Tuesday, September 7, 2010

10 Truths about Camping

Ok I am back. I have been gone, say you missed me and I will come over and comment on your blog and sing your praises, if you don't own a blog I will send my dalmatian over to kiss you, he's super affectionate. (and in time out with me anyway as you will find out in a minute.)

In case you didn't notice due to my extreme journalistic professionalism. Stop laughing damnit. ( That's code for I wrote posts and had them set to auto publish while I was gone.)  News flash I have been gone since Friday morning- yes that's like 5 days of a total lack of internet and communications.

News flash 2- I lived.



So anyway I figured out 10 Truths of Camping that are pretty much the rule and here they are.

1- If you built your house in the deep woods and have a 500 foot driveway and never see humans unless you drive over 2 miles then camping has little appeal unless you are a 9 year old boy who never goes camping.

2- Camping in a huge RV is not really like camping it's more like sleeping poorly crammed in your half bath if you move all your food in there and had people play crappy music loudly in the living room and realatives wake you up all night.

3- No matter how much you love your family,  when they fart in a small enclosed space it is a viable defense in a criminal trial.

4- No matter how much you love your family, the one who wakes up at 4am every morning is the one who sleeps in the one area of the RV you could sleep through all the noise that person is going to make at 4am.

5- If you are camping at a campground you have never camped at, once you are set up you will find out you picked pretty much the crappiest spot on earth and there were 40 choices that would have been better but you are not about to tear down camp and set it up again so you will just deal with it and pretend it's FANTASTIC to the other adults so they don't get crazy moving ideas in their head.

6- big huge luxury RV's are like doing Calculus when your are drunk off MD20/20, and were exposed to IV Opium with a Valium chaser. There are generators, grey water, white water, onans, converters, pilot lights, flip switches, and fuses. Most of the shit wont work because your Dad owns the RV and can't remember how to work anything so assumes it's all broken including the awning and fridge so you buy 10 bags of ice a day and explain to your elderly parents why you don't eat open mayo that has been at room temp for 3 days. They must then tell you 5 hour stories of how they made their own mayo from the gravel on the road they walked to school up hill both ways 30 miles in the snow barefoot between their 5 jobs when they were 7 years old. You will shut up and eat the mayo with an imodium sandwich.

7- A husband who has an IQ that places him in Mensa that has not spent 20 hours off the net since 1995 can indeed go 3 days without internet.  However he will think a rented Kayak can fit in a Mini Van and when you point out that it's touching the windshield his response will be " no shit".  Then he will shamefully come to you a few hours later explaining that Kayak busted out the windshield of your minivan even though he didn't even go over a bump or anything but since it's day 4 you will be too tired and covered in dirt to be pissed or argue. 

8- Your 9 year old is pretty literal. When his pawpaw taught him how to tie a hook on a fishing line and then how to put the worm on the hook then took him fishing for 3 hours and they didn't even get a nibble. He will say something like, " PawPaw said today we weren't really fishing, we were just drowning the worms, tomorrow we will try to fish since we got the worms dead."

9- Some campgrounds are just filled with rednecks of all levels.  
To our left - was the RV whisperer. He got our fridge working ( day 3), He got our white water dumped ( day 3), explained how to open the awning ( day 4), replaced bathroom light bulb ( day 2), he had 2 huge RV's and 2 boats, he even let the prince borrow a life jacket 3 times, and fixed the generator, refused any payment or thanks.
To our right - were the people who rented a pull through concrete RV site with power and water for their pup tent. They secured cardboard boxes and had huge but short lived very dangerous fires 3 feet from their tent and Truck(s) every night.  On night 3  they got so drunk they decided a fight would be a good idea, she threated to shoot "his dumb redneck ass"  ( pretty sure there were just as many guns as campers) and he stumbled out of the tent with his Pabst blue ribbon beer in hand crossed 3 camp sites to pee next to our van.
Behind us-  An RV that had over 15 cars or more at all times, professional sound system speakers on stands all pointing in every direction other than at their own campsites.  They played Johnny Cash,  Hank Williams Sr., Patsy Cline, and every other dead old country musician in addition to night 2 of the bluegrass jam out.  Now this wouldn't be so bad if it ended but their "sleep" or "pass out" or  "shut their shit off"  period was from between 2am and 9am. Other than that you had to yell at our campsite.
In Front of us-  People that clearly hated the music from the rednecks behind us so they turned on their truck(s) radios to play rap songs with absolutely filthy lyrics as loud as they could  so it sounded like totally crap and you couldn't make it out clearly. That was kind of a blessing because I didn't have to explain to my 9 year old what some of those words and phrases meant. Plus their batteries died within a few hours.
air guitar play off, I think they were each playing a song from different camping neighbors.


10- Jungle Fever isn't just a song or movie.  It's what happens when you go camping and decide to hike on a "scenic trail" after a long day of kayaking and are delirious from rancid mayo.




Don't get excited you closet fiends, I am pretty sure that's a plant of pokey death, not a
happy hemp plant on the "scenic route" hiking trip of death 

So there you go.   All in all it was a fantastic trip. Thanks much in part to the RV whisperer dude.  

**  3 fingernails, 1 ankle, 1 doge grand caravan windshield, 3 packs of hot dogs  were indeed harmed in the making of this post**

** Also my Dalmatian punished me for not taking him by pulling 1 shoe from 4 pairs off the shoe rack and chewing it to oblivion, along with a bag of chips ahoy, box of honey buns, and capri drink, and my electric duster all met their doom at his hands. uhm mouth. **

If you want to see more pics and a nicer more meaningful 
story of the trip go to
BeingPeachy.com click here

7 comments:

Overthinking Mama said...

lmbo.. im going camping with you next time!!

Unknown said...

ME TOO! I'll bring the cornhole game, then we can add "thunck" "thunck" to the sounds of 'nature'

ThePeachy1 said...

I was pretty sure they were building a fucking railroad 24/7 the entire time I was there, then on day 4 I figured out it was drunken horseshoes, and they would take shots when they missed the spike. Joy oh Joy.

JayMonster said...

Some observations from your trip:

1. These "truths" are true... but they apply to "pseudo-camping" because you didn't go camping.

2. Going camping with "family" is NEVER a good idea... this applies to pseudo-camping as well for the well pointed out smell and lack of space reasoning. At least in real camping you get away from them in your own tent.

3. I'm glad you (and the family) survived and returned home physically (if not emotionally) unscathed.

4. You were sorely missed. Welcome back to real time. :-)

meredithblumoff said...

i *so* better be invited next time. i can do amazing things with limited supplies and some slightly controlled fire. just sayin'.

also? my captcha is 'hydeep' which is all sorts of dirty & appropriate.

ThePeachy1 said...

open invite to all just make sure to bring your bandanna doo raggy things. I found a scrunchie from 89 and a hat from 92 wore them in a combo fashion move that was pretty damn hot. must say, cumulatively our RV had the most teeth per person. That was kind of cool. Also no farting in the RV. If banjo music creeps you out while kayaking alone in the river and woods, you might want to bring and ipod or something.

Anonymous said...

I enjoyed this a lot. Thanks.

Have a nice day, Boonie