Camping – glad we went. I’ll never do it again.

I’m not exactly the camping type but I went this weekend for the first time in about 15 years with our family. Our first choice, a State Park, was full so we chose a small campground close by. It was a pretty little area with a creek and a lake. It would do just fine.

Sophie had to go to the bathroom immediately so we start hunting for one. We spotted a classic blue port-a-potty in front of an old abandoned red building and started walking. I was giving Sophie the germ talk and trying hard not to gross out myself about the blue potty that would service an entire campground. When we got there we found a tiny little gold lock on the door.

Seriously? I was going to have to ask for a treasure box sized key for a port-a-potty? I hear the blaring of a TV close by and felt for sure someone was peering out the window of the old red storage building that I assumed was abandoned. I decided  I would not be knocking on that door and started getting creeped that our tent would soon be set up just a short distance from this place.

We quickly realized the bathroom was across the way. Sophie and I  walked the plywood bridge to the other side where all the RV’s and trailers were stationed. Sophie loved the fact that the bridge had some sort of manmade hydraulic system going on and would bounce every time you took a step.

We made it to the community bathrooms. Oh boy. Suddenly I was jealous of the locked porta potty. I’ll just say it barely passed my, “if you have to pee and you absolutely can’t hold it any longer and there’s not a waffle house nearby and you can’t go in a cup, then you go here” test. And this was pretty much the situation Sophie was in. Just one problem. We forgot to bring our toilet paper.

Went back across the bouncy bridge, passed Norman Bate’s storage shed to get the toilet paper. I tried not to think about how close our tent would be set up to his place. I also tried hard not to wonder if he had killed the people whose grave sight  sat parallel to our tent. Yes, really. The only grave stone in the entire park. Right there across from our tent.

Within 20 minutes of us setting up camp Mitchell finds a copperhead.

This was as close as I got considering this  is one of the very reasons I don’t like camping. They freak me out so bad and I can’t enjoy anything because of the thought of them being near me. This snake was about 10′ from the back door of our tent. Randy is coaching Mitchell on how to catch the thing and I’m recalling memories of my cousin who almost died from a copperhead bite. I knew what I had to do. Turn my back to it and pray. I couldn’t watch. Randy was there and he is a responsible parent. I had to get Mama bear out of there. But where to? Oh I know, I could visit the neighboring graveyard.  Or I could always go watch TV with Norman Bates in the red storage building. But No, I would just unload the van and keep an ear out for screams. Thankfully there were none.

The baby copperhead got away but we found these wolf spiders instead. One was on the outside of our tent. (Can you see me smiling with glee at the nature discoveries we are making upon our arrival?)

After catching even more creatures than this and being creeped out by the snake I finally looked around at our site and taking it all in said, “Randy, just look around where we set up camp…..right next to the creek, a huge drain pipe, and tons of rocks! No wonder we saw a snake so soon.”

I see a twinkle in his eye and he says with a full grin, “I know.”

I coulda killed ‘im right then and there. But I didn’t. And here’s why:

 

I’m about as stiff as I look in this picture. Who holds their own hands while sitting around the campfire?

I learned real quick that dinner at the campsite is different than dinner at home. Randy is a fabulous campfire cook and had the hotdogs slow roasting one at a time. I was scrambling to set the table and was shoving a few more dogs on a hanger so we could get them all done in time for dinner. Randy said, “Melody, just sit down and relax.” The picture was becoming more clear and I said, “It’s not like the dinner table at home where we all sit down together at the same time is it? And I surely don’t need that centerpiece I just put out do I?” Granted it was a lantern but it still looked all cute and campy on our blue and white checked tablecloth. He confirmed these things so I sat down and it felt good to enjoy one of the best campfire roasted hotdogs I’d had in about 15 years.

The kids were having a blast exploring and playing in the creek. Mitchell turned over every single rock in sight looking for any kind of critter. He found some huge salamanders, crawdads and several frogs. He was a happy boy. Sophie was right there with him exploring.

We told stories around the campfire before we went to bed and the kids begged for a scary story. I told one and it ended up scaring the kids and myself. Not a wise choice at all. Just plain stupid. Because now I was forced to come up with a Plan B  if I had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night like I always do.  I surely wasn’t going by myself. Randy offered to go with me but I didn’t want to leave the kids. I thought I had a good plan that would take care of things if I needed to go but Randy reminded me of how I couldn’t use a flashlight in the tent because of the freak show, silhouette style,  I’d be putting on for the neighbors. So I came up with another plan and ran it by Randy. He reared back with laughter and couldn’t stop laughing for a while. But this time I wasn’t laughing. At all. I could see that my options were running out.

We all got snuggled in our places for bed and I had solved the bathroom issue. I decided I would tell myself if I woke up feeling the need to go to the bathroom that it was just all in my head. That I didn’t really have to go. And I would wait til morning. Simple as that.

Right as I was feeling myself relax and laid my head down on my pillow I looked down and realized that a portion of the backdoor had been unzipped the entire time. This was the door facing all the rocks, the getaway copperhead and wolf spiders. Great. Not only would I be wetting the sleeping bag, because how stupid is it to really tell yourself you don’t have to go when you know you do, but now I’d be sleeping with gigantic wolf spiders and possibly the copperhead that escaped. Ya know, ‘sweet dreams’.

I thought I had to go to the bathroom at 1:09am but I remembered that I really didn’t have to go; that it was just in my head. At 2:15am and at 3:00am I spoke truth over my mind once again and then decided it would be better not to look at the time anymore. I would instead watch for the earliest bit of daylight. But at 5:30am thankfully Randy opened his eyes and I waved. All he said was, “Let’s go.” And we were hightailing it out of there leaving the kids behind. Sorry children. Love ya but I had been lying to myself all night long and it was time to make things right. I love my husband. His love for me looked like walking across a bouncy bridge in the dark and taking me to the bathroom. Silly but true.

We made it back and started up an early morning fire. Nothing like it. Now I could breathe a little better. We made it through the night without a spider or snake bite, without Norman hunting us down and without haunting of dead people. I had an empty bladder and ‘life was good’ just like my hat said. After Randy made some amazing bacon and eggs for breakfast we broke down camp and loaded up and were ready to hit the trails.

But the van wouldn’t start so we had to be jumped off. Some nice motorcycle men got their friend to jump us off and we were good to go. We pulled out of the campsite and our clock said 12:45. Randy and I commented on how long it took us to get packed up and out of there considering we got up at 5:30am. We would have to hike fast because we still had a lot to do that day.

We had a great time at Hanging Rock…..

When we finished hiking and got in the van Randy looked at his phone and realized our van time was off because the battery in the van had died at I guess 12:45 that night – who knows. We were three hours ahead of time! Praise God! I would get to take a nap and recover some of those lost hours of sleep.

It was a good camping trip but one of the reasons I took so many pictures (way more than in this post)  is because I’m pretty positively sure it will be my last. One of my friends said it best when she said, “Go find a hotel, Mel, some times we just can’t fake it! I’m feeling your “being out of your comfort zone!”

mmm hmm. That pretty much sums it up.