Campground 7---Campers 0

As we were preparing to leave Apopka yesterday our neighbors came outside to chat and do a bit of complaining about the campground. It seems they had spoken to someone across the driveway who had ripped the rubber roof of their coach on a tree here in the campground, making the tally for our small segment of the camping area campground 6--campers 0. We shook our heads and carefully, carefully pulled out of our site, missing the low hanging tree to our right. After dumping our tanks on the other side of the campground, we made our way to the campground's exit.

Now, three days ago there were workers doing something to the exit lane that involved fresh concrete, so they converted one of the two gated entrance lanes to an entrance/exit area. It was convoluted and tight, but we figured by Monday the concrete would be dry and the real exit lane would be open. Not to be. So Denny slowly maneuvered our rig through the cones, but couldn't avoid the sharp corner of the "decorative" edging of our lane. As an entrance, the pointed end would be away from the tires, but going the wrong way, it was pointed right into the tires. We could see in the mirrors that the first of our three right side tires on the trailer ran into the point, but there was no room to maneuver away from it. On we went.

90 miles down the road in Sebring, FL we heard a loud bang and I checked the side mirror to see that we appeared to have a flat. Strangely enough, a half block down the street we saw a sign for a Goodyear store, so we limped down there and pulled in. Checking the tire we saw a large slash in the sidewall where the tire blew out. Damage from that darned sharp corner in the campground. The tire store carried a similar tire to ours, so Denny bought one and had it installed. We considered just putting the spare tire on, but figured if we had damaged the other two tires then we needed the spare for those, because we knew that the Moore Haven area was not one that had a lot of stores and businesses. While the business owner was super nice and chatted with me about Ohio, which is where his mother was from, one of the employees struggled with finding a way to jack up our trailer to get the tire changed. An hour and a half and one very hot kitty later, we were once again on our way. The rest of the trip was uneventful and we ended up parked next to a man who worked for the city of Dayton, OH and in a nice, open spot.

Final tally, campground 7--campers 0.

Final irony? A heart-shaped blowout.