We took our time on Monday, September 15th getting ready to leave Bolding Mill Campground because we weren’t going to leave until the noon check-out time for our drive to Twin Lakes Campground in Pendleton, South Carolina. Since the trip was only going to take 2 hours and check-in wasn’t until 3 pm, we could take our time leaving our site and dumping/flushing at Bolding Mill.
Twin Lakes Campground
Twin Lakes Campground is located within the 152-acre Twin Lakes Recreation Area. There are 102 campsites with water and electric service spread out in 4 different loops on the shores of Lake Hartwell. There are 5 restroom/shower facilities, 2 dump stations, and 5 playgrounds in the campground and multiple day-use facilities with boat ramps and swimming beaches within the recreation area. This campground is busy year round and our two weeks there were no exception.
Lake Hartwell is a man-made lake bordering Georgia and South Carolina that was created when the Hartwell Dam was completed in 1962 and was originally used for hydro-power and flood control. Today there are 8 different campgrounds and 11 separate day-use facilities on the lake, all operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). Lake Hartwell is 56,000 acres in size with 962 miles of shoreline.
We arrived shortly before 3 pm and got set up. We were in site 33, as you can see on the photo of the map in the album, which was on one of the points of land extending into Lake Hartwell. The site was a back-in with water and electric service. The pad was level on ground that was rock and dirt. The area next to the pad, where the picnic table and grill were located, was VERY hard and rocky. So much so that I could not hammer down stakes in the ground for the tie-downs on Cindy’s screen room. Instead, I had to tie off lines to the picnic table, grill, and lantern pole in an attempt (successfully, it turned out) to secure the room against brisk lake winds.
Sites were generally closer together than we prefer and most had no vegetation or bushes separating the sites. We had neighbors on both sides for most of our stay. Especially on the weekends, which is to be expected.
Attack Of The Acorns
While setting up we realized there would be a serious problem for the duration of our stay; an attack of the acorns. They were hitting the roof like bullets and sending poor Bella into complete hysterics. She was panting, trembling, and her heart was beating like a metronome on speed.
It was similar to what we had happen when we stayed at Mammoth Caves last year.
Because Bella is not a young girl any longer, we had real concerns that she might have some kind of cardiac event. So, even though she is not the size of a lap dog, I put her in my oversized lap almost daily during our stay. That, along with some calming medicine the vet suggested during our last visit, being out in the soft-roofed screen room with Cindy during the day, and getting her a new Thundershirt later during our stay, seemed to help calm her down some of the time.
After setting up we had dinner and watched a couple of shows, then hit the sack because we had some celebrating to do the next day.
Oh, and Monday was Felt Hat Day, which I wrote about on my personal blog.
Happy Birthday Cindy!
Tuesday, September 16th, was Cindy’s birthday. We drove into nearby Clemson, SC (home of the Clemson University Tigers!) and I took Cindy to a steak restaurant for lunch to celebrate her special day.
When she blew out the candle on her dessert I asked her, “Did you wish that you were young and sexy again?” She looked at me with love in her eyes and replied, “No, I wished that YOU were young and sexy again!”
She’s such a kidder, lol!
After that, the rest of the day was hers to spend doing whatever she wanted.
The next couple of days we just relaxed and then Friday morning we indulged ourselves with breakfast at Cracker Barrel and getting some groceries afterward.
COVID 19 Booster
Sunday we got our (now) annual COVID 19 booster shot. We’ll be in more crowds than we prefer soon, between some activities we’re looking at and being out in public with friends and family in Florida, so we wanted to be properly prepared for those who don’t get vaccinated
Due to supply issues, this time we both received booster shots from a different maker than usual.
Anyway, my typical reaction to the COVID and/or Flu vaccines is that the following day I feel like crap, and this was no exception. On Monday I was tired, aching in my joints and muscles, and feeling like the proverbial truck not only hit me but then backed up and did it again a few times. Cindy doesn’t usually have a reaction, but this time she did and was feeling as bad as I was. I can only attribute her unusual reaction to getting a different brand of vaccine.
Still, as I’ve always said, I’d rather have a day or two of light (in comparison to the actual disease) reaction than a week to 10 days (or lifetime, in the case of COVID) of the full-blown disease. It’s a more-than-fair trade off to me.
That night, we watched the final episode of the final season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Truly, “All Good Things…” must end.
Tuesday, we both felt much better. Sometime in the next month we’ll get our annual Flu vaccines and then we’ll be prepared for more public interactions than we usually experience.
Looming Government Shutdown
It looked like there would be a government shutdown coming up on October 1st. Our next reservation was to be at another USACE (in other words, Federal government) campground starting on September 29th. Since USACE campgrounds typically close as being “non-essential” and this would happen two days into our 14-night stay, we made backup reservations at a State Park 60 miles north of where we’ll be at the USACE campgrounds.
If by some miracle (which we now know didn’t happen) the government hadn’t shutdown, we wouldn’t have received much of a refund from the State Park, but we had no choice but to make backup plans so we’d have a place to stay.
You’ve got to love such a dysfunctional government.
Thursday we went into Clemson and bought Bella a Thundershirt to try and calm her down. We already had one for her, but we left it in storage because we didn’t think about needing it when we left Florida last January.
On Friday I crawled under our desk and put on a middle leg we had bought to give it more stability. Cindy had noticed in the three years since we built the desk out of the 1/2 inch plywood that it was “bowing” in the middle a bit from our leaning on the desk when sitting at it. This new middle leg should solve that issue.
Over the weekend we saw that a hurricane might be coming our way on Monday, making our trip to our new campground that day a long, windy and rainy one. We’ll see.
Kingdom Of The Spiders
Though out our stay the campground was overrun by big, colorful, scary-looking spiders! I mean we literally could not walk out the door of Nomad in the morning without first clearing spiderwebs off the opening and steps. You’d walk around the campground and see massive webs spanning between trees with these huge spiders the size of a dollar bill sitting in the center waiting for prey. Over the course of our 14 nights, spiders built webs every night from the trees above the screen room down to the roof of it, like they wanted to devour the screen room. I’m sure they would have if I hadn’t knocked the webs down every day.
It was weird and creepy, which would be great for Halloween but this was a month early for that wonderful holiday.
I always go first during our hikes and every day I ate so many spiderwebs by walking into them at face level. Thank the spider gods they are smart enough to know when something too big to eat breaks their web!
Saturday it rained most of the day.
Sunday I untied the screen room and moved it into the sun so it would dry out before I put it away from the trip. We took a short drive to go look at the other loops and Cindy asked, “Will the screen room be OK just sitting there?” “Sure”, I replied. When we came back we found the screen room had blown over onto its roof. But I was right; it was still OK.
You can see a photo of it in the album.
And again, even as we prepared to head to our next stop, there was no word for sure that we would be staying there for our entire 14-night reservation.
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Poor Bella!! I am glad you were able to help her calm down. I am intrigued by the spiders though… 🙂
Yeah, we were concerned with how anxious she reacted to the sound. It wasn’t like she was hit by the acorns, just the loud noise upset her. Those things were big and colorful and, as we found out when we researched them, non-venomous. Thank goodness!