Well, you want to hear the good, the bad, and the ugly? Here’s a tale of woe for you.
We planned to leave Virginia on Saturday, November 30th,
and head to Havelock, North Carolina, to do some sightseeing.
But on that morning, as we were packing up and just about
ready to pull out, Steve noticed that one of the tires on the camper was about
ready to pop. I took one look at it and
couldn’t believe that it hadn’t popped already! Plus, there
was one other tire that looked bad as well.
So we had to figure out what to do. The problem?
Repair people can’t come onto the military base to change out our tires
for us. So we had to figure out a way to
get off the base without the tire popping (remember, we had been parked for
three weeks, so the tire hadn’t been rotated for a while) so someone, somewhere
could change the tires. Steve decided to
risk driving to the closest commercial parking lot and try to find someone who
could meet us there to do the repairs. Luckily, the tire didn’t pop along the
way.
But we couldn’t locate a mobile tire repair place that could
do the specialized camper tires. So
after making many inquiries, Steve found a place that sold the tires we
needed. So the kids and I drove to
Williamsburg to buy the specialized tires from the tire store. In the meantime, Steve found a truck repair
place that could change the tires for us that was only five miles or so from
where he was. So I bought the tires, met
him at this truck repair place, and expected that the new tires would be placed
on the camper and we’d be done with it.
Nope. The rims had to be changed
out. So I had to locate yet another
place that could take the rims off the old tires, put them on the new tires,
then drive the tires back to Steve so the truck repair place could put them on
the camper.
Oh, and did I mention that I did all this with a vomiting
child and on less than two hours of sleep?
Yep. The night
prior to this tire fiasco Jonny was so very ill that he vomited all
night long, about every 20-30 minutes.
He slept in bed with me (and Steve slept on the couch, poor man), and I
got only about two hours of sleep, and that was NOT uninterrupted sleep. I was so tired I couldn’t think
straight. So expecting me to do all this
tire stuff was about all I could take.
We finally got around to eating our lunch around 2:00, then
hit the road. (And of course, McDonald’s
messed up our order, so everyone got food except me. For some reason, everyone’s food made it into
the to-go bag except my food! So now I was
tired, frustrated, AND hungry!)
Regardless, I pumped enough caffeine into my body to still
drive all the way to Havelock, North Carolina.
We didn’t make it there until after dark, but by golly, we did it!
So while we DID make it to Havelock, we did NOT do the
sightseeing the next day that we had originally planned to do. We wanted to take in some of the touristy
pirate stuff that the area is famous for, but my kids were given very strict
orders NOT to wake me up the next morning – and I slept until 11:51! Bless their hearts, they’re good kids, and I
have a wonderful husband who kept them all quiet so I could sleep.
While we were in Havelock, we stayed at Cherry Point, which
is a US Marine base. I think I can
honestly say that I had never been on a Marine base before, so this was
something new! One thing I noticed was
that they didn’t have a BX (air force base exchange), nor a PX (army post
exchange), nor a NEX (naval exchange), but rather a MCX (marine corps
exchange). Who knew those existed?
But the campground was absolutely wonderful. It was new, opened only in May of this year,
and it had GREAT Wi-Fi! So instead of
sightseeing, we/I slept until noon, then did laundry and published a bunch of
blog posts since the Wi-Fi was so good.
We missed the pirate stuff, but golly, sometimes you just need to sleep!
