Even Chris' parents put their trailer there and every weekend went to stay there and then go back home for the week. I realized this was still the case. My brother Lance has the skill of calling me whenever I am checking in at the office. I ignore the call until we are parked and set up before I call him back. Once I am sitting in my chair with a drink in hand I reach out to him. He is just up the road and says he is on his way over with my niece, nephew, his friend and her daughter. Within minutes of him getting there a couple of golf carts are going by and they know my brother. They are locals who are seasonals just making their rounds around. The family spent the evening, we ordered pizza, had a fire, and roast marshmallows for s'mores. The rain gave way just before sunset giving us a wonderful rainbow 🌈backdrop. His oldest daughter even stopped over to say HI. It was a fun evening of laughter and picking on each other but once I was laying in bed I said to Chris, my mind is so stimulated from that many people and the busyness. Over the last month while traveling around Vermont its usually been on the quieter side most nights.

Again Sunday Lance comes over with a few of his friends. This was a bit later in the evening so they didn't end up staying too long but it was nice to see them all. The week was pretty mellow otherwise. Chris worked and I found things to do around the camper to keep busy. Each day I usually work on a rough itinerary of what we'll do while in each state. I wasn't upset to have the week stay quiet as we had Chris's company party #deelerpalooza on Friday night and I was looking forward to partying it up 90's theme. We usually make some great costumes but we didn't want to have all the extra stuff to bring in the camper so we kept it simple. We were able to work some pretty good outfits still with only buying a Snoop dog t-shirt for Chris and some hoop earrings and choker for me. As always it was such a fun night at the Burlington Boathouse with the guest performancers being Rev Run and Saved y the 90's. We are going to miss not being able to attend next years party but I know we will be enjoying ourself in Wisconsin.  

Saturday it was Halloween at the campground. The kids dress up and trick or treat from 1-2 stopping at any site that had an orange pumpkin paper hanging up. I am all for children having fun but we adults need to have fun too so I made a sign that said Trick or Treat 21+ We can have fun too! Aside of it we had a bottle of Butterscotch Schnapps and shot glasses. It had also started to rain so many parents were very excited and took part in enjoying a shot. We were the hit of the event by many! My brother showed up a little after 3 but it was still pouring and miserable so he says, lets go to the bar. Since I had already started day drinking why stop now. We stopped at a few places seeing familiar faces and saying many farewells but by 9pm I knew it was time for this girl to go home. Everyone else kept going but Chris and I came back to the camper and stat by the fire (or for me slept by the fire) in our chairs. 

Sunday was moving day and I was in rare form 🥴. I didn't end up rolling out of bed until 9am and was not the fastest at anything I did. We had a friend who told us they had some friends at the campground which happened to be right across from our site so we ended up chatting with them for a bit. Then it was all in as we only had an hour before checkout.  I was very impressed that at 11:59 we were rolling out with a minute to spare. 

As I have mentioned in previous posts Vermont had major flooding that devastated communities, included peoples home and many businesses. Cleanup will take years to be complete. The campground we are at was one that was effected. They had to cancel all reservations and close. After a lot of long days and hard work they sent us notification that they will be open back up for camper and cabin reservations on the July 25th but all their tent sites are closed and they don't know when/if they will be reopened. We were so happy to see this as we pulled in on July 29th. 

After we got all set up while walking the grounds you could see the damage the powerful waters caused. There was a massive tree that you could tell was uprooted and flowed down and only stoped from another large tree being in its path. After talking to the owner of the park, he said, "that tree was at site 1 and now lyes at site 35". The landscape holds a whole new look with new water walls, rocks and sand hills all showing as the water subsides. 

The Lamoille Valley Rail Trail runs parallel to the campground just across the river. This is a 93 mile long trail that runs through Vermont which is used by runners, walkers, bicycles and some using it as there commuter line. There was a celebration of completion scheduled for July 15th that had to be postponed due to the damage that occurred to part of the trail from the flooding rains on July 10-13. One evening, Chris and I took out our Super 73 and were able to hop on a part of the trail that was opened to ride into Morrisville for dinner. The trail had a lot of loose gravel and uneven dirt that did made it difficult to travel. I know the focus needs to be on repairing homes and business but I do hope the needed attention to fixing the trail can happen as soon as possible. 

Overall, the pas two weeks have been enjoyable. There was a farm stand up the road we took the bikes to check out. They had eclairs that we had to try along with fresh fruit and vegetables, and baked good. We walked out of there with a little of everything. We met 2 couples that are also full timers and spent time with them discussing some of their stories and giving us tips and recommendations for must have or not have while out on the road. We actually discovered that 1 of the couples will be in Maine at the same location and as us so we are going to be sure to link up with them while there. It made me think about how often this may happen? It will be interesting to see....

We also had a few visitors stop over to see us. One was my daughter Abigail. She was out this way so she stopped in for dinner and then her and I took a dip in the hot tub. It was so great to see her since this may be the longest stretch of time her and I have been apart from each other. I am seriously going to miss her hugs. A childhood friend of mine drove to see us with her daughter on Sunday. The campground has a trail you can walk up and then float down the river so they also rents tubes. We rented 4 tubes and because it would have been a short float we decided to fill her truck and drove up the road to have a longer float. Well, I didn't consider that even if you drive 4 miles up it takes about an hour per mile. What I thought would be about 2:30 hours turned into close to 5. That was also with Chris getting out and swimming to pull us along faster. (He is one in a million 😍)

About three years ago Chris won a contest at work and was giving a few gift cards. One was for the Stoweflake Resort. Since we are only 15 minutes away I called and scheduled us massages to do while in the area.  That day he jumped off work a little early and we had a fantastic evening getting deep tissues massages, followed by dinner and drinks at a local restaurant in town, then stopped at a community event in Morrisville that had venders and a band.  Here we met up with some friends that we haven't been able to see in a few months due to life being so busy and living an hour from each other.  They also came to visit us the next evening at our campsite. We had such a great time catching up with them. As I said, not seeing friends and family is going to the hardest struggles to overcome. 

As I sit here at our campsite the day before we finish our 2-week stay in Morristown at Mountainview Campground, I think about how we have been living in the camper for over a month and in 3 weeks we are gone for over a year. We won't see family or friends, we won't be around anything that we know so well, or our kids. We move tomorrow back closer to our hometown and we are going to spend as much time as we can with our loved ones.