OK, I may be exaggerating a wee bit but you get the point. I really, really am trying to be a good husband so I really, really try to be excited that WE ARE GOING CAMPING! Now, to be precise we engage in an outdoor activity called "car camping". Car camping by definition presumes that you are going to camp, i.e. in a tent; however you will use an automobile to transport your camping gear to a well defined 'campsite'. A campsite by definition is a piece of asphalt to park your vehicle, a pre-designed firepit, and a tidy little area. That you pay for. Hey, call me old fashioned but I just don't get going out into the wilderness and having to pay to pitch your tent. But - Cape Lookout where we 'paid to pitch' had hot showers (yes, a concession to the hotel-spoiled husband) so I can't complain too much.
But speaking of too much! Sherry had purchased a new tent. She had taken it to California to 'camp' in my sister's backyard with the niece and nephew. I'm thinking, cool - yeah, a new tent - I can dig it. But check it out! Oh, it had to be an EIGHT PERSON tent. Let's see - there's Dave & Sherry, and Kadie the Dog. Now add Mr. Cash (the cat). Now add Dorie and Torie (the fish). We STILL can't fill it up. Sherry patiently explained to me that the purpose of such largesse was to host a bunch of her friends on the Annual GWE (Girls WeekEnd) trip.Well, the picture doesn't really do justice to how BIG this tent was. It had - check it out - a large living room/sleeping area, and a separate sun porch or entry room. I'm not making this up, the tent has two rooms. But wait! There's more! The tent has TWO doors! One opens up into the sun porch, and the second allows access directly into the living area. We used the sun porch entrance and dubbed the other entry "the servant's entrance". It also has a nifty loft area that we used to park the 42" Flat Panel Plasma TV. OK, I'm just kidding about that part!
We went to Cape Lookout with our friends Herb and Judy and their kids. It was a nice drive to the coast, a beautiful Friday evening. We arrived and began setting up the tent. It was quickly apparent that the footprint of this enormous tent extended almost beyond the boundaries of our assigned campsite. You often hear the term "pitching the tent", I almost "pitched a fit" but managed to contain myself.
Well, Saturday morning gave all indicators of a fine day ahead. And it was! Alisha (Herb and Judy's daughter) is training for a San Francisco marathon, and I'm training for the Maui Marathon so we had a nice long run on the beach. That night we cooked hamburgers around the campfire and told stories until we laughed so hard our tears mingled with the rain.
WHAT! Rain? If there is one thing in life that you can count on, it's that you can't count on the weather at the Oregon coast. We made our way back to the tents for the night. About 4:00 AM Sunday morning, the rain pounded down. I don't use the word pounded in an exaggerated sense. It managed to find it's way through the rain flap into the tent, and rained for literally hours - hard. We kept hoping it would let up, and it seemed like it was so we decided to break camp.
Of course it started raining again - hard. We realized with our spirits broken and every possible item we brought soaked, muddy or quickly getting that way we'd have to break camp in the rain. It was a miserable soggy experience.
Sherry's beginning to think that a hotel may not be a bad idea at all...
