CAMPGROUND REVIEW- Ada Lake in the Chequamegon Nicolet National Forest near Wabeno WI

Midweek camping in the National Forest is a wonderful way to get away from it all. We love the peace and quiet of the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. Many of their campgrounds in our area are about 60 to 80 miles away from our home. The National Forest accepts the Federal Senior Access Pass, which allows for half price camping. The rustic camping at this campground is $15 a night, after our pass that brings it down to $7.50.

We headed to Ada Lake which is a National Forest Campground about 6 miles west of Wabeno WI. 

There are 19 sites that are available and the host site which has electrical hookups. The rest of them are all rustic with no hookups. Sometimes that's the way to go--- to get away from any noise and music and singing out loud neighbors! See my previous post for more on that!!! Lol

We tossed in our gear and headed out on Wednesday morning. It was a beautiful ride up and we stopped first in the little town of Suring for a breakfast at Laverne & Gail's Diner.

We pulled into the campground about 1:00 p.m. there were only three other campsites that were occupied out of the 19 sites. They are spread far apart with a lot of natural undergrowth and tall trees separating the sites. There is also a very nice swimming area marked off with a sandy beach for visitors. 

Here is the website:

https://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/cnnf/recarea/?recid=27923

Everything is just starting to green up at this time in May in this area of Wisconsin. 

Here is a campground map, about six of the sites are waterfront and very beautiful. We were lucky to nab number 8. Number 10 on the other side of us was still open all the while we were there.

There is usually potable water available at a faucet spigot right at the entrance of the campground near the pay post. For some reason it said not available yet, even though the campground opened up on May 5th. They may be doing well water testing yet or perhaps there's a problem with the pump. The campground host site does have electricity and has access to the water at the spigot from the pump house. The rest of the sites are rustic with no hookups. There is a well-type pitcher pump located part way through the park and two sets of clean out houses. There is no dump station.

Cellular service is very thin. We had one bar that would fade in and out. But using our Weeboost antenna booster in our rig we were able to pull in two and three bars if needed. Television stations were available from Rhinelander during the day and then at night from multiple areas including Green Bay. Those other stations faded out during the day.

The nearest town is Wabeno which does have a small convenience type gas station store and a few little bars and an ice cream stand.  There's also a casino nearby and a few other restaurants and supper clubs within 20 miles. We don't go for those type of touristy amenities, we just go to get out in the woods. 

This National Forest campground is first come first serve. Once you occupy a site and put your money in the post it's yours until you are ready to leave. You can stay up to 14 days. You can pay day by day if you wish or pay for the full two weeks if you wish. We paid for 2 days and got ourselves set up. 

This is the lakeshore right at our campsite. Absolutely beautiful and serene and quiet. There are cabins on the other side of the lake. The lake is an "electric motor only" lake, no gas motors. One person did have a canoe that went out one day, but that's about all we saw during our stay. 

The shoreline is rugged and full of tree roots. It's kind of fun to walk along and look at all of the different shapes as the erosion has removed a lot of the dirt around these roots. Very interesting... 

While we were walking around, we came across this huge mushroom. At first I thought it was a coiled up snake on the log! I've never seen a mushroom like this. Steve put his hand out next to it just to show the size of it. No, he did not touch it. And of course, we did not pick it nor did we eat it! We later found out it's called a pheasant back mushroom?

We could hear loons calling across the lake over near the boat landing somewhere. We think they are nesting somewhere cuz at one point they were squawking furiously. That usually happens if somebody comes near their nest. It's best to stay away and leave them in peace.

Walking over from the campground towards the boat landing there is a marshy area and a cute little stream rippling down through the woods. Steve could hear the water running before we even got to it. It was kind of like a little mini waterfall. A nice footbridge is built across it so we could complete our walk to the boat landing. 

Over at the boat landing there were a few turtles that had been up on this log. As we approached, they quickly slipped into the water. We observed a few fish jumping, but because we haven't renewed our licenses yet for this year, we did not drop a line in. 

The mosquitoes were getting a little pesty as well as the sand gnats. We set out a couple ThermaCELL  units and it did a great job. If you don't know what ThermaCELL s are, here is a link to their company:

https://www.thermacell.com/

Wednesday night, we went to bed after spending a couple hours over at the next door neighbors. All three other campers were together as a group and they shared one campfire. They invited us to come over and spend some time with them. They were delightful people and we had a lot of fun visiting with them. We knew some people in common and they don't live too far away from us. I'm sure we will see them again somewhere down the line

It got a tad bit chilly on Wednesday night. When we woke up on Thursday the temperature was at 34°. We were toasty warm inside with our Mr Buddy heater. We didn't really want to run the big propane furnace because it does wear down the batteries quickly. Currently, our motorhome only has two 12 volt Interstate batteries and they do not have a large capacity nor a high number of amp hours. Just watching TV and LED lights on and things like the water pump took them down to about 60% overnight.

This is the perfect reason to have solar panels. On our last RV we had 500 watts of solar panels mounted right up on the roof. There are quite a few drawbacks to having them on the roof, so this time we opted to just get some portable sets. I wrote about them in my last blog along with our reasons pros and cons. We decided to take along 100 watts worth of the panels. We have an additional set of 100 Watts sitting at home in the garage. Steve set them up and got them hooked up to charge the batteries. 

Once the sun moved around, they were in the shade. These are amorphous panels and will still charge in daylight or cloudy weather but not as fast. So then he moved them again to another sunny spot further back in the gravel drive. We like the option of being able to park in the shade in the hot summer months and just have the panels out in the sunny areas for charging. 

While he was playing around with that, I set up my sewing machine. I love bringing along this little antique Singer Featherweight. It travels in a small case tucked away in the closet. It's so handy and I love to sit outside and do my quilting. But this time I wasn't doing quilts. Instead I was doing something for our new solar panels!

I had taken some old flannel sheets and pillow cases along. I was making soft flannel fabric sleeves to put around each solar panel. That way when they are put away in storage, they will not get scratched if they rub up against each other. 

Here is the first one, made to size. They are 15 in wide and 39 in long. The neighbors came by and first thought it was silly that I was sewing. But then when I explained what I was doing they thought it was a good idea. I have a small inverter that can run my sewing machine rather than using the large inverter for the whole motorhome. Either way I can sew.... or I can kick on the generator to produce electricity as well. 

I also made 4 small drawstring bags that the attached cords could be bundled up and stuffed inside to prevent scratching on the solar panel. With the little drawstrings at top they would not be dangling around or getting stuffed in the sleeve with the rest of the solar panel. 

Now here is a red buffalo checked one finished. I just draped them across the panel to show what I was making. They can be folded up and stowed away while the panels are set up gathering the sun's rays and generating electricity. Then when it's time to stow them in our compartment, each panel back kickstand folds flat and slides into the flannel sleeve. 

Here is a photo when it came time to put them away. There are four separate sleeves, two red and two blue. And then four little drawstring bags all red. I don't care that the fabric doesn't match. I just want the panels to be protected and not getting beaten up during travel. 

Thursday afternoon the sky has clouded over. Some of it was a result from the heavy wildfires up in Canada. 

Around supper time, we were grilling out a slab of salmon to go with our salads and mashed potatoes. We flipped on the TV and got a weather warning. Due straight west of the campground was a line of storms moving rapidly across Wisconsin. They were predicting thunder and lightning, and gusty winds as well as HAIL!

We were thinking this really doesn't sound too good. This area of the state always seems to get hit with tornadoes. Seems like they just recover from one and another comes through in a year or two and demolishes stuff again. The whole area through from Antigo to Lakewood to Mountain to Townsend etc always seems to get hit. 

It takes us less than 15 minutes to get packed up. We decided for the 1 hour to get home we could be 2 hours ahead of the storm front as we traveled East. So we did just that. As we tossed our trash into the bins near the entrance of the park, we made one more loop around to tell the neighboring folks about the upcoming storms. They were just getting ready to start their supper and said they will hunker down for a while and see how it looks on their cell phones. Only one of them was getting a signal and even then it was pretty faint. So we gave them the most updated weather report and left them to make their own choice.

We were the Blue Dot

We headed on home and had enough time to get in the driveway and get our gear unloaded. We unloaded the refrigerator and turned things off. The storms rolled through our area about 2 hours later. Yes, there were gusty winds and tons of thunder and lightning. As the storm front rolled through fortunately we didn't get any hail here. But north of us they did. So I'm glad we made the decision to come home. Being in an area of heavy tree branches of fully mature old trees could cause problems. Best to avoid it and give up one night $7.50 worth of camping fee. It was going to rain all day Friday anyhow so it didn't matter if we came home Thursday night or Friday morning. Better safe than sorry. 

Adding Portable Solar Panels to Our Camping Gear

In my last blog, I left you hanging with another purchase we made from Facebook Marketplace. Yes, Steve found another deal! 

We have been debating on the solar installation on our new-to-us Winnebago View. 

On our last motorhome we installed 500 watts of panels on the roof, a Blue Sky MPPT controller, a Trimetric gauge and had a bank of 4 deep cycle six volt batteries.  So we are VERY aware of what a good solar setup needs to be...   

The biggest drawbacks of putting them on the roof:

• You have to park IN the sunshine, and can't find nice campsites in the shade in the summer.  
• The panels are exposed to the elements, including hail.  
• They need to be washed regularly which means getting on a ladder to get up on the roof.  Maybe we are getting too old for that stuff.  
• Not to mention the risk of drilling holes in the roof for the brackets or using that special 3M tape.  
• Then there is the challenge of where to route the cables down through the roof into the interior of the rig out of sight, then guiding them down into the battery bay.  

Lots of installation decisions there. We had done it before, and we are thinking we don't want to do that again. 

So please don't judge us harshly on this new option we chose. 

This time we opted for portable solar panels instead of mounting permanent ones on the roof. That way we can park in shady campsites and just set them up when we need them.  We can stretch out the long cord with the solar panels set on the stands in the sunny portions of the campsite. My sister does this and it works very well for her. 

We checked out some of the "suit case" models which are more pricey, and also are aware of the limitations on the additional controllers that need to be bought to use with them. 

So here are our reasons to go with a portable setup:

• We felt at this time we weren't about to invest a LOT of money into a new solar setup.  
• We are almost totally 12 volt and have all LED lighting in the new rig. Even the two tv's are 12 volt.  
• We have a nice 1,000 watt inverter in the rig if I want to curl my hair or run something 120v AC.
• I have a small portable 400 watt inverter if I want to use my (non-computerized) sewing machine. 
• We really don't think we need a lot of battery recharging other than a few hundred watts of panels.  (we do have a propane Onan 3600 Watt generator built in if we need it)  
• The seller just put in 2 brand new 12 volt batteries, so we aren't planning on upgrading them anytime soon into a bank of 6 volt ones. We do know that 6 volt batteries hold a charge longer, but why turn in 2 brand new 12 volt batteries for a $30 core charge each, when buying some other new 6 volt batteries? 

SOOOOO those are the reasons we opted to get a small portable solar setup for the near future.  We can always sell it if we upgrade to something different later.

Steve spied a set of two 100 watt kits on Facebook Marketplace the other day.... brand new. They retail on Amazon for $220.22 or at Harbor Freight for $189.99 each.  This guy was selling them for only $100 each.  They were near his brother Pete's house, so we called Pete and asked him to snap them up for us. We picked them up from Pete on our way back after camping at Kettle Moraine on Friday. 

The price was right at approximately half of what it would have cost us to buy them new. The seller had picked them up for another reason and said that they weren't going to work for what he had intended, so he never even bothered to open them. He said his loss, our gain!

With two sets totaling 200 watts, it should be enough to top off our batteries each day. 

We decided to set up one set, and get them going to test them out.  These are the exact same ones my sister has that charges up their camper battery, their boat battery, and their cell phones via USB ports when they are camping.  Each panel has it's own little stand, and all 4 hook together onto one cable that leads back to the controller.  I am going to pick up some little tent stakes to secure them down in breezy conditions. 

These are amorphous panels, that they can create a charge even in cloudy or shaded conditions, unlike the monocrystalline type panels that need full exposure with no shaded areas to get a full charge. 

The cables are long enough to extend out quite a ways from the RV.  This is nice because we can park in the shade and move the panels around to the sunny spots on the campsite. 

The kits come complete with the attached foldable stands, the cords, the solar controller, even some additional LED lights that can be hung up within the campsite. Those are kinda cute! 

We programmed the controller to use lead acid batteries, and set the parameters of normal load, boost and float.  We decided to store it in a plastic container and will cut little access slits for the cords. This will keep it clean and dry when out on the ground. 

Our motorhome came equipped with some external charging lugs that were mounted in place by the previous owner. So it will be quite easy to just clamp onto the lugs and charge up the batteries without even having to access the batteries underneath the stairs.

We set them up and they started charging right away.... this is going to be a test for taking only one set with us this week when we go up in the woods.  I am going to sew some soft flannel sleeves to store them in, so they don't get scratched.  They store easily on their sides, lengthwise in the passenger side compartment so they don't take up too much space. 

I ordered a nifty QuickLynks bluetooth battery monitor gauge that we can access via our smart phones.

https://a.co/d/1b1oHF2

 This will be a lot easier than using the OnePlace digital readout up over the fridge. 

~~~~~~~~~~

When we got home Friday from camping,

we had a surprise...  

New Neighbors moved in to the top of our wreath

on our front porch! 

Mommy and Daddy Wren will soon have four little ones to take care of.  So we will stay away from this part of the porch and leave them to raise their family in peace.  This may be the same couple who was here last year? 

I had a wonderful Mothers Day with many well-wishes from family and friends.  Our youngest daughter Heather and husband Jesse, along with grandkids Jameson and Whitney came to visit.  They brought a lovely card, a pack of Red Vines licorice, and this beautiful necklace!  

It is "missing" two pieces of my heart.......  

Why are they "missing"??

Because both of the center sections are hanging from necklaces from Heather and other daughter Erin's necks!!! Awwwwww They have the pieces of my heart! 

What a thoughtful and touching gift,

so full of family love between mother and daughters. 

The other family came over later, and brought in some gifts too. This is older daughter Erin, husband Waylen and three kids, Chelsea Clayton and Claire. They presented me with a fun camping tee shirt, and some of my favorite treats. They also gave me a dice game called Left Center Right and will teach me to play it when we go camping together. 

Then 13 year old Chelsea gave us a hand made cribbage board for our camper!  She made it in 7th grade shop class and learned how to use a drill press and woodburning software on a machine to do the lettering.

It was a gorgeous morning in Wisconsin, and the weather is finally feeling like spring.  We brought up my coleus plants that I wintered over in the basement, and also some ivy that I sprouted and repotted.  Soon they can be planted outdoors... .but we had FROST this morning, so these still have to be brought into the garage at night for another week or so. 

Tonight was sketti and meatballs and garlic bread for supper. yummmmm  now we are going to take a walk and wheel those plants back into the garage. 

Stay tuned for our next camping adventure, we will try out the solar panels and monitor our battery consumption. 

CAMPGROUND REVIEW - Mauthe Lake Kettle Moraine Northern Unit, Wisconsin

We loaded up the motorhome and headed on out for a few quiet days during the middle of the week. We pointed our nose down towards the southeast part of Wisconsin. 

There are beautiful twisty two-lane roads going down throughout the Kettle Moraine into the northern end of the Kettle Moraine State Forest. We decided on spending a few days at Mauthe Lake. 

For those who don't know, kettles and moraines refer to topography left over from the glacier.

When the ice melted, this material was deposited, in some instances, across glacier-formed valleys. Some "kettles" were formed this way. The Kettle Moraine is an area of varied topography — parallel, steep-sided ridges, conical hills and flat outwash plains, mostly composed of sand and gravel.

A moraine is material left behind by a moving glacier. This material is usually soil and rock. Just as rivers carry along all sorts of debris and silt that eventually builds up to form deltas, glaciers transport all sorts of dirt and boulders that build up to form moraines.

We decided to drive down south of Fond du Lac and a bit to the east. This park is located between Fond du Lac and Milwaukee in the southeast part of Wisconsin.  

N1490 County Road GGG

Campbellsport, WI 53010

Here is the website:

https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/parks/kmn/recreation/camping

We drove into the park and the office is not open during the week due to budget cuts. All we needed to do was drive into the park and drive through looking at the sites. Then go online and see if that site is available. Once you determine which site you want is available for the days you want, you click on it and pay online with a credit card. If it is the actual day that you are there to already occupy the site then you do not pay a reservation fee. 

This campground is $28 per night for RV sites with electric included. Be sure to fill with water up at the entrance of the park or at the water fill kiosk near the campground host. There are 135 sites, of which 51 are electric.  I am not sure of the rate of the non-electric sites, but the website would tell you.

Wisconsin State Parks used to use ReserveAmérica to handle all their bookings, less than stellar service for sure. Now instead they use the Going To Camp app or you can reach it through their website to make reservations or to pay for campsites. It's much more user friendly and makes more sense. 

We chose site number 220 which is very close to the lake. It's on a little back loop, just around from the campground host. The only traffic that really drives by on the little road of this loop are the ones actually using these sites. The main traffic is over behind on another road. It makes it a very nice quiet site for anybody camping in this stretch.

This one is a pretty deep site that a larger rig would easily fit on. Many of the other sites are NOT big rig friendly, so be sure you add the size of your RV when searching online. 

Local TV stations fade out during the day, and in the evening they are sporadic even when camped along the lakeshore. Cell phone signal is one or two bars, and seems to drop out on data every now and then. We haven't hooked up our Weboost antenna cell phone booster yet, but I'm sure it would have helped in that situation. 

We nestled our little 25-footer back near the corner closer to the power post. There's also a fire ring and a picnic table. The gravel appears to have been newly spread last fall. Someone had the lack of brains and emptied a charcoal grill in TWO spots before packing up--- dumping it right into the gravel. So there were two big spots of charcoal grill remains that we were careful to avoid and not walk through. Why didn't they just dump it into the fire pit? Thoughtless people leave a mess for everybody else. 

As for the park itself, it is located near the little town of Dundee and little further away Campbellsport or Cascade. We made sure to be fully loaded up with supplies for three or four days so we didn't need to leave our campsite to go and get anything. 

Everything is neatly kept and the outhouses and bathrooms are in top condition. The host stopped by and made sure our campfire ring was totally clean because someone had been on our site the night before. Very friendly nice people and wished us well to enjoy our visit. 

Right across from our site is this beautiful open area to view the lake. There is a nice little bench there to sit on and admire the sunsets which we found out later were spectacular!

The woods are all in bloom with these delicate blue tiny flowers. I'm not sure if they are edelweiss or arbutus?

The shoreline is pretty shallow although it is slightly rocky. Not really made for swimming. But there is a really nice swimming beach over at the entrance to the park. It is perfect to pull up a canoe or a couple kayaks and tie them to the tree if you are camping nearby.

The views were beautiful and there was not a lick of a breeze. The lake was calm like a mirror and we enjoyed sitting along the shoreline for a while when we were taking a walk with the dog. 

At the entrance gate there is a large map depicting all of the trails in the area. The trails meander all the way through the entire State Forest system here and include the group camps to the north and Long Lake as well as some of the other sections of the famous Wisconsin Ice Age Trail. There were a lot of bikers going down this trail and we saw a large amount of them were e-bikes. The newest trend. Incidentally, dogs are allowed on the trail but not over in the picnic or beach area. They do make a dog specific picnic area near the entrance which is really nice for those of us who love our canine companions.

As we walked along, everything was starting to bloom out and the birds were just going crazy with their songs. We were blasted from every direction with beautiful bird calls. It was a great day to just meander along.

We could hear some loons out on the lake in the far corner, and somewhere we could hear sandhill cranes squawking. Overhead geese were busy flying by heading back to the northern regions, and there were a few ducks here and there bobbing along the shoreline.

Back to our campsite... 

Steve plugged into the 30 amp post with our new EMS system. This is more than a surge protector, it is a complete electrical management system from Progressive Industries. It protects from brownouts, surges, crossed wiring polarity and open grounds or neutrals. It won't let the rig even access the power if it's not correctly wired at the post. On our larger motorhome we had the wired in unit. But on this one we really don't have the accessibility in the back compartment to wire one in. So this time we chose to purchase the portable one. They are rather pricey, so we were sure to lock it up around the post with a heavy cable gun lock to the loop of the post. We also have a welded chain packed along for other post configurations. We know it doesn't solve every single theft problem, but we hope it's sufficient enough to deter anyone from thinking they can walk off with it. 

Steve hauled out his beloved Blackstone griddle. Although it's a little heavier than our gas grill, he chose to take the griddle instead. Storage space and weight is to be kept to a minimum, so we have to choose which items we really want to have along. 

Soon supper was ready with delicious hamburgers. I steamed two ears of sweet corn in the husk in the microwave, and set out an assortment of veggies. 

A blog or two back I talked about removing the curtains over our bunk area and over the two windows. It opened it up and lets a lot more light in. Plus we had removed the bunk mattress and suspended it in the garage in a tarp like a sling. We will only bring the bunk mattress along when the grandkids are going to join us. Otherwise we will just use the bunk as additional storage space. One bin is my current quilting project and needed sewing supplies. One is extra blankets for cuddling up in the evening on the loveseat.  And one is for all the odds and ends that get brought in and plopped on the counter?!  I hate that!  So things like my purse, dog leashes, bug spray and other junk can go up in a tote out of the way. 

The sun was out and it was an absolute gorgeous day stretch of two or three days. Steve was unwinding and relaxing in his chair and we were completely enjoying the spring weather. It's been a long time coming to Wisconsin! Can you imagine that just eight days ago we had a bunch of snow??? 

We noticed about five or six very brave Baltimore Orioles around the campsite. They were zooming in and out and checking out our little rotating geegaws off the awning. I had fortunately brought along an orange or two. I cut one in half and we wedged it into the tree branches around the campsite. Within just minutes the Orioles came down and started gobbling away at the oranges! At home I also put out dishes of grape jelly, but I didn't have any along. Who knew we were going to have orioles going nuts around our campsite?

Now I know they say you should not feed wild birds that are out in their natural habitat because it teaches them to rely on people for food instead of their own natural instincts. But these are not birds that hang around in the area --- they are on their migratory path North and won't be around long. So it's not like we're teaching them to stay here all winter waiting for a daily orange handout! LOL

The birds coming and going didn't seem to bother Binney a bit. She curled up in her lawn chair and took a snooze. As a matter of fact, we all did! I think we've really been waiting for this ever since we've gotten the new motor home. To just kick back and relax and enjoy the peace and quiet.

On Wednesday, my friend Vicki who lives nearby, came to visit. Of course she brought her two shelties Stuart and Tara! Binney says that Stuart is her boyfriend. She really doesn't like many other animals or any other dogs at all. But for Stuart she makes an exception.

She and Tara give little sniffs to each other and respectfully say that they are both matriarchs and will share the space.

But Stuart makes her little heart go pitter-pat and he is her boyfriend. So she gratefully accepts his sniffs and we took a little walk together before they had to go home again. Isn't he handsome?

The sun was setting and again it gave us the most beautiful view, this time with a clearer image of the lake. The night before it was a little more clouded. Absolutely gorgeous!

We enjoyed a campfire and s'mores for dessert. We did have to buy some firewood because we didn't haul any along with us. Wisconsin State Park system has a new method this year for purchasing firewood. It is a big enclosed trailer located near the office. You can use either a credit card or a $5 bill and a $1 bill in the pay slot for a $6 bundle of firewood that is automatically dispensed. We purchased two bundles. 

Thursday's weather was getting quite a bit hotter than the two days before. We had picked up a roll of this reflectix insulation that is really like silver layered bubble wrap. It's stiff and rigid and can be rolled back up when not being used. We had originally planned to line the back surfaces of the cabinets with it to help insulate from excess heat intrusion. We also wanted to cut two oval shaped pieces to pop in the upper bunk windows because I had removed the curtains. A while back we had seen somebody had rolled layers of it across their front windshield and just tucked it in the door jamb openings on each side. It made a difference on the amount of heat coming in the front windshield. Although Winnebago has these really cute accordion pleated shades on the inside to block out some of the sunlight or use as nighttime curtains, they really aren't meant for the strong heat of the summer sun. So instead, we will just roll these up when not in use and stick them in the closet.

Our little rig is all set up here on the campsite with the slides out and the awning deployed. Even though it's only 25 ft long, we think we're going to be pretty comfortable traveling around in this one. The tank capacities for freshwater, gray water and black water are a little small, only in the 30 gallon range. But we will learn to adapt. On the last motorhome we had 100 gallons fresh and 50 gallons of each gray and black. 

Oh, the other thing we put out were some solar awning lights. These are two strings of lights clipped to the edge of our awning. The little solar panels that go with them are flipped up on top of the awning poles and set to absorb the sun during the day. They look pretty cute at night!

Our evenings were relaxing and the night times were peaceful. For the first 3 days and 2 nights, we didn't have anybody else camping around us except the host down on the end of the loop.

Again we had the most beautiful sunset going down with streaks across the lake. The peepers were going in the swamp and it was a beautiful spring evening. 

Our only complaint was suddenly another RV pulled into the site right next to us. They immediately turned on the music as they were setting up. Then they turned it up even louder! Even worse, they both took turns singing to the music at the top of their lungs! And believe me, neither of them could sing. At all. 

The songs weren't that bad but the accompanying donkey-like braying was less than desirable. We waited for about four or five songs to see if they would turn it down. So instead of dealing with it ourselves or having a confrontation, it was just easier to walk over and let the host know.

He strolled on over and spoke with them. The music was then turned down to a more reasonable level. But then they would holler back and forth to each other to get over the music. He was outside at the campfire and she was inside the camper hollering out the window back and forth over every little thing they were doing. We gave up and went for a long walk instead. 

When we got back, they were quiet. Maybe the host spoke to them again?

We were treated with the most beautiful sunset ever. 

Incidentally, someone sent me this cute little idea for making s'mores. Presently, we roast the marshmallow and we put it between two Keebler fudge stripe cookies. (Instead of graham crackers and chocolate bars). That works really well and is less messy. It also avoids the problem of someone sneaking away with all the chocolate bars and not having enough for s'mores? 

Anyhow, I think we might try this new one next time with the grandkids. They might be a little messier to eat, who knows? But it will be fun to try them.

While we were sitting at the campsite, Steve spotted another deal on his favorite Facebook Marketplace. This time it was a couple sets of portable 100 watt solar panels, still brand new in the boxes! The guy selling them was only a short distance away from Steve's brother Pete. We checked with Pete and he was able to go over there and snap them up for us. 

On the way home Friday we stopped at his house to pay him and picked them up. So this will be another new project to play around with. More on that in the next blog!