It was Day 3 of a planned 14-day camping trip, and I had already given up and retreated back home.
Am I a quitter? A loser? Pathetic? Maybe all of the above. But so dang happy to be home.
The 2-week trip was intended as a tryout for living in The Tiny for an extended period of time, perhaps subletting my leased home, or giving it up altogether. I thought I might do my regular educational designer work on the road, plus post on this blog, plus visit family and friends, plus visit state and national parks, plus provide extreme self care for myself and my dog. That’s about 40 hours of work in a 24-hour day. What could be so difficult? Am I not invincible? Am I not woman?
If all this sounds unreasonable, you are so very right. It’s bonkers, especially if you know me and my desperate need for a stable, beautiful environment in which to live. Not grand. Not fancy. But sweet and peaceful. I thought The Tiny could be that for me.
And so after weeks of planning and preparation for my test run, overcoming enormous last-minute fears, I finally got myself out the door, into my Durango, onto the long overwater bridge, and over to campsite No. 83.
My first thought when I saw the campsite was: Oh hale no!
(Note: If you misspell what some consider a curse word, or use a symbol in place of a letter, it’s no longer a curse word. That’s a new rule I just made up.)
Site No. 83 is a small, boggy, muddy, skeeter-infested mess with a narrow, crumbling asphalt pad, a degraded, moldy wooden picnic table, and a metal campfire pit that looks like someone ran over it, and tried to fix it by tossing a metal truck rim in the center. All this was handily situated along the busy main road in and of the campground, and within eyeshot and earshot of the holding tank dumping station (key word: poop).
This is going to be “home” for 2 weeks? Uh, no. I drove back to the entrance station and told the young man there that I simply hated my site. He asked wearily: “Ma’am, did you see any other sites you liked?” That was somewhat of a trick question because the two weekends of my planned stay were totally booked. Finally, I went back and decided to make the best of it.
This is where I started kicking myself. When I booked this site, one of only 5 available for my timeframe on the Reserve America site, I didn’t do too much research into it. As you know, with enough Internet searching, you can discover the assets and drawbacks of just about any campsite anywhere based on user reviews, blogs, videos, etc. Some folks drive through a campground slowly taking cell phone videos of each site, and then post that on YouTube. How very handy. We are truly a golden age of information. I normally research the hale out of campsites because I am so very picky about where I live or stay. I’m just fragile and sensitive that way. But in this case, as a test run for a longer trip, I decided that I will sometimes find myself in less than stellar campsites, so let’s just see how I do.
I had been to this campground twice previously, and I had seen this row of truly awful campsites and I recall thinking: Wow, those are truly awful. When I pulled up, I realized: OMG, I just paid for 2 weeks in a truly awful setting.
I did my best. I set up the Therma-Rest side tent I had bought from a previous T@B owner in Oregon. I was desperate to get it, as they are not made anymore and are highly sought after, and I used all my power and manipulation and lots of money to get one.
I set up the Clam kitchen tent. I had brought my big iMac desktop computer and set it up inside the Therma-Rest, which was cooled by the adjacent T@B’s Cool Cat air conditioner.
I slept poorly the first night, tossing and turning and sweating and fretting.
The next day, I had three conference calls for work. Cell service was good. I also had a video conference. I thought I’d been clever to bring fancy clothes and jewelry to wear during future video conference calls, to trick my fellow attendees into thinking that I was a highly professional person in a nice office. As soon as I started the video conference, I saw the weakness in my plan: the woods visible behind me. Duh. Readers have accused me of pretending to be more obtunded than I am. I assure you, it’s no act.
During my interminable hours of hale at the campsite, I grew more and more miserable. On the third day, I decided to bring my journal to the pier on the lake, and write until I figured out what to do. The beaten down campground is part of a really spectacular state park, and as I walked through the ancient oaks dripping with moss, and felt the cool breezes from the lake, I felt better and better.
At end of the pier, in a lovely platform with white columns under a tile-covered roof, the dog and I sat and gathered ourselves together. I wrote about my unhappiness and how I had abandoned myself and how I thought maybe my needs for extreme self care were in the past and I could be OK anywhere at anytime in any crappy campsite life could throw me. But who was I kidding? I’m in fact more in need of grace and beauty than ever before.
I looked around the platform I was on, lifted my face to the cooling breezes, noted the lack of mosquitos, listened to the soft lapping of water against the pilings. I thought: This is my idea of a campsite: cool, clean, private. I imagined myself driving The Tiny up the wide concrete pier, unhitching it at the platform, turning it to face out into the vast misty morning of the lake. Yes, I could camp here.
Going forward, I’ll look for campsites that are more like this, and less like the boggy pit of despair I left behind. I simply could not stay there.
Heading back to Site 83, I thought I might get some work done on my big computer before breaking camp. But once the decision to retreat had been made, I could not wait to get out of there. The park graciously refunded my unused nights.
Heading back home, I had arranged for a friend to meet me to back the trailer into the driveway, something I had never accomplished on my own. As I approached my driveway, I saw him waiting in his truck half a block away. Instead of parking The Tiny in front of house and asking him to get in my Durango and back it in for me, I thought: F*&# that! I’m going to give it a go!”
So I did The Scoop, based on the YouTube video by Long, Long, Honeymoon, and positioned my left wheel along the palm tree in the median, as my friend had previously suggested, and proceeded to back The Tiny up. As I began to jackknife the trailer, I pulled forward to straighten up. my friend stood in the street and directed traffic, either stopping cars or waving them past, with all the attitude he could muster, which is considerable. With a few more times backing up and straightening out, I HAD BACKED THE D@MN T@B INTO THE D@MN DRIVEWAY!” my friend and I high-fived and I beamed victory.
Looking back, my decision to exit the campground was not a defeating, weakening moment, but an empowering one. Perhaps it was a lesson I needed to learn: When the ground sinks under your feet, just keep on walking.
I’ve since joined some FB groups for those who RV full time and shared my tale. They assured me that there will be good times and bad, and they’ve had their share, but it can be figured out.
Should I ever attempt another trial run, you can be sure I’ll research the ever-loving dickens out of my next campground. I’ll get the best darned campsite in the best darned campground in the best darned state or national park in the country.
‘Cause that’s just how I roll.