Moving Right Along to the Movies

Cassie sniffing ferns at our campground

2019-09-22  Sunday

Today was pretty quiet. We knew it was going to rain all day, and were hoping to have a better day weather-wise today. So instead of sight-seeing, we did as planned-- left our KOA, stopped at Walmart for a few items we needed, and then drove to the movie theater to see the new Downton Abbey movie. We really loved the tv series, and I was determined that although we missed a couple of movies released while we were away, that we’d make a special effort to see this one. It worked out perfectly, although we literally got the last two tickets in the theater and couldn’t sit together. We were surprised by how many people (many of them tourists like us) had the same idea!

When the movie (which we thoroughly enjoyed) was over, we drove about 45 minutes west to Fairholme Campground, right on Lake Crescent, which we had seen the day before. We were literally the only ones in the entire campground, I think (certainly in our loop of it) other than the camp host. We thought we’d seen a lot of larger sites which could hold us, and we had. Our mistake was thinking that ANY of them were level! No matter what we tried, we were always on a significant slant.

We finally decided that the entire campground was a “Mystery Spot.” When I was about 15, my family went to California for a vacation, and we stopped at the Mystery Spot. It was this very mysterious place where balls rolled uphill, and people who were taller looked shorter than short people, depending on what end of a level wooden plank they stood on. We were very mystified by the entire place, but as the years went on, I started seeing other places with names like “Wonder Spot” or “The Cosmos”. And now Joey and I laugh when we see them, and I say, “That’s another Mystery Spot, right?”  And it is. They are always on fairly steep hills, and the entire thing is an optical illusion brought on by the trees all being completely vertical. There was actually one near Glacier NP when we camped, and the guy in the RV next to us told us he’d gone there. And we kind of laughed about it.

Tree roots

Well, this campground was the same problem-- all the sites LOOKED level in relation to the trees, but they were completely unlevel in relation to us!  We finally gave up, taking a spot that was easy to get into, and using all 30 of our leveling blocks to make the RV at least acceptable for one night. It was really crazy to see how each spot we went to (“This one looks better, let’s try this one”) turned out to be as sloped as the last one. By that time, it was dark, and I was tired, and ended up going to bed without writing a blog (we had absolutely no way to upload anyway; we had no bars at all.)

I must say, though, the campground was gorgeous. It was the same atmosphere as the hike we took on Saturday, though the forest-- it had old trees decaying, moss growing on branches and hanging down, and endless enormous ferns! Some campsites were just surrounded by ferns. They were twice the height of Cassie when I walked her, really amazing. The entire place was one of the most beautiful campgrounds we’ve been in. Just... not level.