Tall Pines
We got a very late start on Thursday night, leaving the house around 11pm. We had so many different things to do to get ready for this trip, especially since we were bringing a trailer along for the ride. You may have seen the Trip to Atlanta but I did not put in the trip to PA for Sasha’s motor bike.
He got one too, it is white with blue. Anyhoo, Once that occurred, Sasha decided we needed to get a trailer for all the stuff we would need to carry, so he has been researching trailers almost as long as he has been researching campers!
We are at Traveled Lane Trailers, where we stayed the night, coming in at around 1 am.
We made very good time considering we were going ~ 60 miles per hour, way below what people on the beltway were doing. TLT is in Centreville, MD, a nice small town but it is getting repaved so it was quite bouncy.
It took us almost an hour to set up as Sasha wanted the trailer and the camper to be Jack-knifed so that we could get the stairs out and get in. I said we should just park across the way and Sasha said, no that is a house over there. See picture here. No House.
But it is hard to see in the dark at 2 am. We finally fell asleep ~2:30 with cars passing us at least 60 mph on Rt. 213. We woke with the cars and trucks going past us for morning rush hour. (Right it is Friday morning, most people are going to work. Is this what retired people feel like? Or has it just been a while since I was on vacation?) This is what our camp area looked like: 
Sasha is meeting with the people at TLT looking at the trailers. Then we are going to find a grocery store and get a few things that I missed when I wrote out the spreadsheet for items to pack. It is probably a good idea that the person who cooks should write out the list of food supplies, as I forgot a basic, Olive oil for cooking. But I don’t cook so I did not even put it on the list. What I did was make a spreadsheet (in Excel) of all the things we would need to bring each trip. I will post it later so that others can use it. But I think most would have their own list, however, this is a good guide on what we will be bringing each time.
One of the reasons it took so long to get started yesterday was that we had winterized the camper in the fall and we now had pink stuff in the lines, so Sasha had to de-pinkify. Get that stuff out. Also too, it took Sasha 1.5 hours just to get the trailer from U-Haul, I guess they have to run all sorts of test to make sure that we will bring it back. Sasha said that there was only one person there and he was answering the phones rather that wait on him. I think that is bad, a customer in the store is usually better than one on the phone. In-store person is going to buy right then and there, person on phone can only reserve.
So it did not take very long to get the stuff on the list together, and then we packe
d it into the camper and trailer. We are definitely bringing more stuff than before, just because we can. There is the motor bike of Sasha’s and our two bicycles, plus lots of wood and extra stuff. I do not know the half of what is in there. We are back on the road to the campground, having gone to a FoodLion and picked up the olive oil, sea salt and other necessities. It is windy but warmish already 68 degrees. Wow, time to get into shorts.
We are in boat county out here and there seems to be lots of people on the road going the same way we are, probably going to work, but it is 10:30 already, 
so I don’t know. It is beautiful out here. So green, and open, with lots of trees.
We are going over a bridge for Choptank River to get into Salisbury. Took a picture of the Hyatt on the river in Salisbury, looks huge! Also took a picture of the Chamber of Commerce building. I went to Salisbury a few times when I worked for Long & Foster, doing some training classes at their offices.
Going through the town now, it is built up more than when I was there but at the same time, there are a bunch of empty buildings too. But there is a Wal-mart and a McDonalds, two icons that this is a large town. Small towns have a McDonalds and a stop light. At least that is what I think. Dairy Queens do not count.
Still have 3 to 4 bars even though we are out of Salisbury. We just went over the Nanticoke River - it is really swampy, good for water fowl. (Sasha said it not me.)
We arrived into Tall Pines around 12 noon on Friday and saw a few truck campers on the way in. There were quite a few people 
already here. We got our spot, #70, a 100 foot pull through area that was near other truck campers but not as close to them. See map. And then we set up. We saw Ron when we came in, and got the itinerary of what the weekends activities were going to be. We took a snooze as we had got up early this morning.
We had an early dinner (for us! at around 7pm) and then went over to the karaoke. They had already started the singing and I was antsy to get there.
We sang one song - from Grease, Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta duet and I think we were a hit. That song is one that we always sing together and really like. I usually see Grease at least once a year; it is one of my favorite movies.
Before we went over to the music, Sasha and I were checking out my camera and playing with the features. I was able to make a video of Sasha talking about the weather. It looked really good, so I decided to try it that evening. I can not put video on this website, but I will have them somewhere else soon. Actually I believe I can get video on this blogging website, the videos have to go through a review process, but I believe they will be on here soon! Ladies Line Dancing and Kids Dancing.
Here are some of the pictures that I took on Friday Evening:
Dick and Mary Jane:
Harper Valley PTA:
Ralph & Sherry:
Redneck Girls:
So we got people singing and dancing that evening. I will put pictures up soon. While we were at the campground, I tried to go online and found that I could not! And my cell phone did not work very well either! What’s up with that? My phone has always worked well in lots of areas, so this was quite a surprise. So Outer Maryland is a bit of a surprise.
Saturday looked a little dark and cold, but we had breakfast and got out and about as soon as we could. I wanted to go around to all of the truck campers to take pictures and get to know everyone. I figured if I could get a face to a name, I would remember it better. So off we went.
| Peoples Names | Picture |
| Skip and Marlee |  |
| Bob & Jan |  |
| Ron and Sully |  |
| Cotton With Mini |  |
| Driving & Meeting |  |
| Bud & Colleen |  |
| Dwayne and Kids |  |
| Sharon, Where's Dale? |  |
| Jimmy's Lance |  |
| Matt & Kathy |  |
| Emily & Bobby |  |
| Natalie & Mike |  |
| Steve Where's Wanda? |  |
| Cool camper - who owns it? |  |
| Ralph & Sherry Northern Light |  |
| Paul & Can with Stable Lift |  |
| Teresa & Dean |  |
| John & Harriet with their Lance |  |
| Lee and Elie |  |
| Gary & Debbie with the Lance |  |
| Richard (Where is Lavssa?) with the Elkhorn |  |
| Dick & Mary Jane with their Lance |  |
| Skip & Linda |  |
| Lee's Lance |  |
| Heather Emma Nancy & Jana Lance |  |
It took a little longer than we thought to do this as there were a lot of truck campers and we would chat with everyone. We got through the poolside people and some of the other areas and decided to have lunch. Thankfully we did not have to make lunch; we got hot dogs, chips and sodas for $2 for each person, which was cool. Unfortunately, as we were eating, the heavens opened up and we got poured on. We could see the clouds coming but we wanted to chance it. So we did. We went back to the camper before we got soaked.
After a while, I decided that it had stopped raining and we went back out and saw more people with their campers. We ended up with those on the bay front where Nancy and her kids had lost their car keys, supposedly in the sand. So everyone was looking around for the keys. In the end, the keys were in a sweater pocket. I guess the best thing to do is have at least 2 sets and one set should be kept somewhere outside of the camper.
That story brings up another one…Jan and Bob from Canada had lost their keys too, but they knew where the keys were: inside the locked camper. As in they could not get into the camper. What I don’t understand is, how could you lock the camper door without the keys? I have locked my keys in a car (while the car was running, that was a bit scary, but yea for AAA!) but in a camper, you have to have the key to lock it. Anyway, they found a child that was still up, and got the pass-through window open so that the child could get through. The adults told the child how to open the door and Bob and Jan where able to get in. Anyway, that camper is a Bigfoot, so maybe Bigfoot could explain how you could slam the door and lock it. That happened Friday night and Nancy’s keys happened on Saturday, so thankfully no key incidents happened on Sunday.
We all had to get the best rig before and after 1998 to Ron by 4 pm, so we voted and went back to the camper for a snooze and to curse at the weather (it started raining pretty hard after that.)
We had taken the steaks out to have for dinner kind of late (3 pm and they were still rock hard at 6pm) so Sasha got out the Jiffy pop and made popcorn see pictures. Then he made us hot ham and cheese sandwiches. We realized then that we did not have a frying pan, so Sasha improvised. He is good at that.
So after that, I uploaded the pictures from my camera to the 
computer and made a little slide show to show everyone that evening. We were again running late so got there around 8pm. The awards had already happened and the karaoke guy was back, and people were singing. We stayed until the end this time, and showed everyone the pictures. 
Us singing Kiss - Rock and Roll All Night!
We sang two songs this evening as people were asking us to sing. We sang Kiss: Rock and Roll all Night and party every day
and an INXS song: Suicide Blonde. The Kiss song was good, the INXS song, I don’t think many people know INXS even though they were on TV looking for a new singer last summer. Laura and Sasha after the sing
We met more people that evening (it was standing room only) and I got a few more pictures. By the time we left that evening, it had stopped raining. 
We got a fire started and had toasted marshmallows (finally!) Sasha is the cook in the family but I make the best toasted marshmallows. Even thought the wood was wet, Sasha was able to start the fire with a little extra help from gasoline (kids, don’t try this at home and Mom don’t be scared, he only singe his knuckles.) We had run out of diesel.
We stayed up until around midnight and then I went to bed. Sasha stayed up longer watching the fire. He has stated before, we have a gas fireplace at home, so when we are camping, he wants a real fire.
We awoke on Sunday without the rain, but no sun. It had rained during the night but at least it seemed as though it would dry out. We had breakfast at the campground dining hall, the Tall Pines people made it. Breakfast was quite nice, eggs and bacon and pancakes. We sat with Skip and Linda and their granddaughter and friend. Skip and Linda have so many tales; they have traveled the world in a sailboat and now with the camper. By the time we had finished breakfast, a lot of people had already cleared out of the campground and it was not even 11 am. I think quite a few of these guys are early risers, not like Sasha and I, would get up late and stay up even later.
Sasha and I took a while getting out of there: Sasha washed down the camper, organized the trailer and other things while I write for this and for my newsletter that I do for work. I went down to the bay and saw the ducks and gave them some food. They are so funny, waddling as fast as they can to get the food, and then pick it up so fast I would think they would get sick. And then they quack at me to get them some more.
I saw Dick and Mary Jane over by the beach and we talked a bit too. While we were talking the sun came up and it started to get warm. It made sense to get out of the shade and get into the sun, so I went back over to where Sasha was working on the truck. He did the dump while I resized all of the pictures for the web. (The pictures are taken at a size 2048x1500 pixels and I get them down to 300x200 so that they can go in the website without too much trouble.) Once Sasha had done the dump, then we lined up the truck to hitch it to the trailer. After that, Sasha cleaned up and we headed out on the road.
I was having some problems with my cell phone, so I waited to make call backs till later, when we had bars on the cell and the internet. I am still having problems with the internet, as it keeps coming in and out. Skip told me about Verizon mobile office and I am going to research it this week and next. If it really does all that I hope, I will get rid of the T-Mobile card and go with Verizon. I just hope I don’t have to switch my new phone.
These are all the photos that we have of the trip. If you click on them, they will show up as the full resolution.
Signing off until the next trip
Laura-N-Sasha.com
posted by Laura-n-Sasha at 9:21 PM
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