Our visit in April was our RV maiden voyage and was notable because it was the official start of our new life. On Friday March 31st Suzanne retired from the University of Rochester, on Saturday she turned 60, on Sunday we left Rochester, and on Tuesday we closed on our house of 26 years. Suzanne thinks that “perhaps we shouldn’t have made 4 major life changes in less than a week”. I had the benefit of turning 60 and retiring from Harris two weeks prior. On that Saturday night, we celebrated our imminent departure and Suzanne’s birthday at the Johnson House in Churchville with Susie and Dean before retiring to our rig at Wilkins RV down the street.
After an overnighter in Frederickburg, VA we arrived at Ocean Lakes RV Resort in Surfside Beach, SC for a couple of weeks. This wasn’t meant to be an “adventure”, it was intended to be an RV shake-out and a family vacation. All three of our kids and their families plus Jack Hereford rented a beach house about 5 miles away in Garden City. We spent a fair bit of time with them at the beach house and hosted 3 “sleep-overs with the Grands” for the kids in our RV.
Our RV park was enormous with more than 800 transient campsites and 3x that number of seasonal sites. The amenities are staggering with everything you could imagine including a complete water park. Given that we were there over the Easter week, the place was full and we were packed in like sardines. It’s not exactly our cup of tea, but it worked well when the young kids were there. The weather was great for the two weeks with one exception and it retrospect it was kind of funny. A big storm came up the coast that was advertised as “could be tornados”. Most of the people in the park were sitting outside watching the horizon as it got darker and darker. When the status changed from “tornado watch” to “tornado warming” nearly every cell phone in the park when off with something like an amber alert. The message advised everyone to get to a tornado shelter. The notion of cramming into the bathroom – the only stone structures within a mile – with 200 or 300 of my closest friends was almost laughable. … But on the other hand, you know how tornados are attracted to mobile homes …. Anyway, the storm passed without incident but it was a wake up call about weather that we don’t get in upstate NY.
We did have our shake-out: dragged a stop sign down the side of our RV while maneuvering in the park, conquered a stinkbug infestation, fixed or lived through a handful of mechanical failures, and generally figured out how to live and travel in a class A RV.
We returned to the same park in November and it was an entirely different demographic. The park couldn’t have been more than 20% full. There was plenty of elbow room – no one next to us and 100 yards from the beach. As with most places after Labor day, there weren’t many people under 50 and only very young children. The weather was fantastic and the beach almost empty. We stayed for a few days and enjoyed a “vacation from our vacation” before moving down the road to Charleston.
