Now N Then

Navy

Also Navy

The campers here are a patriotic bunch and are proud to show the flag as well as indications of their branch of service.

Army

USMC

Each table of four gets a deck of cards to distribute. A caller draws cards at random from his deck and as a card is called all players with that card discard it. First person with no cards left gets bingo.

Card Bingo

What a nice feeling. Our own site. No sewer but we have everything else.

Last Thursday we went to the Recreation Hall for Card Bingo. Each table of four gets a deck of cards that are distributed to the four players. Then Ron, the host, calls cards at random and players discard those cards. First one to get rid of all their cards wins.

Down to 1st on the list for a site. Hot water is still out (since Friday). Base Maintenance must not have heard about Home Depot. No cold water either. I heard that a camper forgot to disconnect his water hose before he pulled away. That at least should be fixed today.

Rt 96 goes right down the middle of Tyndall AFB. The FamCamp is between Rt 96 and Pearl Bayou below.

Pearl Bayou

We started on the site list as number 8 and are now number 4. Still no hot water. Maybe later today. Back a couple of weeks ago six of us from the campground played golf with the Happy Hackers a local group that plays on different courses each month. This time it was at Tyndall.

This should have gone out yesterday  but somehow I must have saved it as a draft. Well here it is.

Before they started using the new overflow sites basically those in overflow were squeezed into two files of 4 campers each and everyone had to move forward each day. What a pain. Now we get an overflow site and stay there until we get a non sewer site. I do miss the opportunity to chat with overflow neighbors each morning to see how many times they got up to turn the circuit breakers back on. But I do not miss it all that much. We were 8th on the list for a site yesterday and now we are 6th. The hot water tank leaked and now there is no hot water (for showers) in the Rec Hall until Monday. The inclination is to blame base maintenance but they probably can’t get whatever they need over the weekend.

Last night we went to the Gazebo for the Friday night hot dog roast. Bring your own hot dogs everything else is there. Guess this is the last one until after Lent for us anyway. Later three of the campers got out guitars (plus John also brought his Fiddle) and they played for the 25 or so of us who were there. Good time. I really wanted to sing but I thought that it was more important not to drive everyone away.

Gazebo

Gazebo, inside with John and his fiddle

With no hot water for the showers we have gone to combat mode. Probably no need for underwear either. Since overflow in most military campgrounds is dry camping (no electric, water, sewer or cable hookups) this is still a pleasure even without hot water. After all they do call what we do —camping.

Ate breakfast out, went to church and the commissary and will now play golf before the super bowl.

The maximum stay in a campsite is 60 days. Then you have to vacate the site and rotate to overflow behind anyone else already in overflow. Then when your turn comes up you can move into a non sewer site and go on the list for a sewer site. Overflow is like purgatory – partway between heaven (sewer site) and hell (no site at all). Today was our turn to rotate into the dreaded overflow. As it turned out we got lucky. Instead of the old overflow area where campers share 20 amp electrical service and have no cable TV, we were assigned a space close behind regular sites and were able to plug into 50 amp service and cable TV. Below is regular overflow and below that is our temp site.