An Embarrassment of Reindeer

Take Holiday Blvd, turn right at Reindeer Run, left at Rudolph Blvd, right on Santa Lane, and left on Snowflake. You’ll find me next to a tree at the second site on the left, 36D—“D” for “deluxe”: concrete pad, 30/50 amp, with a very short walk to Blitzen Bay swimming pool and the takeout-only Blitzen Kitchen, serving piping hot pizza and ice cold ice cream cones, shakes, and slushies, mix and make your own flavors from 39 choices. They even deliver pizzas 6-10pm to your site.

Welcome to Lake Rudolph Campground and RV Park, in the heart of Santa Claus, Indiana, across the highway from Christmas Lake Village, and down the road from Kringle Place. This RV park is so big, it probably has its own ZIP code. Two hundred RV and tent sites, 200 more RVs parked and ready to rent. Officially named neighborhoods and roads (very necessary for navigating this place). A fleet of golf cart rentals for getting around (also necessary when you’re as big as some of the folks I’ve seen in Indiana).

The campground is next door to the Holiday World/Splashin’ Safari amusement park, so the place is overrun with kids, teens, and families. Free minibuses shuttle campers between both places all day long, and when the rides are running, wolf howls whine above the trees every 60 seconds, marking the progress of some ride. Screeches of terror, yelps of surprise, and the growl of a wooden coaster echo across Lake Rudolph near the camp store.

It’s raining now, a warm thunderstorm crashing as it passes west to east over the campground. I’m under the cover of the Blitzen Kitchen porch enjoying a cinnamon eggnog ice cream cone while my pizza cooks. At the first sign of lightning they closed the pool and took down its umbrellas. Winds whip leaves and dust from the heart of the trees, causing one Blitzen Kitchen customer to ask how she and her family were going to keep debris off their ice cream on the walk back to their campsite.

I tuck my 12" pizza box, hot and smelling of pepperoni and cheese, under my arm like a flat, square football and go back to the trailer while the winds increase. Campers all around me are scurrying to close awnings before a gust peels them off the rig. This storm is just a pattering of rain compared to the four-hour deluge in Indianapolis, but I’ve shut down my computer just to be safe.

Today was my second back-in site, and this park was ready with lots of help when I asked. Two men immediately made offers to back the trailer for me, but were also fine with helping me do it myself. It took three of them to get me in, mostly because none of them had seen my kind of sliding hitch before, and they couldn’t figure out why their steering instructions weren’t working. I suspect that if one of them had actually tried to back it in, he’d have taken just as many attempts as we did with me behind the wheel. Once I took charge of the steering and just asked them to make sure I didn’t hit anything, we got it in pretty quickly.

Already the terrain has changed to forested hills, and I’m beginning to sense a shift in the nation’s landscape. I prefer this southwest part of Indiana to the endless corn and soybean fields in the middle of the state, although that weariness may also be from seeing the same kinds of fields ever since Nebraska.

Don’t know what I’ll do for the next few days in this area. Besides the amusement park (which does look pretty cool in the brochure), there’s a local Benedictine abbey, Lincoln’s childhood home, the Santa Claus museum, the Santa Claus Candy Shop, a buffalo farm, a small town a few miles north, and of course Christmas-related shops and restaurants. Choices, choices. I’m also nearly straddling the Central/Eastern time zone. Stay where I am, and it’s 8:45am. Head a few miles north, and it’s 9:45am. Urg—my brain can’t handle that just now.

Town hall, Santa Claus style.