Day 25 -- Virginia Beach, Virginia
Sunday 7/22/2001
Lilly and I got up just after 6 and did a morning run. It was muggy, but the run was nice. By the time we got back, we started to kick life into the kids. We began preparing breakfast. Isabella was hard to get out of the tent and she was moody too. After breakfast I helped Isabella take down and fold the tent. We cleaned up things a little bit around the trailer and inside. This morning we were getting a visit from an old Swedish friend of Lillemor: Eva Tingwall. Eva and her family were over on vacation from Sweden in Virginia Beach. They arrived just before 11. It was a sweet reunion for Lilly. They spent much of the day chatting about assorted things, while I talked to Eva's husband, Ulf. Isabella was very shy and not forthcoming in playing with Sofie. Erik was the same with Adam. I was not too happy about that.
For lunch we did take out, for the first time during this vacation. We tried to eat by one of the pools, which had been quite for some time. But just as myself and Ulf returned from food shopping, some very noisy kids arrived with their dad at the pool and it was loud and wet. We ate, and tried to have a conversation, but it did not work well. After we'd eaten, we moved over to another pool on the campground. By 5pm Eva and her family left and we started to wrap up our things to leave.
Isabella, Sofie, Eva and Lillemor
Adam, Ulf, Per and Erik
We were thinking about taking a different route home, to avoid some of the heavy traffic around DC and Baltimore. I did not have any hope that the people in the reception would be able to help, so I looked around on the campground for anyone who may have come from New Hampshire. It did not take long until I found a motor home from Pelham (which is not far from Merrimack). This guy usually took route 13 over Delaware and up. I recall that we came down that way back in 1994 when we drove to Disney World but I was not sure you'd be able to take that route with a camping trailer. The guy said it would be no problem at all. I annotated a computer map with roads he proposed we should take and then went back to the trailer to complete packing up for the trip tomorrow.
Karl (complete with bicycle blisters from Orlando) passed out during picture taking
We ate dinner outside. It was nice. Before going to bed I wanted to take a shower. Things would not drain out of the shower tub. It was completely plugged. Cleaned that out and it flowed nicely, but I barely had any water coming out of the shower head. Thought the water supply at the campground was strained. But after the shower I checked the pressure outside the trailer and now suspect that my outside water filter is completely plugged. No surprise there, as we've used it for over a year while it is only rated for 500 gallons of use. After dinner, the kids watched cartoons that the campground showed. I tried to go to sleep just before 9, but the kids were making lots of noise and rocking the trailer back and forth. Once again we slept without the air conditioning on.