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Suddenly There’s So Much to Do

I don’t mean that there’s work to be done, although we had some of that. But there’s also been a near constant stream of fun things going on around here. It seems like we kept busy all day every day for the past week or so.

To begin, we had a mystery. One night we didn’t sleep well because someone, somewhere kept shining a light in our windows sporadically all night long. Or so we thought. We blamed some workers fixing a water line at some condos across the street—they were definitely working all night, and we figured they just kept mis-focusing a spotlight that hit right in our window. Or, my first thought, did the drumfish start running and so all the fishermen were turning on their truck headlights to get out before dawn to make a big catch? Though we were tired, we kind of forgot about it as the day went on.

Then, we went to bed, and a few minutes later—a bright light! We were up and out, looking around, trying to find the source of the light. I had checked the time when we first saw the light, and just about nine minutes later, when we’d gone back in the camper, we saw it again. But wait—it actually seemed to be inside the camper. Ghosts?  Elves? Pixies in the electrical system? The last guess wasn’t too far off. We spent quite a lot of time first pinpointing the source, which Mike thought was one of the interior lights and I thought was a wiring harness end that was closer to where I was actually seeing the flash. Covering the end of the wiring harness with tape made no difference. Putting it in an opaque metal cup and stuffing in a black t-shirt around it made no difference. Every nine minutes, FLASH! Eventually we decided we needed to deal with it in the morning, and tried to get back to sleep with pillows over our heads.


A wiring harness in the Scamp—
was this the culprit?

The next morning, we discovered another issue—the light, which was super bright at night, was almost undetectable in the daylight. So I made a foil tube to tape in the place where we’d seen the light, to try to be able to see it. Yep, still flashing. I went up to the community tent to tell them we wouldn’t be there for the yoga and tai chi exercises because we had gremlins in our electrical system, and one of the ladies there asked if we had any remotes  because they can mess with LED lights. Ridiculously, we do have one remote, for the vent fan. We never use it, because the controls for the vent fan are easy to reach from almost anywhere in the camper. So we took the batteries out of the remote. I thought that stopped it, but no—I saw it flash again. But maybe not as regularly?


Looking up at the ceiling of the camper, this
was the aluminum foil viewing mechanism
I concocted to try to track the light during the day

Anyway, long story short, I contacted my sister Amy, who is a certified lighting expert, and she of course Googled it (which I had also done, but she knew more what to look for). Her first suggestion was to do a hard reset of the whole camper electrical system. Somehow, it seems as if a combination of taking the remote out of service and the hard reset stopped the flashing, thankfully. Mike called the Scamp people, and they were not surprised to hear of it; they thought it was something in the LED fixture. And maybe it was—we ordered a new one, but we are not going to switch it out unless the rhythmic flashing starts again.

A long introduction to the week . . . it did get better. The flashing lights happened on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. On Thursday, with the problem solved, I wandered around Port Aransas for their Chocolate Crawl, which was fun if a little underwhelming. There were about a dozen places participating, offering something chocolate (Halloween size candy, homemade buckeyes, brownies) or alcoholic (tiny wine margaritas at a boutique; a help-yourself thermos of grasshoppers at the town museum). The shops were fun, probably more people than they usually see on a February Thursday, and in fact the kite shop was a mob scene. Besides the fact that there were cute little kids selling Girl Scout cookies there, people flocked to the shop because Saturday is the Port Aransas Winter Kite Festival. I took a LOT of photos of kites. Here are a few!

 
  
  

But I can’t get ahead of myself; on Friday, we participated in the semi-monthly (bi-weekly?) cornhole tournament at the campground. We did not do great; we only won one game out of three, but we were told we played with panache. What more can you ask for? After the tournament, a BBQ food truck came and after waiting a bit for them to set up (we walked down to see some early kite flyers in the meantime), we had some so-so BBQ brisket. The sides were great, though—delicious mac & cheese and coleslaw.


The BBQ food truck, and our new friends
Corky and Gayle at left in the photo

Saturday was jam-packed. We woke up and went to the pancake breakfast at the tent, and then took off for Aransas Pass to see the Mardi Gras parade there. We weren’t sure where to park, but there were some spaces sort of between two roads that came together and the harbor, and that turned out to be a perfect spot. The parade came right past us, and just like in New Orleans, there were lots of beads and candy to collect. The floats were great, homemade and goofy, and I took lots of photos, but here are a few of the parade entries.

  

  

And I had a great time catching beads! (It was a family friendly event, so I only had to smile and wave.) I even got a t-shirt from the Krewe of Sirens. I really wanted some kind of Mardi Gras t-shirt; I didn’t expect it to get pitched at me, but all the better!


Me with my Mardi Gras beads

Saturday still had more to offer, the kite festival was in full swing when we got back. There were hundreds of kites, as far as the eye could see both up and down the beach. We walked a long way admiring the diamonds, deltas, box and double box kites, not to mention the octopi, cow, shark, spinners, and everything else. I did get a kite of my dad’s and tossed it up; it was so windy, flying kites was pretty much effortless, so I joined the festivities.


Flying my dad’s kite, which is on the left above

We also came across a camper that looked a lot like ours, except it was made of corrugated metal—in 1950. We talked to the lady who owns it; she knew it was called a Wigman, but hasn’t been able to find out any more about it. When she bought it, the camper had been gutted and used as a traveling boutique, so she had renovated it, or at least put a bed, a sink, and some storage in it.


A 1950 version of our camper we came across
at the beach during the big kite festival

Saturday ended with a sudden and fierce storm around 7:00 pm. There were supposed to be light-up kites, but all the kites came down fast when the lightning started. Then there was a monsoon-like downpour, even some hail, before it all ended about fifteen minutes later. A kind of wild ending to a fairly wild day. And with that, I’ll conclude this long entry. But the following week has been full of interesting adventures, too. More on that next time!

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