Wilderness Experience
We went camping this weekend to
My car is a 1995 Honda Civic DX coupe. This is the first car and only car I have ever owned. I can still remember the new car smell it had when I got it and how much fun I had driving around with the sunroof open and the radio cranked up the summer after my first year of college. The car was my ticket to freedom and confirmation that I could do whatever I wanted. I didn’t need to depend on anyone, I had my own car. Now I’m a bit older and wiser and my little family doesn’t really fit into this car, but a new car doesn’t really fit into our budget either. So I tell dear Betsy how much we love her and beg her to make it from A to B without incident. So far, so good.
Back to camping. Once we finally entered Shenandoah and began our drive along
That’s when things started to fall apart. Every other time we’ve been camping the three of us all slept comfortably on a king size air-mattress—not this time. For some reason this was now the most uncomfortable bed on earth. Angel babe had no complaints and was snoring away—he is so loud—but fiancé and I barely slept three hours all night. First, Angel likes to sleep on top of me when we share a bed, so I was rolling him off of me about every 30 minutes, I might as well have jumped up and down on the bed for all the disruption this caused. The air-mattress is basically a big balloon, push down on one side the other side goes up; move around a little and the resulting waves move everyone else too. Angel would then migrate to his dad’s side and attempt to burrow his little feet into the small of daddy’s back to keep warm. More rolling of the snoring babe, more waves. For even more fun we failed to correctly estimate how cold it was going to be up there at night. The thin sheet over us in our shorts and t-shirts wasn’t cutting it. Then we both had to pee—of course—but it was so cold we didn’t want to get up. I finally caved at about
I should let those of you haven’t actually met me know that I have pretty bad vision, I have worn contacts since 7th grade, I only where my glasses for about 30 minutes a day and that is when I’m reading in bed before I go to sleep or fixing Angel babe breakfast before I get back in bed to try and steal a few more moments of sleep. When I got up to go pee, I didn’t put my glasses on. I stumbled out of the tent and into the dawn mist, I bet that it was beautiful, but I can’t be sure. I started the short walk to the bathroom and realized that I didn’t want to walk across the grass in my flip flops because the grass was so wet with dew. I knew there was a sidewalk leading to the restroom, but I had always taken the shortcut across the grass. I was sure I could find it. I walked down the road a bit and realized that in fact the sidewalk didn’t lead from the road to the bathroom but from the bathroom to more campsites on the other side of the grass—the grass that I didn’t want to walk on.
Now I’m cold, tired and nearly blind walking through thick mist on wet grass twice as far as I would have if I had just sucked it up in the first place. I’m almost to the bathroom when I see a brown mass on the side of the path, I can’t tell what it is and figure it’s a bush or camping gear. Nope, when I’m about 5 feet way I realize it’s a deer. A serene deer munching on its breakfast of dewy grass. The deer at these campgrounds are pretty tame and have walked right through are campsite before without incident. But usually they keep a distance of about 15 feet from people and if you get too close they move away a few feet or walk off.
In the next episode: Hiking, star-gazing and Smokey the Bear.
3 Comments:
Hey, you're a VA blogger, too - cool!
We like to camp up there as well. I can't take it for too long, though. Something about being trapped in a tent with my kids for lengthy periods. Ack!
Hey Cattiva--I love your blog, we seem to share the same parenting style. We absolutely love are kids, but let's face it they can do some annoying stuff too. Angel babe was pretty good--we tired him out as much as possible. But because he is an only child he spent a good amount of time whining "Please play with me." And after a day of hiking, all I was going to do was have a cold drink and sit down.
Heh, I'm as blind as you are. I wouldn't have even ATTEMPTED that walk without putting my glasses on. The first thing I do in the morning is reach for my glasses, THEN I get out of bed, pee, shower, and put my contacts in.
Post a Comment
<< Home