I guess the experiences of last year's second camping trip were too traumatic as I have not updated the post in over a year... Evidently time does heal all wounds so I can now rationally and safely write down an account of our last debacle, um I mean camping trip. Hopefully my memory serves me correctly and I get the events down in the correct chronological order...
The plan was to travel south from Iowa to just outside St Louis for a horse show that my daughter (Jess) and our friend and her trainer (Hannah) were taking part in. Hannah and Jess had left earlier in the day with the horses to get them settled in and Mary and I would pick up Hannah's mom in the RV and meet them down at the camp site later in the day. This time we were pulling a Jet Ski behind the "Beast" in preparation for continuing on down to the coast of Alabama for a week of vacation on the Gulf of Mexico.
It started out innocuously enough with packing and setting out. We picked up Hannah's mom Cathy and in good spirits we hit the road. I begin by programming the destination into the GPS, in truck mode of course. Now, we know from experience that it only takes 4.5 hours to get from our house to St Louis so when the GPS came back and estimated 6.5 we of course didn't take it seriously. That was an easy fix... I rebooted the GPS into Car mode and reset the destination. Now the estimated time was about 5 hours. Perfect!
Now had this been a cheesy daytime tv drama there would of course be some dramatic music starting to play in the background. But since this was the real world we obliviously and in high spirits press on.
Things go pretty smoothly for the first 4 hours and we are having a nice trip visiting with Cathy. As we approach the small town were the camp site is the GPS directs us off the main road onto a secondary road. No problem right? The scenery is nice, but starts to look pretty residential. Hmm... the trees are awfully big and kind of hanging out into the road. It is very scenic and we press on.
Uhh.... the road seems to be getting pretty narrow and very windy... The trees start to hang more and more into the road... We have to slow down.... Branches are starting to rattle the top of the RV.... Wow this is getting stressful... Thankfully Mary is driving so of course I can relax and provide extremely helpful advice on how to drive from the comfort of the couch!
About this time I notice Cathy, who is in the "shotgun" position looking out the side window with an uncomfortable sort of "oh my god" expression on her face. The windy dark road, the trees hitting the coach, the 30 mph pace of our progress have now been joined with a sheer drop off the side of the road into a gully. I guess at this point it became apparent that perhaps we should have listened to the GPS and accepted the 6.5 hour route, especially as I think we are now 6 hours into the trip with 2 hours left according to the GPS. That is assuming we don't fall into the gully...
Well I have to say that Mary (with my excellent back seat driving, um I mean coaching) successfully navigated us through the outback and finally got onto more easily navigable roads. It is now approaching midnight I think but all we have to do is get to the campsite.
The campsite... Our options were limited but we managed to find one fairly near the event. Jellystone was its name. Evidently it comes complete with Yogi, BooBoo and the intrepid Ranger Smith. Sounds quaint. Does anyone else hear the sound of fiddles playing in the background?
The GPS says we are approaching Jellystone and Jess and Hannah are waiting at the entrance to guide us to our spot. Evidently, in our exhaustion we completely overlooked the 30 foot tall lighted sign on a hill and cruised right past the entrance much to ours, Jess' and Hannah's dismay. Oh well, should be easy to just turn around and get camped. Uh... yeah....
The road we are on is a tiny rural road with apparently no other businesses or areas to make a graceful U Turn. We are left with the only option of attempting a 3 point turn around in the middle of the night on a pitch black road with 60 feet of vehicular beastiness. Due to my excellent coaching, I, of course, get elected to go stand out in the middle of the street to guide us. Did I mention the pitch black night oh and we are on a blind corner.
The plan is for me to call Mary on the cellphone and direct her, the beast and the jetski through the maneuver. Mary pulls onto a side road, I am in the street behind her and we proceed to slowly try to back the Beast and the Jetski without: a. getting killed, b. ruining the jetski and c. all of the above....
Oh yeah, we have sptty cell service so 5 minutes into the procedure the call drops...
20 minutes later we actually accomplish this feat and are back on the road toward Jellystone.
At night the campsite doesn't look to bad. We get hooked up and collapse with exhaustion.
Morning comes bright and early with the sounds of campers awakening to see all the Jellystone has to offer. What it offers us is a site of about 50 kids running around, mostly in just diapers. Beer guts galore shining pasty white in all their glory chasing said diapered kids toward the pool and a bizarre collection of various campers and rv's all looked to be even older than our beast.
One thing we do have to look forward to is we can arrange for a guy in a bear suit to come tuck us in at night... uh no thanks... I think we are "smarter than the average guy in a bear suit"....
Next up the trip south....
The Beast
