We typically serve as Camp Hosts at the Holly Point Campground in the Falls Lake State Recreation Area near Raleigh, NC in April, or October, or both. We do this so we can spend more time with our daughter, Elisabeth. As in many states, North Carolina will only let you stay in a campground for 14 days within a 30 day period. In order to stay longer we volunteered to be Camp Hosts. We clean bathrooms five days a week, but compared to camp host duties in other states this is light duty!  For this small commitment of time we get to enjoy time with our daughter and a beautiful campground on the shore of Falls Lake.

The North Carolina State Fair a must do event whenever we are in the Raleigh area. We enjoy the livestock exhibits, 4-H Club displays, including the largest pumpkins I have ever seen!

One of my favorite exhibits are the lawn arrangements. The two of these that I liked the best this year were one that had plants as people and the one that incorporated a model train.

Another favorite are the pig races. They have races with pigs, geese, and goats. We see the same races every year but they are still a hoot.

My favorite exhibit is the Yesteryear Village. In this building are many artisans and craftsmen displaying everything from painting and tinsmiths to gun makers. I could stand around for hours watching these men and women working their crafts.

Halloween may not be the only holiday in October, but it is the most popular. When we were still living in a house we enjoyed handing out candy to the neighborhood children. However, you don’t get a lot of trick or treaters in a campground. That doesn’t mean we didn’t celebrate. On the Saturday before Halloween the Ranger staff and the “Friends of Falls Lake” hosted a Halloween celebration at the campground amphitheater. There was face painting, popcorn, S’mores, and ghost stories. Over 100 campers attended and we all had a great time.

On our last Sunday afternoon the volunteers and seasonal staff gathered with our Head Ranger, Crystal at her house for a cookout. The weather was sort of drizzly, but we had a fun time hanging out and sharing stories from the camping season.

A common subject among fulltime RVers is how to get medical care. Last year I had to have a root canal that ended up with a fractures tooth. I opted to go with a dental implant but never realized how drawn out the process would be. I made an appointment with a local oral surgeon to extract the tooth and emplace the implant. There are several long waiting periods in this process. First they did the extraction and did a bone graft to make sure there was a solid surface to emplace the implant, then I had to wait for at least four months. We traveled through Florida and wintered in Key West and returned to the Raleigh area in April. At that point the oral surgeon put in some kind of device and I had to wait another four months. I thought I was going to be able to finish the process while we were in Michigan over the summer and made arrangements with my general dentist for the crown that would replace the old tooth. I was having such a difficult time trying to explain to oral surgeons in Michigan what needed to be done, and considering that I had already paid for this to be done in Raleigh, I decided to wait until we got back to Raleigh to finish the process. The process was long, but on November 6th the crown was fastened to the implant and my mouth is whole again.

While all of this was going on we finished our duties as camp hosts at Holly Point on November 1st. That campground closed and we moved to the Rolling View Campground, also on Falls Lake, where we stayed until November 12th.

We spent our last day in town taking advantage of some of the meal discounts offered to veterans in honor of Veterans Day and watching the MSU (Go Spartans!) game with our daughter.

On November 12th we awoke to a chilly morning, hooked up, and headed south for Myrtle Beach State Park in South Carolina.