Seasonal Campground

I saw this practice of people parking their camper in one spot all summer back in Virginia at Small Country Campground, but only now it is sinking in as a very cool idea.

Most of the campers along this section of the bay into Lake Superior park their campers here in the spring and leave them all summer long, paying a lower rent than us weeklies or the occasional weekenders who happen to find a spot by a miracle. 

These seasonal folks set up fully for the summer, with house-style lawn furniture, flower baskets hanging from those curved posts you stick in the ground, and even potted tomato plants.

They keep their power boats here for deep-lake fishing, their canoes, kayaks, mopeds (no golf carts, oddly), and some have lawn mowers under their trailers since they have so much stuff spread around that the campground guy can’t mow their sites. It’s really remarkable.

And most of them seem to know each other, or at least there’s a campground social scene. On Friday night when the weekend campers returned to their spots, I saw them visiting each other, taking drinks to each other’s popup tents and letting their dogs reacquaint (Banjo had to go inside for an off-leash doggie party in front of our trailer). I see them knocking on each other’s doors in the morning and being invited in for coffee. 

This is for sure their neighborhood, and I feel a bit like an interloper. That’s not helped by our two neighbors who’ve staked out their territories—using every bit of campsite land on both sides of us—so in effect they’ve both taken the “ally” and we have just the narrow spot between. These are big sites though, so we have plenty of space. 

I guess I understand: maybe their itinerant neighbors are often obnoxious, loud, drunken.  I know how that is. And these seasonal folks made the investment to be here all summer long so want to do everything they can to ensure their expectations.  

Our neighbors to one side, turns out, are a hybrid type of camper. They live in their Class A motorhome (like a big bus), but they stay here all summer and then go to Florida where they stay in one spot all winter.  I guess that’s an economical way to live in retirement, since their campground fees are low and they pay for gas for only two trips a year.  What a bummer idea though to make the sacrifice to live in a moving vehicle and then not explore in it!