Sorry if you thought this was going to be an existential essay on the meaning of life, why mankind is put on this planet and our place in this universe, but I'm only writing today about why we're here at the Open Pond campground, and why we've stayed here for so long this winter.
First of all, we love it here. No secret there. If nothing else were happening in the world right now we would probably still have come back to Open Pond this winter. This is our fourth year here and definitely our longest stay yet. After a full summer of travel and a lot of boondocking in the northwest, it was really nice to settle here for a spell, plug in, and relax for as long as we want. In addition to great winter weather, spacious camping spots and quiet, lovely views, Open Pond has two things we love: all the sites are first-come-first-serve, and they waive their fourteen-day limit in winter.
First-come-first-serve means that when you come in and take a camping spot, it's yours. They don't accept reservations, so no one can take it away from you. More and more parks are taking reservations - some are reservation-only now, thanks to COVID - and that means that the weekend warriors can get on-line up to a year ahead of time and reserve their favorite spot(s) for every weekend of the rest of the year. We ran into that problem all summer: camping spots would be fairly easy to find Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, but by Thursday or Friday there were no spots available for the weekend. COVID made things much worse this summer. It seemed like everyone was camping. There was nothing else to do, airlines and cruises were dangerous or completely off-limits, and social distancing was the order of the day. So everyone camped. And to make sure they could camp, they made reservations. More parks are being handled by private companies. Taking reservations makes their job easier, and more lucrative since they usually charge an on-line reservation fee in addition to the camping fee. And a lot of the weekend people prefer to be able to make reservations. I get it. They only have weekends or scheduled vacations to be able to camp, so they want to make sure they get a spot. Reservations accomplish that. But it sure makes it tough on us folks who don't like to roll that way. If we're sure we want to visit a particular park, we don't mind making reservations. We did it when we visited Palo Duro Canyon. It's a popular place and came highly recommended, and we knew we would want to spend several days there and needed to have a spot. There are also some parks that we've stayed at before and want to re-visit, so since we're already familiar with it we can comfortably make a reservation for a specific site we know. But most of the time we are exploring new places; I mean, that's the point of our RVing. We might spot an interesting-looking area or park and head that way, but not having reservations gives us the freedom to drive in and say, "Nope. Doesn't look like a place we want to stay after all." and we drive away. Or only stay a day. Or stay for two weeks. Anyway, you get the idea. We're hoping that there is less camping this summer, and that will help a lot.
So the second thing that Open Pond does is waive their limit during the winter months. Long-term stays at a campground - say, over two weeks - are pretty much only available at private campgrounds. To be honest, we've never stayed at a private campground. We've stayed at State Parks, Corps of Engineer Parks, County Parks, City Parks, National Forest Campgrounds (Open Pond is one of these), Federal land, Bureau of Land Management camping areas, Harvest Host parcipitants (a membership of wineries, farms, museums etc who allow an RV to stay overnight on their property), boondocked in National Forest areas where it is allowed, and done overnighters at Walmart, Cracker Barrel, and Cabelas. All of these places have a limited time you can stay, from one night (Harvest Hosts and Walmarts, etc) to sixteen nights (most parks' limit is fourteen to sixteen nights). Open Pond is the only place we've seen that waives that limit at a certain time of year. I wish we could find others if they exist! Here at Open Pond beginning October 1st through the end of February, we can stay as long as we like. I've done the math: if you stretch that to include the fourteen days before October 1st and fourteen days after February 28th, we could potentially stay a total of 179 days (180 on a leap year). We're not apt to stay that long of course, but it's sure nice to know that it's an option. Edit: October through February was according to the sign at the entrance, but host Tim says it is actually October through March. That's 210 days!
So anyway, those are all the reasons we love this park. This year we came a little earlier than we might have otherwise for a couple more reasons. As mentioned, COVID is still going strong. There are now vaccines, but very few people have been vaccinated so far and the consequence of having them is that is has made people even more complacent than they already were. Several different, more fast-spreading strains of COVID have developed also, making it even more dangerous. Rving has actually been a really good way to self-isolate, so we haven't had to alter our way of life much at all, but you never know when parks will close like they did last spring. Here in southern Alabama we have friends and places we could go that are relatively close by in an emergency. Plus we know the area now a little bit which helps in getting supplies we need and just our overall comfort level.
But the main reason we're here so early and so long is the mess our country is in right now. We went to Texas mid-October to vote early, then came straight here. We thought then that if there was to be any kind of rumblings of civil unrest, it would be on election day. Of course, election day turned out to be just the beginning. So we decided to stay until January 6th when the election results would be certified and we thought all would be settled, but instead rioters stormed the Capital building threatening to lynch the vice president. So now we're staying until at least January 20th. I'm afraid to imagine what may happen on Inauguration Day, but we can only wait and see. As I write this, our president is flying towards the Alamo, no doubt thinking he can inspire more uprising than he's already accomplished with his self-serving lies. I was astonished five years ago and continue to be astonished now at how many people in this country think..... well, a subject for another blog maybe.
Anyway, those are most of the reasons we've been at Open Pond so long. The final reason is weather, which of course has played a part too. We wouldn't be moving north just yet anyway - a snowstorm hit parts of northern Alabama yesterday! So we'll watch the news, and the weather, and when we feel we can move along, we'll head out.