The Joys of Camping

I have a rule about no cleaning the first two trips to our camp in the spring. The place definitely needs it, but I’ve learned to ignore the mess. For one thing, April in Pennsylvania is generally muddy. That old adage about April showers wasn’t created for nothing. For another, there are always unexpected repairs to be made after the place has sat empty for six months.

This year, the mud isn’t so much an issue. It’s been a weird winter and spring. It’s also been dry.

However, the “unexpected” repairs part of the equation has more than made up for it.

The campgrounds don’t “officially” open until next week, so we weren’t sure what we’d find. Our first happy discovery was the water had already been turned on. My first less-than-happy discovery was that the Internet had not.

No big deal. It’s amazing how much work I get done when I’m not online. Yes, I should know this by now. But when I’m offline for days on end, the emails tend to pile up in my inbox and take half a week to sort through. So I made a trip into town with my laptop to my favorite hotspot at the bike shop. Where I discovered that I STILL could not connect. After all my problems with my old computer, the idea that my laptop was now refusing to pick up a wifi signal didn’t exactly make me happy. But Brad, the intrepid bike shop owner, checked and discovered his secondary router was down and gave me his password for the shop’s main one. Bless his heart. It worked.

With nothing requiring my immediate attention, I returned to camp. All was well.

For about an hour. That’s when Hubby broke the camper. Or the connection where the water hose comes in, to be exact.

Okay, he didn’t break it. It was rotting and we knew it. But the moment he tried to tighten the dripping hose was the moment it chose to snap. A trip to the hardware and two attempted repairs (and some colorful language) later, all we had was a puddle on the floor. Hubby announced that we would have no water for the remainder of this trip. At least, none inside.

But I’ve “roughed it” plenty of times in the past. I simply lugged a coffee pot outside to get water from our spigot. After supper, I planned to heat that pot on the stove for washing dishes.

That was the moment the propane ran out. It was also after the place down the road that sells propane had closed.

Thank goodness for our electric heater. If the power had gone out, I’d have shoved the cats back in their carriers and headed for home.

Instead, I dealt with washing dishes in cold water. And I took a 50-cent “hot” shower in an unheated bathhouse.

As for cleaning—or NOT cleaning… All of this fussing with the plumbing meant a lot of tracking dirt inside. But considering the lack of water—and other amenities—the dirt on the floor is the least of my concerns. It’ll still be there once we’re ready to settle down to a “relaxing” camp trip.

Which at this rate ought to be mid August.