July 29, 2023 It was going to be hot today with a high of 95 and it was already 83 at 9:30. I got up early and saw Mary and John leave at 7:30. We’ll see them back in Palmetto. Other campers left as well and the campground emptied out quite a bit. I had a leisurely breakfast and Bob took a walk up to the campstore to return two of our movies. Upon his return, he noticed that we had gotten “ducked” last night. Someone left this duck on our Jeep.
Jeep enthusiasts have this “game” whereby they acknowledge your Jeep by leaving a duck on it! The “Duck, Duck Jeep” game has no hard and fast rules, but the main premise is that one Jeep driver puts a rubber duck on another Jeep with a note to explain. When the recipient finds it, they take a picture of it and post the photo on social media with the hashtags #duckduckjeep or #duckingjeep. Then the duck can be passed on to another Jeep to keep it going OR if you want to keep your gifted duck, you can buy your own ducks and give them to someone else. Many people keep their ducks to add them to their collection. So far, we have been ducked 8 times during our travels and have left 5 or 6 ducks on other Jeeps. I have a bag of ducks that I keep with me to share with other Jeep owners. Last night, we met another Jeep owner and found out that there are some Jeep trails near the West Virginia/Virginia border. We recently found out that there is also a thing sponsored by Jeep called the “Badge of Honor”. If you register and complete the drive on a Jeep trail, you fill out a form to prove that you completed it and mail it in. Then Jeep will send you a Badge of Honor (magnet) to display on your Jeep. The guy we talked to must have had 10 attached to his Jeep. There are a bunch of Jeeps here in the campground from his club. They are doing some trails tomorrow to earn their badges. I did register us with the Badge of Honor site to see what’s it’s all about. Bob read a sign in the camp office that said there is a natural honey beehive in site #21 in this tree which is right across the road from us.
We went over to take a closer look and sure enough they were flying in and out of the tree.
The campground asked everyone to steer clear of the area so as not to disturb the bees. Otherwise, the office might need to destroy the hive and they don’t want to do that. I hope people listen! This afternoon, the campground is celebrating Christmas in July. There are some activities planned for adults and kids–making Christmas ornaments and decorating Christmas cookies. There was an ice cream social to raise money for Care Camp–a camp for kids with cancer at 3:00. Bob and I went down for a little ice cream treat and I got to sit on Santa’s lap.
Later in the afternoon, there was a swim with Santa and hayride with Santa. People seemed to have fun!
We took some time today to look at the remainder of our itinerary. Bob thought we needed to adjust our plans a little bit because we had a pretty long drive one day and he wanted to break that into two smaller drives. We made some calls and made the adjustments. We also made some plans to hook up with our friends in Asheville, NC. I did 3 loads of wash and we hung out in the AC during the heat of the day. It was pretty warm in the sun, humid, and there was absolutely no breeze. We sat out with Auggie for a little while, but we didn’t stay out for long. After dinner, we took our walk, but we waited until later to let it cool down a little. Tomorrow we have plans to go into Harrisonburg to check it out.