Little Miss Creativity

Many people know me as the Farm Lady but I'm also known as Little Miss Creativity - well, actually I just adopted that name for myself today.  The thing is, I am very creative when it comes to problem solving. Some of this I learned during Peace Corps days but living on our farm really honed that skill.  Like most farmers, I was always figuring out how to do things, using what we had and adapting.
This week I really put my mind to figuring out a couple of problems with my popup.  This first was a problem with hitching.  I'm by myself when camping and depend on the screen in my Explorer to show what's behind me as I backup.  The problem I have is seeing the coupler - everything is black on the trailer hitch including the coupler and really difficult to clearly see it. I talked to Larry and we decided to put orange paint on it.  This was a huge help.  I hitched with only 2 attempts and  I think that's pretty good for a novice doing  it alone.  I mean, you have to be so exact with placement of the ball under the coupler - geez, I'm good!

Ok, that was one problem taken care of but I had a bigger one and that was backing up the trailer - a real nightmare for most of us beginners.  I have some theories about this subject - I've given it a lot of thought.  I truly believe that someone who is knowledgeable should give instruction and then go away. Too much help can just be confusing.  Larry gave me the basics, tried to continue helping but that didn't work.  I need to stop and think - ok, I want the back end of the trailer to go right so, I need to turn the wheel in opposite direction.  Every time I have to change direction, I have to go through this thought process.  If I'm given enough time and I'm not being watched I'm not too bad.  I just want to be left alone, for example, first camping trip, ready to back up and some old guy places himself behind my trailer and starts giving hand signals.  I thought, "what the hell, leave me alone".  In my opinion when someone tries to do that it just causes confusion.  So, what to do - well,  I came up with a solution, orange pails.  I was at Maumee in Ohio and was backing my trailer into my site cement pad - should have been relatively easy as it was basically a straight shot but, what a mess.  I just couldn't see what I was doing - had no reference point.  Now, genius that I am, I decided to place one pail on one side of the area that I'm backing into and another pail on the other side.  Now I can look at the side mirrors, see the pails and know where I'm headed.  Tried it out and it works.  This is not to say the backing up issue is resolved because it's not - backing a trailer is a struggle but this pail idea is going to be a big help.  So, onward and upward, enjoying my solo camping adventures and trying to confront and resolve the problems I face.

Confidence, Too Confident - My Dilemma

I admit to being a novice in the world of popup camping.  I've done it 3 times -  last Fall up north, April in Georgia and May, I went to Maumee State Park in Ohio.  Since that Maumee trip, the trailer sat, closed up, in our backyard.  Each of my three trips helped me gain confidence - pulling the trailer, setting it up, taking down, etc.  On each trip, I had a few problems but by the time I returned from Maumee, I felt good about my experiences and the knowledge I'd gained. We'll, from then till now, I didn't do anything with it, it sat closed up in the backyard.  So, a few weeks ago, I  set it up and that went pretty good. I decided  to take it down last week and as I was doing it,  I was proud of myself,  it was going so great - confidence that's what I had, great confidence - apparently, too much confidence because, I forgot to take off the safety arms and what a mess.  There are two and they fit on a front and back strut so if there's a malfunction, the roof can't collapse. By not taking them off,  I jammed them and couldn't get the roof up or down. Thankfully, Larry was here and working together we fixed the problem and it doesn't look like damage was done - whew! So today, I decided to hitch the trailer to my Explorer - yep, really confident that I could do it - started turning crank to lift front end of trailer and, it stopped - I couldn't get it to go up for coupler to be higher than ball.  I looked at the bottom of the trailer and the front stabilizers were in the air - crap, I forgot to put the four stabilizers up.  I corrected the problem and looks like no damage to rear stabilizers - whew! There's a fine line between the confidence that I need to go on trips with the trailer and too much confidence where I create real problems for myself and potentially can damage the trailer.  I'm working to blend the "confidence" and "too much confidence" and then, maybe, be "cautiously confident". Also, I need to remember the whole, "you gotta have a plan man" and am making lists so that every time I do something with the trailer, I'll use these lists as reminders and hopefully stop having these kind of issues. I can get frustrated and sometimes want to kick myself for stupid mistakes but, in the end, I love being a "solo camping grandma" and just will keep going till I can't go no more.

Aren't You Afraid?

I've written about fears relating to solo camping in a previous blog.  As I said then, I'm rarely afraid - maybe 4 times since I started camping alone.  Recently I was thinking back to a camping trip that I took to Ohio Amish country. My main destination was Lehman's store.  They sold to the Amish and I could make purchases using their catalog.  I think this was in 1999 when I still had my red Farm Lady van.  I think of this trip as the camping adventure from hell.  This was before internet and before GPS and I remember getting lost - not a little bit lost but big time lost.  I was in a very rural area and I just drove around and around searching for a campground.   I finally found one - it was already dark and I  went to bed.  The next morning someone told me about a nice campground not far from Kidron.  When I reached the campground I thought it was really nice.  It was wooded, big sites and I had lots of privacy because I think I was the only camper.  I remember, very close to my site, was a small lane that led to an Amish farm.  After I was settled, I drove over to Lehman's.  I thought I was going to find a small, interesting store with lots of items the Amish would need for their farms.  I couldn't believe it when I saw bus loads of tourists shopping there.  I was really disappointed and went back to the campground and decided to read my book - a good mystery.  I was sitting in my lawn chair with my feet resting on the picnic table bench - just sitting there minding my own business when this horse drawn wagon came charging from the lane, into the campground and stopped at my campsite.  The driver (about 20 years old) jumped down off the wagon, walked over and sat down next to my feet.  He started talking to me, asked what I was reading and then went into a long story about an Amishman in Pennsylvania who killed a woman by stabbing her and slicing her up and on and on it went.  I thought to myself that he was crazy and told him I had to go.  I went to the campground office and told them what had happened and they seemed totally unimpressed.  If I had been in a tent or my popup I would have left but I  felt relatively safe in my van.  That night I was sleeping and about midnight, I woke up and realized a car had just pulled in and was parked next to me.  The whole campground was empty but they parked next to me. Now I was afraid and spent the rest of the night awake - knives close to me.  The next morning at dawn the car left.  A little while later I left - I wasn't waiting around for some crazy Amishman to slice me up or some random person to kill me in the night.  As you can imagine it wasn't one of my favorite camping experiences but didn't stop me from continuing my solo camping adventures.