Yes we are still in Trail at the City RV Campground. While one would think, being here since July 12th, that we would know everything there is to know and have seen everything there is to see in the campground. There are only 14 RV sites and another 16 campsites to be fair. However if you wait and be patient, you encounter other residents of the area you were not expecting, like wild turkeys. We also had some very proud moments and a few not so much. We learned along our journey that we occasionally judged inappropriately, and self scolded. One such moment was when we saw a camper living in a very run down utility trailer, and had a very old car who appeared to be living here full time. This, along with his scruffy look, caused us to assume mental illness, drug addiction and the like. So we avoided eye contact as we walked by with Winston on a daily basis.
Later in the month we learned from the park host Brian, that this man had grown up locally and was a talented carpenter and handyman. He had fallen on some hard times, after a lay-off in this small town where jobs were not plentiful. He had made the choice to live a nomad life, so he could drop everything whenever he was called to a short contract job somewhere. The rest of the time he did one-off small repair work.
Interestingly, we had a small project of our own on the go. We had realized that the RV floor was widest near the front door however it was unusable real estate given the stairs were there. So we brainstormed how we could cover them for extra space for Winston to lounge on. So an idea came to life. Off to the hardware store with measurements in hand where we purchased a piece of thick plywood and had them cut it to our specs. Once back at the RV we added our newly purchased felt furniture leg protectors to allow the wood to easily slide in and out of place. Wow are we brilliant! We then decided it would work even better if we could add finger holes to enable us to more easily pick the board up when not in use. Hhm, how were we going to do this. Well we thought, there is this handy carpenter living in the park. So our next walk past we engaged. He was very nice. We explained our project and he quickly said he would be happy to help and he would pop by later with his tools. Not long after, he indeed did come by and quickly drilled the appropriate finger holes and our project was complete. We got into some great chats and he taught us that the turkeys are native!? He was very bright and loved the outdoors and knew a lot about nature and the area we were now calling ‘our summer home’.
What we learned about ourselves – we know we are not supposed to judge. We thought we were non-judgemental and yet we fell prey to assumptions based on visible clues, versus true understanding. Shame on us. We agreed for the rest of our travels we would check each other whenever this occurred.
