July 4 at Santee Lakes

July 4 is one of those holidays when we rent nearly all of our units. After a grueling week preparing for the rush, after the last rental rolled away, we loaded up one of the few remaining units – the 32’ Sprinter trailer with 2 bedrooms – and headed to nearby Santee Lakes to camp near some visiting relatives.

The Sprinter is an amazing trailer. A 2008 model, the interior is pristine. The front bedroom has a queen bed and the rear bedroom has 4 bunk beds and plenty of storage. In the large living area, the sofa opens into a true sofa bed and the wrap-around dinette makes into a large bed as well. There are beds for 10, although you could squeeze a few more in on the floor. The trailer has two separate entrances and, interestingly, the second entrance opens into the bathroom. This is a great idea when you are camping and you don’t want to track dirt or beach sand through the entire trailer to get to the bathroom. (With the sofa bed open, it blocks the aisle, so the occupants of the front bedroom might have to use that second entrance to get to the bathroom at night too!)

Our weekend in the Sprinter also reminded us why it is so important (besides being fun…) for us to try out all our rental units so we know all the features and problems to tell future renters about. This unit had never been rented yet, so if we had not used it ourselves, we would not have known about a blown fuse. Dan ran up to Wal-Mart and fixed that in a few minutes. We also discovered that if you run the air conditioner, an electric skillet and a coffee maker at the same time, the a/c fuse will heat up and pop repeatedly. We turned off everything and let the a/c breaker cool off and when we started up the air again we had no problems. If this problem had happened to a novice renter, it might have spoiled their vacation.

Santee Lakes is a great little getaway in the middle of the city. As a matter of fact, I am typing this blog sitting at the dinette in the Sprinter using their free wireless internet access. The dogs are looking out the door at Nicholas and his cousin riding bikes out front, barking at any ducks that stroll by. The older kids are at the pool. Earlier, we rented a couple of bumper boats…I mean paddle boats. You can go fishing from a boat or the shore. With cable TV hookups, we can catch some fireworks shows from the east coast on the large flat-screen TV on the wall between the living room and bedroom (which, by the way, you can rotate so the TV is in the bedroom instead).