Springtime at Hillbilly Acres

That's what the Farm Manager has been calling the place. Maybe "Falling Downs" is too subtle...

I think it's all part of her master plan to have me get rid of a winter's worth of empties.

In the fullness of time.

That's what I tell her. That's what I used to tell my children when they were lobbying for this or that.

Ya, OK, we'll do that...

When?

In the fullness of time...

As a bullshit answer to serious questions, serious at least in the mind of the questioner, you have to admit that's a good one.

It doesn't nail you down.

We don't necessarily have to do this or that next weekend or the one after, because that may not yet be the fullness of time.

For years the Farm Manager has been lobbying for a camping rig that will allow her to sleep "off the ground."

For me, sleeping on the ground is the essence of camping, so I gave this lobby job the full "fullness of time" treatment.

The empties do pile up over the winter months. Not that you can't take them back in the winter; there's just something about being in hibernation mode that mitigates against it.

Also, you let the empties pile up long enough, taking-back-the-empties day sort of becomes an extra payday. You cart your empties in there and come out with a case of beer AND twenty bucks in your pocket.

That's a win-win if ever there was one. Unfortunately it'll take a few months before it's gonna happen again...

Sleeping "on the ground" is a bit of bullshit to begin with. We have always had the tent floor and a couple of foamies between us and the ground. Even experimented with an air mattress for a couple of years.

Besides, when you are out in mother nature in the deep north, hiking and inhaling all that all-too-fresh air all day long, and then quaffing a six-pack or two to wash down those campfire-cooked hot-dogs, there's absolutely nothing that can keep you awake once your head hits the pillow, whether that pillow is one inch or six inches or four feet off the ground.

Be that as it may, the Farm Manager got so fed up with the "fullness of time" runaround that she went out and bought us an old Rockwood camper.

A tent trailer.

Ya, I'm thrilled. Now I have to weld a hitch on the van. We towed the Rockwood home behind the farm truck, but that ain't gonna be the tow unit for our cross-country junkets.

The farm truck is pretty much limited to back forty junkets these days, and the previous owners of the Rockwood were only about ten minutes past that, so we were good to go.

But the annual North of Superior pilgrimage won't be happening with the farm truck.