Hey everybody!
I hope you are enjoying the summer and staying safe. Between the fires here in California, and the flooding in other states, mother nature seems to be unleashing her wrath on us. There have been a number of fires in my area this month, but fortunately none of them came too close. Normally we don’t get many fires in this area, but this year it feels like the state is just burning around me.
My search for agents continues. No agent yet but I’m not feeling discouraged. I was reading blog posts from other authors who are already published about their journeys, and it helps to know that it is common for this sort of thing to take time. My birthday’s coming up soon though, and finding an agent would be a really nice birthday surprise! But in the meantime I’m still writing, and I plan to submit a short story to a writing contest later this summer.
With summer in full swing, I’ve noticed an increase in the number of tourists visiting the area here. ‘Tis the season to travel after all. Even I took a few weeks and retreated to a campground up north for my family’s big annual camping trip.
For years I avoided this trip with a variety of excuses like university classes, productions, and trips abroad. Don’t get me wrong, I love to spend time with family and friends, just not when I’m baking in the sun with heat over ninety degrees, and mosquitos launching the attacks on my already sun burnt skin. The lake is also so much more enjoyable when you can participate in water sports (which old injuries prevent me from doing). This time though, there was no excuse, and for the first time in years I joined everyone.
Me hiding from the sun like the vampire I am.
Now usually each family that goes with us has some little incident. Maybe they have a problem with the boat engine, or there is a small injury. But this year the bad luck just kept coming.
I swear, we must have had a pissed off a gremlin living in the electrical harness of my family’s rig. The slides, and various other electrical components just stopped working. They were just fine when we left, but as soon as we got to the campground, nothing. Our friend’s weren’t much better off either. Their refrigerator died, and the replacement that arrived looked like it had fallen off a truck. The husband had to leave one day to take it back to shop, leaving his wife and son at the campground with the ice chests full of food for the day. And where there are ice chests full of hamburger meat, there will soon be bears that come looking for it.
One of the bears at the campground.
Okay, we know better than to put meat in an ice chest where a bear can reach it, but this was the first time in seventeen years that we have encountered any bears in this campground! Our friends’ teenage son was the one who saw the bear, catching it on video as it ran towards my family’s rig. Lucky for me, I was sleeping inside. I’m not a dirt and bugs kind of girl, so no tent for me! My brother and his fiancée were not so lucky.
Of course they were freaking out when there were people running past their tent screaming “bear!” But I find it ironic that my brother, the eagle scout, was the one who turned to his fiancée and told her to run. So there was the bear running towards the tent on one side of the motorhome while my brother’s fiancée was running away from the tent on the other side of the motorhome. *Face-palm*
One of the smallest emergency rooms I’ve ever been to. (But a great view of the mountain!)
We also had to take another friend to the ER for ten stitches after she cut herself while doing dishes. She was starving though, so she ate the corndog I brought her while the doctor was stitching her up! I hate needles, so I probably wouldn’t have been conscious, let alone eating a corndog! There were also the plethora of colorful characters camping like the guy who set off fireworks in someone else’s campsite, or the guy who drives around a quad towing a trailer behind it painted with flames and the name “The Honey Bucket.”
This year’s camping trip was certainly not the relaxing vacation I was hoping for. I did manage to get a lot of writing done for book two, especially considering that there was little to no internet or cell service out there. I’m glad I was able to spend some time with family and friends, but I am so happy to be back home.
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Have a great summer!
