Kiptopeke–Week 4

I can’t believe our first month is over all ready!  Our time here is passing quickly, and now that school is out in Virginia, the pace is definitely picking up!  The campground doesn’t get as empty during the week now, and we’re pretty much fully booked every weekend. 

So far, we’ve been pretty impressed with our campers – we rarely find trash left behind on the sites or in the firepits, and everybody has been really good about checking out on time at 1pm.

That makes our job really easy! So easy, in fact, that Tom has been helping out in maintenance on the days that I work, in order to keep busy.

We also had a project here at home to take care of this week.  We’ve been having trouble with the 50 amp breaker in our pedestal tripping, even without excessive load on it.  I only ever run two A/Cs at one time, stagger the use of the washer and dryer, and always keep an eye on the number of amps being drawn on each leg.  Tom also noticed that both the breaker, and the plug on our cord have been extremely hot lately.

We had actually picked up a replacement 50 am plug end for our cord back in the fall, in anticipation of having to change it, but just haven’t needed to do it until now. 

We looked at the plug again, and it definitely looked ready to be replaced!  Its time had come!

We watched a couple of You Tube videos on changing the plug, and they made it look very simple – a 5-10 minute job!  We weren’t quite that quick, but we were done in less than an hour with no issues!

After cutting off the old plug, we cut the 4 wires to the defined lengths and stripped off 3/4” of insulation form each one.  Then we removed the cap from the new plug and attached each of the prongs to the appropriate wire.

We got them installed into the cap – this was probably the trickiest part and took the most time – and installed the cover.

All done!!

Then the moment of truth – we plugged it in . . . and it worked!

We monitored it for a day, and the cord and plug no longer got hot . . . but the breaker still was, and our progressive EMS shut us down the next morning.  So Tom talked to the maintenance ranger, and he gave Tom a new 50 amp breaker to install in our pedestal.

I didn’t get any pictures during that process because I was too afraid he was going to touch something he shouldn’t and end up  propelling himself across the site!  He didn’t though, and now everything seems to be working great!

  

We had a few cooler days last weekend, and that was a welcome relief!  We were able to do a little bike riding and have a couple campfires in the evening.  The stormy skies made for some interesting photos, too.

Even a rainbow!

One night after the storms had passed, we had an unusually high “high tide” – the dock along the boat launch channel was completely under water!

We didn’t do a lot of sightseeing this week . . . just hanging out at the campground, taking to fellow campers.  We had a couple of really nice neighbors recently – one couple were fairly recent fulltimers, originally from Marietta, Georgia.  We spent quite a bit of time visiting with them and comparing notes on places to go, and things to see.  When they left, a family from the Shenandoah Valley moved in with their motorhome and fishing boat.  They were very nice, and did lots of fishing!  They very graciously shared some of their catch with us, as well as some tomatoes from their garden and some homemade sausage!  I took advantage of the cooler temps and did some baking – banana bread and blueberry muffins – which we shared with them in return.

You meet the nicest people in campgrounds!

Rather than crossing the bridge-tunnel to do our shopping this week, we decided to take a drive up to the Walmart in Onley, about 30 miles north of us.  On the way there, I spotted a little quilt shop and just had to stop!!

Luckily, there was a TruValue Hardware Store next door, so Tom had somewhere to go while I looked around.  It was a nice little shop – I didn’t buy any fabric, but I did find some pearl cotton and embroidery floss in colors I needed for my wool applique projects I’m working on, so that was a good find.

The wonderful temperatures didn’t last too long, though . . . soon we were back in the 90s with heat index over 100 degrees!  Whew – hot and humid!

The interpretive ranger at the park does several programs for kids in the park – one of them is a fishing and crabbing program.  We went down to watch one evening to see if we could pick up and tidbits of information!

People have been saying that the crabs are really late this year, and nobody has been catching any . . . but this little guy caught two in his crab basket on the first try! 

He was very excited, and even held the crab to throw it back in the water once Ranger Stan picked it up for him.

These two guys showed up with two nice-sized Cobia . . . Tom was drooling over them, but they didn’t share!

With the warmer temperatures, we were back to beautiful sunsets!  I never get tired of them, and love watching the progression of the sun over the horizon!

First view – over the concrete ships

2nd view – at the beach

Getting closer to the water

And the day is done . . .