Friday came and weather warnings were issued, I am pretty sure the weather man waits for us to say we are going camping and then issues warnings. The girls at work proceeded to tell me about all the warnings before I left for the day, thanks guys. I wasn't really concerned at this stage until the radio news came on and tornadoes was mentioned in the weather forecast. WTF? Straight on the phone to Joel, "babe, tornadoes? Are you sure you still want to go?" Of course Joel didn't believe me so as soon as I got home I jumped in the truck and we were off. Another hour clicked past and another weather report on the radio. Secretly I was hoping that the tornado word was mentioned again so Joel didn't think I was just trying to get out of going camping! And it was! By this time we were half way there and no point of returning home now. Tornadoes or no tornadoes!
We arrive at rainbow and pull up at the Rainbow Beach Holiday Village, this is the one next to the BP right in the middle of town. We get our paperwork including a pin code to open the boom gates to the park. Heading in, we encounter a young guy in a van who is already in the park and is trying to get out of the park at the opposite boom gate. He's forgotten to bring his pin code and can't get out. He asks for ours so Joel puts the number in our side and reads the number out to the guy in the van. We go in, van goes out, no problem?! BIG mistake but we will come back to this.
Following our map to our site, everything looks really nice, turn a corner and here's our site covered with small children, lucky us, we had been put at a site right next to the pool and the BBQ area, people everywhere, tight little spot to get into, only good thing was toilets were close cuz I was busting! Joel lined it up and backed the trailer in, looked good to me! However Joel proceeded to pull the camper back out and said we are on the wrong side of the concrete slab...now I wouldn't have noticed this until I had set up the whole camper so luckily Joel is in control of this department. I'm sure out of all the people standing around watching us one of them would have said rookie mistake! Haha
We set up and this takes us around an hour. By this time we are starving and decide to head straight out to get fish and chips for dinner. You know how I said we would come back to the big mistake, well here it is. We proceed to the out boom gate and put in our pin code, boom gate doesn't move. I think Joel is just doing it wrong so I get out of car and enter it, still nothing. I look around for someone to help, everything is closed up. We make the assumption that this gate is broken and we decide to try the in boom gate to see if we can go out there. It works so Joel reverses and goes out the in. Next minute a man who looks like he's had too many beers and has no shirt on says "what's happening here champ?" Joel told the story thinking in the back of his mind, who is this joker and if he doesn't piss off soon I'm going to tell him to $&ck off. He said its not broken you have done something wrong, at this point we realised he was from the park management. Anyway to cut a really long conversation short, he just kept saying you have done something wrong and treating us like we were criminals while telling us how sophisticated his security was. Turns out your pin code knows if you are in or out of the park, so when we thought we were just doing a good deed for the young guy in the van we actually told the boom gate we were heading out of the park. So when we tried to actually leave the pin code wouldn't work, then we opened the in gate telling the boom gate we were now in the park when we were actually just outside of it! So we couldn't get back into the park that night and had to leave the car outside. Well this whole thing put us off the whole park and put us both in a bad mood for the rest of the night. To top this off the fish and chips were awful, the dogs were painful, the kids were noisy and we decided just to go to bed and wake up and try and have that relaxing time tomorrow!
All night dogs were whinging and wanting to go out, wanting to get on the bed, wanting to get off the bed, Joel couldn't sleep cuz he had worked himself into such a frenzy over the days events, I couldn't sleep cuz all of that was going on, so got up to go to the loo and get some fresh air. Took my pin code to get into the toilets! Yes you read right. Got to the toilet door, no glasses couldn't see any of the digits on the pin pad! Put in what I thought was the pin code three times and after each attempt failed and people were staring I gave up and went back to the van! Got my glasses waited for the crowd to disperse from the toilets and went back, pin code in, turn the knob, I'm in! Freedom!
At 5am when we were still awake from the night before and the weather looked like it was about to turn to shit, we decided to pack up and head home, the dogs, the pin codes and the weather was driving us crazy. Got up packed the camper, went to get the car to hook it up and remembered we couldn't get into the park and would have to wait until 7 for someone to be in the office. At this point we just decided to go for a walk along the beach and then had a coffee at the shak. By this time it was 7, Joel went in to get a new pin code and came back out more pissed off, cuz the guy said that he fixed it last night cuz everyone was having trouble with their pin codes and he was sorry about last night etc etc. we went in the in boom gate with our pin code, hooked up the trailer and went out the out boom gate never to return to that park. I really wished we had of just picked the simple caravan park at Carlo point where you don't need a pin code to have the simple freedoms of coming and going as you please and peeing when you want!
Driving out of rainbow, Joel suggested we go a different way home to test out the camper on a gravel road. We set our phones up to direct us home and lead us down cooloola way. Now in Joel's defence we had already been on this road in a commodore so we figured in a 4wd it should be pretty easy. How so much can change in a couple of years and obviously the floods and rain had made a huge difference to the roads surface!
There was hill climbs, one metre deep ruts, mud pits, water, trees down, pretty much every 4wdrivers dream along this road. We got lost, we did a few u turns, 2 hours later we could see in front of us a smooth bitumen road, yes we made it! Next minute clunk crash bang bang donk. (That is nothing like what it sounded like but it was a noise that made us look at each other and say wtf was that!!) Joel gets out, looks around cant see anything, I'm too scared to even look, I thought for sure we were done for and with the bitumen road just ahead we would have to be towed onto it! Turns out it was a d shackle that had rattled undone and fallen off the front of the car and had obviously hit a few things underneath the car and camper to make the clunk crash bang bang donk noise I referred to before! Thank god! We could proceed all the way home on the smooth bitumen road.... Only took us 4 hours but we are home now. Overall I think this trip was worth it to find out the things below....
Things we learnt on this trip
Check what Joel's mum is doing before we make plans
Don't take dogs camping
If you see boom gates at a park find another one to stay at! This could be challenging considering they seem to be everywhere now. Haha
If you do have boom gates do not be a kind person and give out your pin code to anyone that asks, guard it with your life
Always check where the van site is located, near pool, bbq etc and consider asking if there are any other sites available
If a weather warning is issued it doesn't mean that it will actually happen! We didn't see one tornado, one drop of rain etc
Always think before backing into the camp site to ensure the door is on the correct side, this will avoid weird stares and embarrassment!
If there is a pin code for the amenities ensure glasses are on before heading to the toilet, especially at night time!
It only takes us about 20 mins to pack up the van
Whe you are tired and cranky taking the bumpy road in probably not the best option
If you set your phone maps to walk instead of drive it gives you the shortest route however also a route that is undriveable!
If you do some awesome 4wdriving over 1 metre ruts you should get your passenger to film it or at least take a photo of the ruts as proof. This is a Big one for us because this blog will get pretty boring if I don't include pics!
clunk crash bang bang donk noises are not always the end of the world.
"Go out and make a difference!"
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