Well! Why wait? Let's see if we can get into our site today and just head on down there. A quick call confirmed that we could occupy our site that evening but that the office closed at 6 PM. But not to worry, if we didn't arrive before 6 PM, they would leave a packet for us at the entrance and we could settle in and stop by the office in the morning. That would be fine!
I had every confidence that this plan would work. We learned about packets on our very first trip. We learned that just because they said they were leaving a packet with your name on it did not guarantee that said packet would actually be there. What are the odds that we'd experience a missing packet this time?
So the GPS figured we'd arrive at 6 PM. That did not account for gas stops taking over 30 minutes each. And it sure didn't account for the slow traffic on Highway 1. We arrived at 8:30 PM. And the odds of a missing packet? 100%. (The next time I can't reach my destination by closing time, I'll just pass on that destination or arrive the next day.)
No packet. Two packets for someone named Cannon. Maybe they got confused and gave them ours. I called the emergency number and got someone named Rosa who said she was going to send someone right over. After what seemed like an eternity, but was probably 10 minutes, I phoned back to see when the person who was coming might arrive.
Debbie arrived shortly, but without the keys to the office. She had to phone someone else to bring those. She apologized for not leaving the packet. At least she owned that. She got us checked in and set off to lead us to our site. It was pretty clear that she didn't know the place all that well. She had to keep stopping to look at the markers. We were at least in the right row. But then she told us to "just back right in there."
Back? As in back up? I'm certain that we reserved a pull through site. It's what we do. We are not good at backing up. We were also relatively certain that we'd reserved a waterfront site. Debbie told us that we didn't. She said we'd reserved a site that was too small for our camper. I don't think so. But anyway, we were determined to have a good time and not get bent out of shape. We could sort all of that out later.
But it was dark. We'd been driving for more than 12 hours. We hadn't eaten and Mark's blood sugar was tanked. And he's really not an experienced backer upper. It was about to go very badly. The RV across from us was a monstrous thing - probably over 40 feet long. Shiny and new looking and if he'd kept going, Mark would have taken those wing mirrors right off. Larry, it's owner was excited and came out to "help" - which actually didn't help. But he was probably more help than Debbie.
After three failed attempts at backing into the site we asked Debbie if there was someplace we could just park for the night and sort it out in the morning. Fortunately, there was a place where we could just pull in sideways - go get something to eat, and then get a good night's rest.
Got it in first try the next day. Daylight and a good night's sleep make a world of difference.
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