Campers and trailers and tents,... Oh My!

This is an adventure of a different sort-- we didn't head out of the country, or even out of the state.  In fact our adventure happened less than 10 miles from home.

This is the story--- Grand daughter will enter public kindergarten next fall and her mom would like her to be in a specific school, which is not her neighborhood school.  To accomplish this transfer the central office takes "first come/first served" applications for transfer.  Some of their schools are HIGHLY requested, so to be sure their request is first in line, some anxious parents literally camp out at the central office parking lot.  The school district allows parents/family to begin this "camping out" process on the Monday before applications are taken on Saturday morning-- and some do begin to camp out that early.  My son-in-law had planned to park his pickup there and camp in the bed the night before.  No one can predict the weather right now, so we looked online for a camper to rent for one day.  No one seemingly wanted to rent any kind of camper for less than 3 days-- which we did not want or need.   A call was made to Nick's boat storage man who gave him names to contact.  He found a place in Cleburne that rents campers for their owners who were willing to rent for one day.  Arrangements made, we drove on Friday morning to pick up motorhome.  Since the plan was to have it in place in the parking lot by noon Friday (to get a low number for entry into the transfer process) we took the empty camper home to add needed supplies for an overnight stay.  That accomplished, I drove to the central office, got the "parking permit" for $50 and our all important NUMBER.

Note we have #32, and the folks who'd been there since Monday obviously had the really low numbers.  As it turned out, they quit allowing parking- and giving out numbers at close of business (4 pm) Friday afternoon- giving out a total of 50 parking spaces.

No electricity or water were available for this unique camping situation, but 3 "porta pottys" were positioned in the middle of the parking lot, and they were maintained-- I saw the truck "taking care" of them while we were there.  And we were fully contained with a generator, running water, heater, and bathroom facilities

We settled in with books, iPads, and pimento cheese and chips and just chilled out.  We expected the rest of the family to join us later.

We tapped into the district's "guest" WiFi but it wasn't very strong in the parking lot, so we created our own "hot spot" with our phones. 

And we waited, and we waited.  Nikki had some friends who were camping also and we received a text from her asking if  one of her friends could make use of our bathroom rather than the facilities provided in the parking lot.  She came by and we talked.    Nki and chickadee came and we played with the green slime she made at school, she and I went for a walk and then we attended a meeting where the rules and expectations were explained.

Family arrived with supper and after we ate "bootleg chicken" we left it with them.  Grand daughter and son-in-law went home to sleep and Nki and her friend camped.  They had heard that about midnight people would begin arriving to stand in line to register.  Let me explain-- the 50 with parking permits would be allowed in to apply for transfers first, then those who were standing in line would be allowed in according to their place in line.

 This picture was taken from the window of the camper at 6 am and the line runs from the front door of the central office  (the far end of the building  in the distance on the left of the picture) past where the camper was parked.  I'm guessing that to be about 100 yds.  I was told that someone who arrived to get in line at 4am was # 50 in the line. (Remember that is after all the camping permit numbers)

The doors opened at 7:30, the paperwork was done, and camper was returned to our house before 10 am.

The problems with this transfer system are that those who can't camp out for whatever reason, don't get as much access to transfer availability, that transfers should be handled in a more equitable manner using computer access and random selection and finally for us anyway, there are no guarantees.  People are signing up for a place on a waiting list that may or may not become available.  In Kindergarten, especially, no one knows what openings will be available until all the neighborhood kindergarten children register and are accounted for.

We completed the adventure by cleaning out and returning the camper to Cleburne.  A camping trip to be remembered.