Aylmer Express "MoHo" Extravaganza 2006

The weather was reasonable today but word on the street was that very high winds and rain were heading our way. I’m serious. A truck actually drove through our campground with a loud speaker informing us of the impending storm. They went on to say that should anyone need to take shelter they should head to the building with the restrooms and showers. Hmmmm. How bad is this coming storm going to be? They said they are expecting 40 to 50 mph (65 to 80 km/h) winds. That is not too bad if you are in a house. If you are in a MoHo, it is a little less enjoyable. But I guess if you are in a tent, the restrooms would start to look like an attractive alternative. Anyway, it was a nice day so we decided to check out all the bike trails at this state park. First we made a stop at the local coffee shop/internet cafe to get some blogging uploaded since the campground did not offer any internet access. Then Chantal and I had to finish up a few things at the MoHo before we could set out so the kids decided to head out on their own for a few minutes while they were waiting for us. When we hooked up with them 10 minutes later we found that they had already made some new friends. Only this time the friends that they had made were a retired couple who were sailing remote control sailboats. When we arrived at the small lake it was the kids who were sailing the remote control sailboats. We had seen a group of people sailing these boats when we drove by the lake this morning. I had just assumed that these boats were just made up to look like sailboats but had a motor on board which was controlled by the remote controller. However I was shocked to find out that these boats only had a sail and a rudder that was remote controlled. All the power was provided by the wind, just like a real sailboat. Amazing! I got a chance to try it out and, low and behold, you could easily control the speed of the boat by simply adjusting the rudder and the angle of the sails. Unbelievable. After thanking them for letting us give that a try, we set out on our bike ride. As we cruised around we found out that not only is it a beautiful, agrestic location, but there were many other activities available, depending on the time of year. They had boat rentals, they had a water park area for kids, they had a train ride around the park, they had a good-sized play structure and park, and we even passed by what looked like a kayak race course laid out on one section of the small river. We also happened across a sand sculpture that had been created for the festival that was superb which you can see from the photo. All in all, a splendid park that we would happily recommend to anyone wanting to camp in the Charleston area. When we returned to the campground we slowly cruised by all the sites to check out what other MoHo-ers we driving. We saw some pretty nice RVs. At one point we passed a gentleman who was getting something out of one of the storage compartments of his Dutch Star by Newmar. Newmar is a company that builds some of the nicest quality, and likely most expensive, motor homes. The difference between me getting things out of our storage compartment and this man’s activities was that, instead of sticking my head and arms into the compartment and removing the stuff at the front to get at the stuff at the back, this man had simply opened the side door and then slide out the huge drawer-like platform thereby exposing all the items in the compartment and making them easily accessible. Sweet. I struck up a conversation with him and the next thing I knew his wife was giving all of us a tour of their MoHo. No THAT is what I’m talking about when it comes to life on the road. It was not only big but also gorgeous inside. They had four big slide-outs making the unit much wider inside than our humble little MoHo. When you see a rig like that you can see why people don’t mind living in their motor home. After that is was back to reality. We grab dinner in our MoHo and then got prepared for an official tour of the Festival of Lights. I thought it might be nice to ride my bike around the road along which all the displays had been erected but then I realized it would be at night so that would not be too safe. Then I thought we could just walk, but I found out that they don’t allow either walkers or bikers on the road. It was a safety thing which makes sense considering everyone driving down this road is looking at all the displays rather than bikes and pedestrians. So we jumped in our car and headed out. It was quite impressive. I cannot imagine how many people must be involved in putting this together but I did hear that it takes about 3 months to get all the lights set up. And the cool thing is that many of the displays are “moving”. They don’t really move but the way the lights are set up and turned on and off gives the illusion of movement, Check out the videos I took to get an idea. After the Festival of Lights it was time for bed for the kids and blogging for me.

Today’s word:

agrestic \uh-GRES-tik\, adjective:
Pertaining to fields or the country; rural; rustic.