Spring Returns to Michigan
Spring continues in Michigan. Except for the cold – Mother Nature will struggle to get to 65 for the foreseeable future – we are about where California was a month ago when we left.
The trees here in Michigan are that light-green hue of early spring and the deciduous redwood (Dawn Redwood) growing on our site has leafed out. It was planted a few years after we started staying at Kal Haven Outpost campground. It doesn’t lose it’s leaves until after we leave in the fall, but when we get back in the spring it is definitely bare.
Being a tree-hugging nature lover, I’ve enjoyed watching it grow. I’m guessing it’s about 15 to 20 feet tall with the potential of growing 100 feet. According to what I’ve read it likes moist soil, which is not a problem as King waters our site – sometimes even in the rain. He likes a green lawn. He also likes to keep people from cutting across the lawn during the summer months. Yes, King is the “Get off my grass” type of person. He wasn’t always, but sometime toward the end of his years as a school administrator he started taking more of an interest in the lawn. It was often a race between him and our landlord to see who would get home first to mow the grass.
Kal Haven Outpost Campground Is Growing
Today at the campground there are crews working on installing the electric service to the 29 new RV sites that were added earlier this spring. A huge dump truck has been delivering double loads of gravel for Scott, the campground maintenance person, to create pads for RV parking. When it’s complete the campground will have 20 full-hookup sites and 29 sites with water and electricity. The campground also has 32 tent sites, three glamping tents, two RV rentals, a converted school bus, six family cabins, four couple’s cabins and two duplex units available during the summer months.
In the six years we’ve been staying here (this is our seventh year) I’ve watched the campground grow. The goal for the owners is for some type of addition during the winter months to greet campers in the spring. Projects have included a pond (a real learning curve), new playground equipment, a dog park (one of the biggest I’ve seen), new RV rentals, the Skoolie I mentioned before and upgrades to the bathhouse. Some curmudgeons complain about changes or growth, but the owners aren’t in it to please those who are crabby. This is a business. As my father used to say “YCDBSOYA” (You can’t do business sitting on your ass). He had a tie clip with those letters engraved on it. That was back in the 1960s when men’s ties were little narrow slips of material.
Reflections on Retirement and Life in the Trailer
So it’s early spring and I’m sitting in the warmth of our trailer watching the busyness of the campground, waiting for the muse to take today’s meandering bevy of words to some type of conclusion and I’m struck with how much I am enjoying being fully retired.
The downside of this is I’m constantly looking for ways to create more space in the trailer. King and I both like order – King probably more so than me. I used to go into his office to move the paperweight on his desk. There was nothing else on his desk. I mean nothing. His computer and keyboard were hidden away in some drawer. There were no “in” baskets or “to do” baskets. Just that dumb paperweight. Moving it from the left side of his desk to the right side of his desk would drive him crazy. If I really wanted to annoy him, I would turn it upside down.
A Journalist’s Organized Chaos
On the other hand, I had neat piles of “important stuff” piled on my desk. I knew where everything went and it was in order – for me anyway. I had my Associated Press stylebook and a dictionary on the desk and a pile of notebooks – one for each of three city councils I covered, one for county commission, one for feature interviews, one for each school board (four of them), several township board notebooks, the EPA superfund site notebook, one for wind turbine public hearings and one for spontaneous notes for people who stopped in unannounced. I also had a flyswatter for unruly people who came in to yell at me. Most of the yelling was from the publisher who I fought with regularly. We had a difference of opinion over whether competitive cheer was a sport. I felt a tinge of smugness the other day when we attended our granddaughter’s soccer game in Paw Paw and our son pointed out the district was building a competitive cheer gymnasium. I now have to fight the urge to get on his Facebook page and say, “See you big ass-wipe. It is a sport.” I can’t though because I blocked him years ago, and unblocking someone is a pain, you have to wait a specified period of time to block them again.
Finding Space — and Contentment — in Small Places
That’s a long way around to say, I think I can put a shelf under the table in our kitchenette and keep my printer in a more easily accessible place. But then I have to find a place to keep my vitamins…
