What are Those Painted Rocks?

Well last night we actually need sweatshirts by the fire!  What a change in the weather – form sweating constantly to sweatshirts in under 24 hours.  Well, that’s New England.  Today we are officially into the Labor Day weekend. 

Lori and I provided another day of community service.  Because of the holiday weekend we will remain on site.  This makes us available to the staff for any unusual occurrences. In the past we avoided camping on the holidays because the campgrounds become very noisy and – at least to me – it seems you get the less than courteous campers.  You know the ones I’m talking about.  The ones who use your site as the short cut to get to their friend’s site.  Yah, those guys!  Here at Horseneck the sites are set to place the campers end-to-end and there is plenty of room between sites.  Our host campsite is in the middle of a row and directly across from the restrooms.  For this holiday weekend it was obvious that the two rigs in front of me and the one behind me were all a part of the same group of friends.  I feared for the worst!  I have to admit that this group of campers understands campground etiquette!  What a pleasant surprise!

We got to enjoy some time with the grandkids again. 

They were off to great-grandparents cottage for the annual Labor Day picnic and started their day’s journey by visiting with us.  Lori had them painting rocks, seashells, and sea stars (we used to call them starfish!) to hide in the campground – these are called Kindness Rocks.  Eventually other kids find these items and they can either hide them in a new place – even an entirely different park or campground – or they can keep them.  Since we’ve been here Lori has placed over 100 items for the kids to find.  Because this is not a commercial campground families come and go – arriving and departing mid-week or mid-weekend.  This unique turnover causes the painted items disappear quickly.  After the grandkids left Lori continued painting and this attracted the attention of the kids in the site in my ‘backyard’.  Before you know it she has a crew of three working on painting items and, as soon as they are  dry, hiding them!!!  These guys are putting some miles on and will certainly sleep well tonight!  While the production effort was on Mom came over to make sure the kids were behaving and to thank Lori for spending time with them to craft.  So what is the moral of today’s story?  Every place is different and every situation unique.  There is an oriental proverb that goes – You can never stand in the same river twice. Turns out you also cannot live the same moment twice.  Enjoy until tomorrow.