Melt Down

Boy, have we had a day.  I don’t think I want to call it exciting, but it was certainly different from what we had planned.

Yesterday ended well.  We had a relaxing evening and when we got tired we locked the door, pulled down the shades, turned off the lights and went to bed.  About 3 AM I had to go to the bathroom and when I got back in bed I noticed the electricity was off.  That was strange because I could see the lights were on in the bath house.  I looked out another window and could see Christmas lights brightly shining on a rig across the way.  Since it appeared to only be us without power, I woke Gene up to report my findings.

He was not thrilled, but got out of bed anyway.  Our breaker inside was not tripped, so he put on shoes and a coat and went outside to check the post.  All seemed well, so he unplugged and plugged our cord back into the outlet.  That set off sparks and sizzles.  The electricity came on, but only for an instant.  Gene unplugged the cord and left the problem for the light of day.

A quick check of the post this morning indicated that things had gotten a little hot in there.  Just before 8 AM Gene called the park office to report the problem.  There was someone from maintenance at our site within 10 minutes.  He had all the parts to change out the unit in the post and after about an hour he plugged us back in.  We had electricity briefly and then it went out again.  By this time, one of the work campers had showed up on the scene.  Their second project was to change the breaker box at the post.  With that done, they plugged us in again and again we had electricity briefly.

Immediately after Gene had made the call to the park office, he had called Four Winds tech support and described to him what the end of our electrical cord looked like.  It was only slightly scorched, so the tech guy felt like it would be safe to use.  However, after the maintenance guy and the work camper had replaced all the parts in the post, they started looking at our cord.  It was more damaged than Gene had realized.  They sent Gene off to get a replacement.  Luckily, a camp store just a few miles down the road had one and we dashed off to get it.  I had to do the driving because Gene’s back is still not as good as it should be.

From the time we got back with the replacement part, the work camper had it reinstalled and electricity flowing within 30 minutes.  And he did it for free.  How nice was that.  Better bake that man some brownies.

As we were leaving the campground to get the electrical part, we passed an ambulance, a couple police cars, a few park ranger cars, and a fire truck parked on the side of the road near the turn off for the Wildlife Center.  We couldn’t see where there had been a crash, but there were so many cars there it was hard to tell what was going on.  We thought maybe a motorist had hit a bicyclist.  The road is curvy and it could easily happen.  When we got back to the park with our electrical part, even more fire trucks and police cars were there.  Now they had the road blocked.  I pulled over to the shoulder to wait.

Finally, after we had sat there for about 20 minutes, one of the policemen came over and suggested we might want to go around.  When I asked what had happened all he said was “hunting accident”.   Before I could move, a news van pulled up behind me.  My window was still down from talking with the police officer, so the reporter started asking me questions.  One of her questions was if we’d seen the helicopter.  That was a pretty juicy tidbit of information, so I asked her what had happened.  She said hunting accident, too, but she didn’t rush off like the policeman had.  We learned from her that bow hunting is allowed in Oak Mountain State Park.  That was a surprise to us.  We’d never even considered there’d be hunters here.  She didn’t have much more information to share and the party started to break up anyway, so we were waved on through.

Being curious about hunting in the park, for my own safety don’t you know, I did a little internet researching this afternoon.  I learned that officials started allowing bow hunting in Oak Mountain to help thin the deer herd which is over populated here and thus not very healthy.

This evening, I learned from one of the local TV channels, that a hunter had shot himself in the chest when he fell out of a tree stand.  He apparently had a hand gun tucked away in a pocket somewhere.  Now that explains the party on the road--a real crime scene investigation.

That was our day.  Hope yours was just as exciting. Thanks for tagging along.