August 6...SNRA (Day 11)

(Kim's Perspective)
We woke up early this morning and actually made it out of bed by 7:30 - AMAZING! Had some breakfast, ran the generator (wooohooo) and updated the blog. We renewed for several more days. Did I mention we love it here?

We again needed to make a trip to the dump station so we took care of business (HA) and popped into Stanley for a couple small, but much needed purchases.

We discovered that we have a small leak in the roof after an exceptionally heavy downpour the previous night, so we took the trailer back to our camp site and did a little caulking. Okay, we did a lot of caulking. Being somewhat lighter than Bill, I did the roof work while he did the bumper seam. I caulked the daylights out of everything I could. Looks like an unsupervised 2 year old got hold of some glue and went to town. :)

While we were outside, an older gentleman by the name of Ed stopped over to ask us a few questions about Maryland. He and his wife, Diane, were taking a Good Sam tour to the DC/Baltimore area in a few weeks and wanted to get our opinion on things to do in the area. We both laughed and said "there's not much to do there, that's why we're here." :)

We hit a few highlights, which were already part of his itinerary, so weren't able to provide him with much valuable info, but he apparently enjoyed our conversation so much that he came back awhile later and invited us to dinner.

He said there was a large group of people they were camping with and there would be about 23 of them having dinner together. The meal was being prepared in a Dutch Oven. "Can we bring anything?" "No, just yourselves. There will be plenty of food."

He stopped over one last time to tell us when dinner would be ready and that we should bring some chairs. He also said "we are a religious group and will be saying the blessing before dinner, but you are excused this time from the prayer." Bill said "No, Sir, I'd be happy to say the blessing for the meal." That seemed to surprise him.

Feeling bad that we didn't have anything to take with us, I made some fresh iced tea to take along. We went over around 7:15 and true to his word, there was a pile of people and a passel of kids. Enchiladas were on the menu. They said the blessing...guess they didn't trust Bill to... :) and, as their guests, asked us to be the first in line. They told us not to be shy. I took the opportunity to say "We're fundamental, independent Baptists - we are not shy around food." They replied "we're Mormons." I immediately thought "Hmmmm...guess they're not going to take the tract I have in my back pocket." :)

The yummilicous goodness that came out of that Dutch Oven that was buried in the firepit was amazing. Seriously? You people know how to camp. Enchiladas, salad, and sliced watermelon. Yum. I offered up the iced tea; no one drank from it. Bill pointed out it was decaf and also heard one of the kids say "what's iced tea?" Riiight...Mormons and caffeine...oops. I told Bill later "Good thing we don't drink alcohol. What if we had brought over a bottle of wine or something? They should be more careful about who they ask to dinner." ;P

They were very nice and we chatted about the area, RVs (one of the older couples was in a Class A motorhome), and how they really knew how to make some yummy stuff over a campfire. Dessert was peach blackberry cobbler and french vanilla ice cream. Wow. They also had the standard smores (but with a twist) for the kids as well as biscuits baked on a stick with honey butter. That was new to me. Need to try that. I'm kind of confused about the caffeine thing...all their drinks were decaf, but they were pumping the kids full of Hershey's chocolate bars and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Uh...okay. I can't claim to know much about the food restrictions of Mormons, but I kind of assumed that no caffeine covered chocolate as well. Maybe they recognize the insanity of removing chocolate from their diet. I mean, c'mon, not eating chocolate is completely unreasonable. :)

We headed back to the trailer as quiet hours began and walked the dogs before settling in for the night. We chatted about the evening and read awhile. Didn't get to sleep till after 1 am.

It was a nice, relaxing, and really tasty day. I think I'd like to get one of those Dutch Oven things. A shame they weigh a thousand pounds and Bill won't let me add more weight to the trailer. :)