Camping Disaster

Jason, Juno and I went on a camping trip last month. Unfortunately, it ended up being one of those "what more could possibly go wrong?!" experiences. It all started with the tent. As we were setting it up, we realized we were missing a very critical little plastic piece that connects the poles together at the top of the tent. Putting our two heads together, we came up with a solution that involved lashing the poles to each other with a rope then tying the whole thing to a nearby tree.

With that problem happily solved, we decided to take a hike out to a pond about 3 miles from our campsite. When we arrived at the alleged spot of the pond, we discovered that due to the recent drought conditions, it had completely dried up. Yep, that's a 6-mile round trip hike to see a dried-up piece of ground.

By the time we got back to our campsite, it was around 7 p.m. and we had worked up quite an appetite. In the fine Schmucker tradition, we had planned to make hobo dinners over the campfire. We were a bit concerned to find that our fire ring was actually set a couple inches off the ground, leaving about a foot between the grill and the fire itself. And due to the aforementioned drought conditions, we were adhering to a "charcoal fire only" policy. We optimistically set the dinner on the grill, finally proceeded to Plan B after waiting a full hour for dinner to cook. (It hadn't. At all. OK, so it was a little warm.) So out came the camp stove, which finished up the cooking process quite nicely (if a bit messily).

So having finished dinner around 9:30 p.m., we found ourselves ready for and in bed soon after. Now here's the "inconsiderate camping neighbors" part of the story. Sometime after 10 p.m., a family consisting of several noisy children, a barking dog, and an adult male with a very boisterous laugh drove into the area and proceeded to set up camp. There's nothing like trying to fall asleep to the sounds of car doors slamming, tent poles clanging, and children shrieking (Jason didn't hear any of this, of course).


The whole experience may have put us off of camping for a while. Well, at least until we can find that darn plastic tent piece...