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Jo-Anna and I want to extend our thanks to two wonderful MOCers, Toni and Dick Whitfield, for a wild and fascinating week at the "RLWhit Campground". For those who have been invited to their "campground" before, I'm sure you are familiar with all that we're about to say. But for the benefit of those who haven't been here, we would like to take the opportunity to give you a feel for what it's like to visit this "special" facility.
You know you are in for a "different" experience as soon as you get to the road leading up to their CG. When you see the sign saying that the "road narrows," you need to understand that to mean that the nominally two lane wide road to their place is about to shrink down to less than one lane wide, with a raging river just to your left. As long as nothing larger than a bicycle is coming the other way, you are probably OK. But after navigating those narrows, we now feel prepared to face the Top of the World Highway up in Alaska!!! And don't let anyone tell you that the Whitfields live at the end of civilization--that little road goes at least another 200' past their house before it disappears altogether into the fog of the Twilight Zone!!!!
When you arrive at the CG, you may be greeted by the entire Whitfield clan, which for us included two dogs, two cats, and we were told lots of four legged varmints!! Not sure whether you'll be greeted by Toni right away--in our case, Toni spent the first hour after our arrival busily riding around on her riding lawnmower, totally oblivious to our arrival. She then had the nerve to accuse us of having sneaked past her up the driveway. Now really, there is no way we "sneaked" a 40 foot fifth wheel past anyone, especially when we had to turn around in the road and back up the driveway to get into the "campground."
I guess I'd have to say that the "campground" comes with partial hookups. We had the opportunity to practice our power management skills by operating our rig on the 15-20 amps of power coming down that long, skinny wire that Dick ran out to our rig. The water hookup was fine--much better quality water than many campgrounds we've been in. Although we did have to wait two days for the wifi to be hooked up, it worked well once we got it to work. As for TV service, Dick and Toni were nice enough to give up their bedroom Dish connection so that Dick could run a long cable out to our rig. Got great audio, but we never did get more than a fuzzy video. We appreciate the effort they made—I just hope Dick doesn't pull out even more of his hair trying to figure out why the video didn't work—he, like me, doesn't have that much extra hair to spare!!!!!
Toni and Dick fixed us a wonderful meal upon our arrival--that is, after she finished cutting the lawn!!!! Not wanting to impose too much, we brought our own box of wine along (we go high class--wine in a box). Fortunately, our rig was downhill from their house, so we were able to stumble back to our rig that night after enjoying the fruit of the vine. But we showed them who can and can't handle their booze!!!
Perhaps because we had partied so much the night before, Dick got even with us by ordering in two days of steady rain starting the next morning. Nothing quite like sitting in your rig in someone's front yard and not being able to even go outside to stretch your legs!!! What they say about all the rainfall up in Washington is certainly accurate!!! We were able to get some relief from the rain when the four of us got together for lunch in Bellingham with fellow MOCers Bob n Pam, who were passing thru on their way up to Alaska. We had a wonderful time chatting about life on the road--amazing how you can feel at home so quickly with fellow members of the forum.
The next day, Dick offered to wash our rig for us--he said he just wouldn't feel good about us leaving their "campground" with our rig looking so dirty. Being a macho guy (yeh, right), I couldn't resist that challenge, so I spent the first day of sunshine since our arrival washing and waxing our rig. Made me wish for more rain so that I could stay indoors!!!
Once our rig was clean, Dick and Toni became wonderful tour guides, taking us for a drive out to see nearby Mt. Baker. We even made it most of the way up to the vista overlooking Mt. Baker before hitting the snow drifts on the roadway and having to turn back. Oh well, Dick assured us that the view of Mt. Baker would have been terrific if only we had been able to make it up to the vista.
After treating us to yet another wonderful dinner, and as a parting gift at the end of our stay, Dick offered to give us one of his collection of mouse traps to take with us as he was confident that we would undoubtedly be taking with us some of their resident rodent population. Nice to know that you can take the glow of a wonderful week in paradise with you by bringing along some lively tokens of the experience. Of course, our departure from the campground was delayed while we all climbed under the truck and the rig to try to persuade one of their cats to get out from under there—maybe she was hunting some of the rodents who climbed up into the rig!!!
Tonight we are in Vancouver and will go to sleep to the sound of trains going by – no more of the quiet, listening to the river rushing by and the chirping of the birds in the (early!!) morning.
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