We sometimes feel that we are other people’s entertainment, as they watch us try to back Rover into a tiny site or simply look us over, noticing the Minnesota license plates and especially the bristle “mud flaps” on the back bumper. But yesterday someone else provided the entertainment.
We were camped in a beautiful location in a campground that had only 13 sites for overnight touring guests. The other places were occupied by pretty old permanent small trailers used on holiday and weekends. Some of these are so permanent that they have little wooden decks built next to them: frames of 2x4s, covered with something like 1x6 lumber.
The day’s entertainers, an elderly Dutch couple, drove in, looked around for a place to park, and decided one of the unused decks was actually a parking pad. We couldn’t get out quickly enough to stop them; we could only watch as they drove onto the flimsy structure. The RV’s front end did quite nicely, but when the back tires got onto the wood, they very quickly went right through the deck to the ground. By this time the woman was climbing out and yelling (better late than never, we supposed), at which the old man backed up, ramming his way back over the edge. But of course, now the front end went down into the hole made by the rear tires, so a little more ramming--and ineffectually yelling--was required before they extricated themselves from the now-destroyed deck.
They then pulled up alongside it (as they were supposed to before--who says people don’t learn from experience?--but then decided they didn’t want to be parked next to a destroyed deck (who can blame them?), so they picked a spot to one side of their destruction, just behind us, where someone had left a dishpan full of plastic toys. The technique of leaving something on a site had indicated to us that another RVer had been there, reserved this spot, and driven off for the day’s sightseeing. Indeed, as we watched, we saw another camper, who had been incredulously watching all this, try to tell our heroes as much, but they ignored her, leveled their RV, and hooked up their electrics. Sure enough, about an hour later the couple who had reserved the spot returned and asked them to move, which they did, albeit with a bad grace.
As if that entertainment weren’t enough for one day, we found an unlocked WiFi network. The office had told us their WiFi wasn’t any good because of the mountains, but our mystery host worked quite well for quite a while.
And today, even more entertainment: we watched a family of six trying to position their trailer on a little knob of a hill. First they pushed it uphill by hand; then they voted (nobody found the location satisfactory); they pushed again, discussed and criticized, pushed….
We are in Kristiansand, Norway’s fourth largest city. The countryside here is rocky: big rocks, little rocks, small mountains of rocks, and the campground is a winding road going through low rocky hills. There are no marked sites. Our GPS was unaware that the gate it was directing us to had been closed, but a young boy on a scooter was eager to show us how to get in (his English wasn’t quite impeccable--he was only 8, after all--but it was good enough). The sign at the entrance said to find a place and come back to pay at 4 pm. This campground is about half an hour’s walk to the city center. We were surprised that it wasn’t crowded, since this is high season for Norway vacationers.
The cathedral here is only (!) a couple hundred years old. No marble or stone carvings here--it has a lovely folk feel--all carved out of wood. It is on the main city square, where construction and a children’s carnival were going on the same time. We thought we could hear what sounded like Native American drums and chanting, and sure enough, down the block some people dressed in leather and feather headdresses, and looking somewhat like Sioux dancers from Minnesota, were singing and selling CD’s and beadwork. (Disconcertingly, though, they were also playing what sounded like Peruvian flutes.)
Once again the were a lot of people in the streets; once again everything closed at 4 pm. This town, like many others along the south coast, has an old section of historically protected little white houses, here, though, with wider streets. Somehow having cars parked in front of them reduces their charm a great deal.
Because we decided we didn’t want walk all the way back to the campground, we found the tourist office, where we were directed to the bus stop. A helpful lady told us which stop was ours. It proved to be quite a long walk to the campground anyway, but at least this time we knew how to get back in.