Assateague Island is just minutes from Ocean City, Maryland, but it might as well be in another world. Ocean City is a busy resort community with tourist trap souvenir stands, fast food places, and shops everywhere. The boardwalk at Ocean City is a great place to see people and stores. There's always a bunch of kites flying in the sky and often someone is making a giant castle or sculpture in the sand on the beach.
Within sight of Ocean City, is Assateague Island. It's a mostly barren place covered with low bushes and vegetation. It's known for it's wild horses. When we got to the island, there was a very prominent sign that said that you have to have reservations to get into the campground. We had no such reservation. With hope, we entered the campground anyway to see if we could stay. We got there the first or second week of June, and we got there on Tuesday, so the campground was not full. This was before their big season. They gave us a site and we set up camp in the Airstream. There were no hook-ups at Assateague, but that's okay with us (this may have changed by now). We are self contained. We didn't use the toilet in our trailer except for emergencies because we have a big family, and I didn't feel like dealing with the holding tank!
Before we got to Assateague Island, we had heard about the wild horses. I had hoped to see one, but I fully expected to see one only at a great distance ...I imagined it would be running away, free spirited, with it's mane blowing in the wind, and that I'd just get a glimpse of it.
The first night of our visit, I had left something in the car that I wanted. I was in the Airstream and the car was still hitched up. Sure it was pitch black out there, but I didn't need a flashlight to find the car. "Flashlights are for sissies!". As I was stepping out of the door of the Airstream, I heard something that sounded kinda big just outside the door. "Whoa", I said. "Maybe I'd better get a flashlight!" So, I fumbled around and found a flashlight and when I shined it out the door of the trailer, all I could see was the rear end of a horse. I would have walked out the door right into the back end of a horse! The sign in the campground said to stay away from the horses because they bite and kick. I most certainly would have walked into the kicking end of that horse!
Those "wild horses" weren't all that wild after all. They turned out to be moochers in the campground. They really like the grass that grows in the campground, so they hang around there much of the time. They also like some of the food people leave out, so once in a while they help themselves so a camper's food. One night, a horse ripped his head through the neighbor's screen house to get to some food that they had left on the table. When I got up in the morning the neighbor was trying to sew up the huge hole in his screen with dental floss!
We had a terrible storm the second night. The wind really blew and the rain came pouring down. That's a typical occurrence on one of our campouts. Since we were in the Airstream, we could just look out the window and say, "My, that's a nasty storm out there!" and then go to sleep knowing that the trailer is safe and secure. You sure don't get that feeling in a tent or a pop-up camper!
The forth night out, I was sitting at the picnic table reading a map while the rest of the crew was inside getting ready for bed. It was quite dark out. Suddenly, somebody yelled out the door, "The water pump's not working!" Since this was the trip that started out with trailer brake problems and the alternator on the car freezing up, I was really upset when I heard that about the water pump! "Geez! Another problem!", I thought. When I went in the Airstream to look, the first thing that I noticed was that every light bulb in the place was lit up. "Why are all these lights on?" , I asked in an irritated voice. "Because it wasn't bright enough in here. We could hardly see so we had to keep turning on more lights", I got as an answer. True enough, it was not very bright, and all the bulbs burned with a dull orange-yellow color. "No wonder the water pump isn't working", I said. "You've got all the lights on and you've killed the battery!" ....But, this should not have been the case.
I've got one battery in the Airstream. A Univolt, or rather, a replacement for the original Univolt, charges up the battery (and /or provides 12 volts ) when the trailer is hooked up to 120 volt power. (There is nothing except the charger and the refrigerator that can use 120 volts in our '71 Globe Trotter). At Assateague, we had no electric hookups. The battery can only last four days at the most without charging, with this family. But, I have two batteries in the tow car also. One battery is reserved for engine cranking. The other battery is connected thru the electric plug back to the trailer. That means that the trailer has two batteries to draw from, one in the car and one in the trailer. Since the car is always going somewhere when we are camping, the car batteries stay charged up and battery power will last indefinitely. Whenever we go someplace and then get back to the campground, we hook up the electric plug from the trailer to the car as soon as we return so the freshly charged battery in the car helps keep the battery in the trailer from running down. Therefore, the dim lights and the stalled water pump should not have been! It turned out that the fuse I installed in the line for the hot wire (12 volt line) from the car battery to the trailer plug had blown for some reason (it might have had something to do with the alternator problem). Therefore, the electric was not getting from the car to the trailer. As soon as I put the new fuse in, the lights were bright again! I have since replaced that fuse with a circuit breaker.
We spent a number of days at Assateague Island, and enjoyed our stay. The trips into Ocean City were fun. It seemed that everyone was flying or selling kites. The wind blows constantly. There were all kinds of touristy things to do there .....not that we could do that many of them since we had 4 kids with us. It turned out to be a great vacation in spite of the troubles I had getting there. It's nice to have an Airstream trailer that doesn't make trouble for me!