Escapees September-October 2024

or the parents and grandparents! One older RVer told us he went Halloween camping every year for 15 years as he raised his kids (his youngest is now 24), but he still comes out on the weekends because it’s so much fun to pass out candy to the kids and see them showing off their costumes. He laughed as he told me that if you time it right, you can hit all six Michigan State Park campgrounds in this area from late September through October and experience the fun over and over in different settings! Some of the campsite decorations were very complex. A few campsites had morphed into graveyards with headstones carefully laid out around the RV. In one site a team of skeletons was seated in kayaks, paddling and fi shing alongside their toy hauler. Another campsite featured a skele ton bride and groom getting married under a trellis. As we walked around the campground taking photos, our pup Buddy did his usual snif fi ng and socializing. Suddenly, I felt him stiffen at the end of his leash. I looked down and he was crouched low and staring wide eyed at a scary corpse sticking out of the ground! He sniffed the corpse very gingerly and then jumped back in fright. I reassured him as he crept forward again. Soon he realized it wasn’t real, and he sauntered on with his tail in the air. We had missed the big trick-or-treat night, so we didn’t see the kids in their costumes or take part in the trick-or-treating. But the decorations and festive spirit of the camp ground got us in the mood for the upcoming holiday. What a super fun way for families to celebrate Halloween and extend their camping season past the end of summer. Check the campgrounds near you to see if they have any Halloween or Harvest events happening this Fall. If you go, walk softly and watch out for things that go bump in thenight! EMILY AND MARK FAGAN #99408 trav eled full-time by RV and sailboat for 13 years and now enjoy RVing seasonally. Their website RoadsLessTraveled.us is a treasure trove of travel and RVing tips. Emily has written hundreds of RV and sailing magazine articles, and the Fagans’ photography has been on magazine covers, wall calendars, at National Parks and in a museum!

Do your RV travel plans include any Halloween festiv ities this year? We discovered that campgrounds in the northern states, especially in the midwest, have a fantastic way to prolong the summer camping season by hosting Halloween and Harvest events! What a great way for families to continue camping and enjoying the outdoors long after the balmy days of summer are gone and school is back in session!

W e didn’t know about this a chilly, drizzly mid-October Sunday morn ing. We were shocked that the campground was packed to the gills, and we were grate ful there was one last available campsite for us! After setting up our trailer, we quickly took a stroll around the campground to fi nd out why it was so busy. To our surprise, all the campsites were decorated to the hilt with ghouls, goblins, skeletons, pumpkins and more! It was Halloween on Wheels! Families were shivering in the rain and huddled around their morning camp fi res, but nothing could dampen their spirits as they showed off their wild Halloween camp site decorations. Everyone had gone all out. Witches rode broomsticks, ghosts twisted in the wind, pumpkins grinned wickedly and skeletons were perched on everything from travel trailer hitches to picnic tables. A pair of skulls stared out the windshield of a big ClassA. It was evident from the power cords running this way and that between the campsites that the decorations really came alive at night when they were all lit up and the in fl atables were swaying in the breeze. However, even without any glow-in-the-dark spookiness, we still caught Halloween fever as we walked the campground loops and admired the ornamentation. As we chatted with our fellow campers, we learned that Michigan’s State Park campgrounds transform into trick-or-treat neighborhoods on Saturday nights in September/October. The kids dress up in Halloween costumes and go from campsite to campsite with their bags open and their hopes high. I don’t know who loves this tradition more, the kids wonderful tradition until we arrived at Metamora-Hadley Recreation Area in Michigan on

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ESCAPEES Magazine September/October 2024