Ahh, Thanksgiving. The time of year when family and friends gather together to give thanks for their good fortune over the last year, and possibly compete to see just how many pieces of pumpkin pie each can stuff in their kissers. Good times.
Coincidently, Thanksgiving falls in October. This tends to be a chilly time of year, when wood stoves are sparked up, furnaces are turned on for the first time in months, and fashionable fall coats make an appearance because the weather is just that temperature. So what better time of year to pack up your things and head out camping for the weekend, right? Right. *sigh*
My family started this tradition last year of all of us going camping on Thanksgiving weekend. "Oh, it will be fun," they said. "The weather won't be a problem," they said. "Quit your whining, you're going to get your bloody turkey, okay???" they said. "Stop being a downer, and if you don't like it, just shut up," they said.
So this is how I once again found myself driving more than two hours from home towards a campsite that is called a provincial park (but apparently is not important enough to have proper signage advertising its location) to surprise my family a day early for our weekend o' fun.
I have to say, though, driving along a dark, twisty, 90km/hr highway at 9 p.m., in an area I have never been before, while hearing banjos play in the distance was slightly disconcerting. The most fun part, though, was trying to call my family to get their site number so I could actually find them, and getting voicemail on all their cell phones.
Luckily, I am a survivor. When faced with adversity, I excel. Well, okay, let's be honest, I get by if I really need to, and usually that's by getting someone to do something for me. Which is exactly what I did this time. I stopped at the campground's administrative office at 9:30 p.m. Friday night, smiled my most innocent smile at the three people in there, and said, "I'm trying to find my family, but I don't know their site numbers and they aren't answering their cell phones."
After five seconds of silence, while they eyed me up and down trying to figure out where I was hiding my gun or my shiv, one girl asked, "Do you know their names?" I racked my brain to come up with my sister's name (big family, we aren't that close) and said it was either under her name or my parents' name (had a hard time coming up with those names, too).
Luckily, we got it all sorted out, they (pretty much) determined I wasn't there to go on a rampage, and gave me directions to my family's sites. About an hour after I got there, the park truck drove by the site realllllllly slow-like to see if everyone was okay, so I think that cemented their already high opinion of my lovely self.
We had our Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday afternoon. Basically, pretty much everything was cooked ahead of time and packed in coolers. Then, it was all reheated over the fire or over the camp stoves. It was a wicked good feast, let me tell you...but there's something to be said for being in the house when the smell of turkey cooking just permeates the air, gets into your clothes, and stays with you for days. I enjoy that part of it. However, we had a good feast, and a ton of food, which always makes me happy.
So, that was the Thanksgiving-y part of the weekend. But back to the actual camping part for a minute.
Now, I am not a camper. As in, I have zero camping supplies, I have never really done it before, and I have issues with many outdoors-y things. However, I will concede that there are some good aspects to camping as well. They would be:
- Breakfast. I love any kind of food cooked outside, especially scrambled eggs, bacon, hash browns, and pancakes. It's just freakin' good.
- Campfires. It's very relaxing and therapeutic to sit around the campfire and just shoot the breeze, try to stump your family with the name of the song you're humming (anyone who has played Cranium's Humdinger knows what I'm talking about), or stare at the coals. And since they frown upon campfires in the middle of the city, I don't get to do that very often, so I take advantage whenever I can.
- Heaters. Nothing like freezing your butt off when you walk away from the campfire and walking into a camper that has the heater on full-blast. I literally sat in front of the heater for a minute to get the circulation going again. So awesome.
- Fresh air. I always develop a coughing habit when I get out in the fresh air, because I have so much city pollution in my lungs that they don't know how to function, but it feels kind of good to breathe clean air for a while. I'm not pretty to be around, granted.
- Hanging with my family. Alright, I admit it, I kinda like them, and I don't get to see them very often, so it's nice to be able to spend time with them.
- Breakfast. Seriously, have you HAD bacon cooked outdoors?
But, of course, there are also things that I am not a big fan of when it comes to the camping thing:
- Insects. Believe it or not, there were mosquitos at the campsite. In October. And the freakin' hornets were swarming us constantly. I have major issues with stinging creatures, so I was slightly more neurotic than usual this past weekend.
- The cold. I also have a major aversion to the cold, so the times between moving from the warm fireside to the warm trailer were very traumatic on my thin-blooded self. Silver lining to this, however: I got to wear my toque, which looks really good on me, so I'm warm and hawt, all at the same time. Bonus.
- Not sleeping in my own bed. I'm a creature of habit. I likes things how I likes them. So there.
- Public washrooms. Really, who does enjoy them? But as someone who has a naturally squeamish stomach, I do not enjoy the washroom experience at campgrounds. And while the shower itself was pretty good, with lots of hot water and good water pressure, you still just feel gross with the floor (I forgot to bring shower shoes), and just...eww.
All in all, it was a better camping trip than last year. This time, we had huge sites, lots of privacy, no kids screaming at all hours of the night, no drunken neighbours threatening us, no park ranger coming along every five minutes to yell at us about something...sheesh, no wonder I hated camping. Last year's experience pretty much clinched the deal for me, but I will admit, I have changed my tune. I will, probably, go camping again.
As long as someone feeds me breakfast.
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