"akheel" wrote in message
...
I had a great time at Lake Mojave this 4th of July weekend, but it ended
on
a sour note. We "camp" on the lake during the day and pull the boat each
night and stay in a nice air conditioned hotel in nearby Laughlin.
Thousands of others do the same. As is the custom, we left our gear at
our
site overnight, covered with the tarps from our awnings. We've never had a
problem before, and felt relatively safe, since the site is only
accessible
by boat.

We left about 7pm on the 4th to see the fireworks over the river outside
of
the hotel. We got back late the next day at around 1pm. Well, for the
first time in 10 years, someone had ripped us off. A few hundred dollars
worth, but that's not the point. The kids had looked forward to playing on
the floating island we had. We looked forward to sitting on the beach on
chairs. The took everything and obviously spent some time. The only thing
left were our awnings (thank G-d, at least we had shade) and oddly enough,
our barbeque. This was odd, because believe it our not, they took the
half-bag of charcoal we had left. They took my daughter's water shoes
(what
the hell are they gonna do with that?) and my favorite land anchor with
the
built in slide hammer. They took my buddy's jet ski anchor, which is just
a
bag full of rocks and a rope.

Anyway, when I see boat sales are up 21% I don't necessaryily think that's
a good thing. Obviously, based on my experience, any jerk can buy a boat.
Just another carefree activity that is less so now. Thanks to whomever.

Yep, back in the early '50's when we first moved to our house on the Rock
River in Illinois, we left our boats tied to the bank with "rope" and never
took our fishing poles and gas tanks out of the boats. But about 1958, when
dependable larger boat motors, electric start and people with the money to
buy them came along, the boating population really jumped up. Had to start
locking everything up. Even the boat gas (at 25 cents per gallon) would
disappear overnight.
Tom G.