I'm in California this week - visiting my sister and her hubby. I get to travel the world by visiting my sister - whose husband is in the Navy... stationed on either coast. This is nice for me and mine, as we still live in the Midwest - where I grew up.
The first couple of days here we decided corporately that RVing was a fun idea. I had never been RVing, and neither had they. So we all approached the concept with much optimism. We camped a lot when I was a child. My parents enjoyed the outdoors and they also enjoyed penny pinching - all of which made for a lot of camping trips. I have never enjoyed camping as much as it seems like everyone else in my family has. I didn't mind it as a young child, but it got less and less appealing as I grew older. I know this will sound incredibly girly and spoiled, but I don't care for dirt and bugs and smelling like campfires. I like daily showers and particularly relish indoor plumbing and all of its requisite benefits.
Why I thought I would enjoy camping more now than I did back then is a mystery. I love nature, but I'm doubtful that the feeling is entirely mutual. The first night went pretty well. I had showered the evening before, and I was able to avoid the opportunity to try out the pay showers at the first campground. These were nice showers, and had I known the kind of showers that would be in the next night's campground, I would have paid the 25 cents a minute to shower in the luxurious pay showers.
We stayed in the neatest campground - at the foot of the mountains next to a river rushing over big, beautiful rocks. I was able to find lots of geological specimens to take home to my girls - who LOVE rocks. I know if they had been there, we would have had to rent a U-Haul in which to take home our rocky treasures. We camped next to Canadians, Netherlanders, and Sweeds, which provided fun, interesting conversation and the chance to prove heroic to camping novices from foreign lands.
Lest you think all of this beauty and culture didn't come with a price... enter the showers. The showers were in a cement block building with a few core doors leading to 3' x 4' rooms. These 5 shower rooms were not gender specific and were roughly equipped with some plastic shower stalls that looked like they had been cut to fit. They were shoved into this cramped space with a dim lightbulb overhead. There were two hooks on the wall. The up side was that some of the doors to the outside even latched and locked.
It was a cold evening - in the 40 degree range that night. As I started optimistically toward the unheated shower rooms with my sister, I was met with the rude awakening of earwigs... a creature for which I have reserved a special kind of disgust within myself. They were crawling everywhere. I picked a shower with a latching door, but it had no bench on which to set my toiletries, towel, and dry clothing. So... hooks. I tried to hook every possible thing on the two small hooks provided. I was ready to give it the ol' college try. I turned on the water to disappointingly low water pressure and ice cold water. I thought it would warm up - it warmed to slightly less freezing than the water that was coming down the mountains from melted snow. I jumped in out of desperation, but all my dreams of a nice warm shower with the opportunity to sanitize and groom were all but lost. I shampooed and tried to jump out before a new and strange creature dropped into my hair or crawled up my leg. I wanted to shave, but I have been known to - from sheer distraction - shave only one leg or, even worse, shave the same leg twice, forgetting the other completely. Who knew what could happen to my poor legs under this duress. Not to mention that I also have a working theory about goosebumps making the hair on my legs grow faster.
When I got out, I did the after-shower hokey pokey. It goes something like this. You stick your left foot out; you dry your left foot off; you put your left foot in your clothes and shake it till they're on. You put your left foot in your shoe before it hits the ground. That's what it's all about. Right foot... and so on and so forth until you're dressed without ever having to touch the floor with clean, dry feet. I hadn't brought showering shoes, but those are the mistakes camping rookies make... especially when flying halfway across the country to camp.
Anyway, I sometimes wonder if other people do neurotic things like this, but I guess it doesn't much matter. I just realized as I was walking back to the RV - looking like a drowned rat - and feeling like one too - how spoiled I am. Ugh... I hate to admit that. I've even tent camped before. It's not like I don't like the great outdoors. But somehow I get the feeling, when visiting a campground, that they should be paying me to stay there. There are lots of people who live outside for free. Yet I'm paying $30/night to sleep outside, take cold showers, and eat cans of beans. All the while my home is sitting there - all paid for - with a nice, warm bed, hot shower, and good food. Ah, well... It's the experience.
(My sister and brother in law are great hosts, by the way, and fed us well and were great company - which was worth much more than we paid to camp. I say this, lest my dramatic flair and goofy rhetoric gives anyone the wrong impression about our delightful hosts.)
The next day, at Grand Sequoia National Park I actually used a pit toilet. But that's a blog for another lifetime. I am off to find a t-shirt that declares "I (heart) indoor plumbing!"
