My maybes always mean no. I’m pretty sure yours might, too.
I might be worse than you, though. I’m painfully practical. I have a tendency to be what you might call, a wet blanket. It’s not a strength.
My astrologer (I know, I know) once told me “Be aware of this trait. It can affect your relationships.” She’s right. It does. How did she know? Oh right, she is an astrologer.
My mistake was sharing this knowledge with Ernie and Brock. The peanut gallery in the backseat will hear our conversations and he (Brock) will interject “Wet Blanket!” Thanks for the reminder, buddy. So when the subject of camping came up, I hesitantly shed the wet blanket and my go-to maybe (no) became yes.
We’ve never gone camping. Correction. I’ve never gone camping. I would like to blame this on my parents, but I was only under foot for 18 years and according to my calculations, that leaves 36 years of adulting with no camping. OK, so maybe I’ve been a wet blanket. Blame it on the stars.
Knowing we had deprived the first four of a camping trip, I knew I had to come through on this one. Thankfully beforehand, I discovered AirStream. One look at the beautiful Silver Bullet travel trailer models at a local RV lot and I was hooked. I would just have to try one. Visions of glamping danced in my head.
When we got home, I looked on Outdoorsy, found a local Airstream owner, booked a 23 foot Airstream Sport and reserved a campsite on Lake Bomoseen for Labor Day Weekend. We had to wait all summer long to go on our adventure. Ernie was excited to teach Brock some cool survival skills. I was excited to know I would survive the weekend in a bed with a full kitchen, bathroom and warm shower. The older four teased me. “Mama, that isn’t camping, you know.” I didn’t care. To me, it was.
Before we left, the AirStream owner had warned us to be sure to park the trailer on the correct side for the hookups. We pulled up to our site, I jumped out of the car and started looking around for them. I looked and looked. Hmmm. Finally, I said “I don’t see them.” Ernie jumped out of the car and said, “What the F@&K? I thought this was a premium site.” Being a newbie, I wasn’t aware that ‘premium site’ doesn’t equal ‘hookups.’ Premium hookup sites were all booked at the KOA across the lake. It was, after all, the last weekend of Summer. We had to stay.
Without hookups we had 23 gallons of water, no ability to cook or have hot water (my shower!). Our electricity was seriously limited having to hook the truck up when we were running low. This was camping. How was I going to survive?
RV after RV pulled in. We watched as they pulled in seamlessly, unpacked their outdoor grills and gear and set up their camps like a perfectly choreographed dance. Some of them pulled out carpets and comfortable seating areas as if magically from a hat. They were set for a weekend of glamping. We were not.
I was counting the ounces of water coming out of our faucet (we only had 2,944) and yelled at the boys not to use the toilet for #2 and don’t flush #1s. DO NOT even think of opening the refrigerator unless absolutely necessary or worse turn on the lights for too long.
Ok, so maybe I brought the wet blanket.
We settled in. Ernie taught Brock how to build a fire, use a hatchet along with other cool camping tricks. He taught him how to pack the start of a fire into his Go Bag with a smoldering ember wrapped in fresh leaves, real Bear Grylls kind of stuff. We cooked on an open flame. They spent the night in a tent. We paid 50¢ for a five minute hot shower. Walked to the lake to fish and kayak. Read without interruptions. The nights were quieter than Stowe. Heaven on earth.
