A long weekend is always welcome but I must admit we don’t tend to go away caravanning at those times because every other man and his dog does, so traffic can be a little nuts. This is especially so if you have plans to head to Yorke Peninsula in South Australia.

Yorkes itself is a beautiful spot anytime of the year and in around 2 to 3 hours you can be at any number of gorgeous seaside towns. BUT to get off the peninsula, and back into the highway flow of traffic can be a nightmare. When the holiday weekend ends everyone is trying to get home it seems at the same time so congestion is terrible.  It’s a standard thing to watch the news service and see how bad the line up is to get ‘off the peninsula’ every time there is a long weekend.

With this in mind though we decided to go anyway but thought we’d be smart and beat the rush by going a day early and coming home a day early. It worked!

However, by going a day earlier we left home later than we normally would (after a working day) and arrived after hours at the caravan park. That was all good with the friendly and helpful caravan park manager, thank you, but I was however feeling a little tired, irritable (from the day’s work, don’t ask) and more than ready for that first glass of wine.

Then things went a little pear shaped when we arrived at our site which was already surrounded on every side by others. A lot of grey nomads and a few others, were in the park still enjoying the last of their summer holidays. Good for them. As is our routine my husband backs the van in and I guide us to fit in position especially with sites all around us set up to the full extent.

Our van is 24 foot long and then put a landcruiser in front and it’s quite a big rig to shoe horn onto some sites. All is going well except for the need to swing the car to put the van in the right position, straight, on our site.  We wouldn’t make it with a car parked close to the road on the site opposite us.  No problem!  I will just ask the gentleman coming out of his van if he would mind moving his car back onto his site about a foot so we could straighten up the car and hence the van. His response… ‘If you come in from the other direction you’ll have no problem’.  After a moment of stunned silence in which I’m thinking ‘why of course, it would make much more sense for us to drive our 24 foot van off site, around the park and come in from a different direction than it would be for you to reverse your car 1 foot’. I instead replied with just the slightest hint of sarcasm 😉 ……’Thanks for your help!’

So take two, husband moves van, tows it around the park and back from the other direction and here we go again. Now we are not new at this type of thing, we have had a lot of experience in driving, towing, reversing, parking, etc…. but again on this attempt it is still a squeeze there is no way we can get the van straight on the site without encroaching on ‘Old Mate’s’ site across from us.  Seeing the difficulty he finally asks my husband….’Would you like me to move my car?’

NOW THERE’S A GOOD IDEA!!! But no, I wouldn’t want to put him out so told him don’t bother and we set ourselves up slightly skewed on the site.

It didn’t take long for our set up to be complete, the first bottle of wine cracked open, and a toast made….Cheers to you Old Mate, may the caravanning karma gods bring you all that you deserve.

The weekend did get considerably better from then on though and especially the next day when a young caravanner (who witnessed the exchange the day before) brought us some freshly caught, cleaned and cooked ready to eat crabs. Nice one, this is more like the Peninsula holidays we’ve come to know and love.

Be kind out there people!

Cheers

Glenys