Camping at Huntsville State Park

 

Chapter 1: The dream
It all started off so well, and I was glad, because this was Stephanie’s first tent camping trip (Alex’s too). I packed a ____ load of stuff into our Toyota Rav4, and as I did it, I thought about how I used to go camping with friends – which means a one man tent and one backpack full of supplies – a light load – and how life changes.

Anyway, we got packed up, and took off for the awesome campgrounds of Huntsville State Park in Texas. We were going on a one-nighter of camping, cooking out, a nice fire, and the peaceful sounds of wildlife in the night.

Upon arrival, Josh and I went inside the main building at the entrance to select our campsite. I had reserved a generic campsite a week or so in advance because I knew how crowded Huntsville State Park gets during the fall of the year. The park has the best of everything including showers, bathrooms, a lake to swim in, playgrounds, views, hiking trails, etc… So we selected camp site #69 as there was one of only 7 sites available and it was the one with the best view of the lake. So we made our way down the winding scenic road that leads to the water-only campsites.

Camping

Chapter 2: The beginning of the end
Upon arrival at our campsite, I noticed that there was already a large family camping there: there was a set of grandparents, an older couple, a younger couple and their small child, and another young woman – about 8 people in all. I thought to myself, they must have forgotten that checkout time was 3pm (since it was already 4:30pm). So I parked my car behind theirs, and walked down and said hello, and stated nicely that we had this campsite reserved for the evening – I think that was pretty much the end of the fun camping trip (even though there were fun things peppered in between the insanity).

The 50ish year old father, who was sitting in a lawn chair watching the birds, turned around and said, “That can’t be right, it is first come first serve. I bought a park pass.” I told him that the people at the main building said that this campsite was available. Mind you, I was standing in the middle of a small family get-together, telling them that this is my campsite. The father that was in his late 20’s rolled his eyes, and said that he was going to go back to the front to see what was going on. As he was backing out, the 50ish father said that he was going too, so he can clear up the mistake. So we waited for them to return.

Needless to say, once they returned the 50ish father was not in a very good mood. As he got out of the truck, and was walking back to his campsite, he mumbled something at me under his breath. I think he said, “This is bull____!” He then stated that I had a lot of balls to walk into their campsite and tell them that they have to leave (he told me this many times). I felt bad, so I just said that if there was any other campsites open, I would move – but since the park was filled, there were no other sites available anymore (this is over an hour since we first arrived), and since the park was booked up, they were not going to be able to go to another campsite either. He then said sarcastically, “Get comfortable, it might take us a couple of hours to pack everything up.”

I moved my truck to the adjacent camping site, just across the street, about 30 feet from the parking spaces for my campsite. As I was playing with Alex, he was playing in the truck, I heard footsteps coming up from the direction of the people packing up. I looked up, and it was the 50ish father coming across the street to remind me that I had a lot of balls to kick his family out of their campsite. At this point my patience was running out, and if you know me, I have a lot of patience – but once it runs out, its out. As his fat jaws were flapping up and down, I interrupted him and said, “Do you think I wanted this to happen? Do you think that this was my plan, to go camping and make the people move who were set up in my campsite? No, I just wanted to come out here and have some fun with my family and some friends. I feel bad about the situation, but what do you want me to do?” He just looked at me and said, “I just want you to know that it takes a lot of balls to walk into a campsite and tell complete strangers that they have to leave.” I said, “Great. Just finish packing up your stuff so we can get out tents together before it gets too dark out. (I was also making a brush off gesture with my hands – because I did not want to talk to him anymore – and I think I made that perfectly clear.). I said, “I am not making you do anything, remember, the campgrounds are the ones that told you to move on.” Of course, he had more to say, “No, you are the ones making me and my family pack up and leave in the middle of our get-together.” I decided to pepper a little bit of my smart-assiness into the conversation by stating, “Actually, I am not making you do anything, the campgrounds asked you to leave, and you are leaving on your own. I am not the police, I am not forcing you to do anything – you are doing it on your own. Now go.”

At that moment, our friends (Raf, Ruxandra, Luca & Stefana – they are some of our best friends, nice family) arrived and parked next to us at the adjacent campsite. They got out, and we all started talking and laughing, etc… – you know, the things friends do when having fun. Believe it or not, I was actually trying to keep it on the low, since the booted family were getting in their cars to leave. And I was ready for the fun part of the trip to begin. Luckily for me, the 50ish father stopped his car right where me and Raf were talking. He said from his rolled down window, “Now I see why you had to have this campsite, it’s because your friends are right here across the way.” At this point I had already had enough, and I said, “You don’t know what you are talking about. What are you talking about?” And he said, “You kicked us out of our campsite so you could camp next to your friends. Now I see.” I quickly spouted back, “You do not know what you are talking about, we are just parked up here waiting for you to get out, because we are both camping at our campsite, the one you are leaving right now!” He again mentioned that I have a lot of balls to … blah, blah, blah (you have heard the broken record before). Raf then decided that he would try to talk to him nicely to reason with him, so he would understand our side, and not be so upset. I told him to forget it. The guy knows that he was wrong, and he is just trying to save face with his family because he was not even smart enough to know how to reserve a campsite. So Raf started talking to him, and the next statement out of the dude’s mouth was, “Well, I just hope you enjoy your time here.” And, “I don’t know how you can look yourself in the mirror, making us all pack up and leave and all.” At this point I was already smiling and doing the brush-away gesture with my hands again. I decided not to talk anymore, because I do not want words like, “$h!t h&ad, jerk off, or ___hole”, to come out of my mouth – I kept my composure, but I was not feeling sorry for them anymore, I just wanted to start our camping experience. Bye Bye squatters, have a nice life (in the end, they would have had the last laugh, if only they would have been able to watch us from afar).

Chapter 3: Setting up the campsite
Me and Raf looked over the campsite, and found the two best spots for our tents, right next to the campfire – perfect. My tent right between a huge white oak tree and a huge loblolly pine tree, and Raf’s right between a monster pine tree and a medium sized ironwood tree – lookin good so far.

I soon learned that my tent sleeps about 40 or 50 people, and once we got the ____ing thing put together, it looked pretty awesome – it actually has a compartment labeled “closet”. And it’s bright red to boot. Sweet.

The next thing to do was to air-up the air mattress. While I was finishing up the Taj-Mahal of tents, Raf and Stephanie were trying to get the air mattress aired up. I did not have an actual tent inflater, but I did have an air compressor and an air needle to use. I thought that the air needle would reach far enough down the nozzle of the mattress to air it up – do you think that it did? You were correct if you guessed that the needle was too short. Since I was not up to blowing 100 square feet of air into it, and hyperventilating myself to death, it meant that we were now going to be sleeping on an uninflated air mattress, which pretty much means that you are going to be sleeping on the ground (side note: the combined thickness of a tarp, the tent bottom, and the uninflated air mattress is about 1/4″ – maybe thinner when a 2.5 year old is bouncing up and down on it, but I will cover that later). At least we did have good sleeping bags provided by my sister and her husband. This kept me from buying one for Steph, which would be a waste since she will most likely never step foot into a tent again.

Chapter 4: Cooking
This part of the trip went well. I made elk burgers, roasted potatoes, and mixed veggies. I can’t believe that nobody was burned or choked to death during dinner.

Chapter 5: Sleeping (or not-sleeping, or me and Steph’s worst night ever)
Part one: Did you know that 2.5 year olds rotate in circles during their sleep? You would if you were sleeping on hard ground next to one. Did you also know that when a 2.5 year old, who is used to a mattress at home, rotates off of the sleeping pad and hits the cold plastic floor of a tent, will throw a tantrum in the middle of the night – two or three times? It seems that little kids like Alex (whom I still love with all my heart), do not care about others feelings – when I say others’ feelings and I mean anyone within earshot of a screaming/crying child at the campgrounds (which means pretty much our entire area). When I say tantrum, I do not mean the kind where the kid holds his breath and passes out – that would have been a Godsend, case closed everyone back to sleep. I am talking about a tantrum that starts around 2am, and lasts about 30 minutes – pretty much nonstop screaming. After he calmed down, I asked Alex if he wanted me to put him back on his sleeping bag, and got a 3 minute screaming response. I pretty much quit speaking that night. After about 30 minutes of so, he finally got back to sleep – and then me and Steph got back to sleep (Josh did not wake up – that is amazing).

Part two: Around 4:30am I had to go use the bathroom (urinate) outside – I could not hold it any longer (I did not want to disturb Satan over in the corner). Once I got back, Steph also needed to “go” – lucky for us, Alex woke up and demanded to go with Steph to the potty. Raise your hand if you think that he wanted to come back into the tent afterwords – if you raised your hand, you are wrong – Alex got all fired up again – and he was freaking out. I think he was not that impressed with sleeping on a harder than normal surface. While Steph was trying to appease Alex, I was busy trying to un-jamb the tent’s front door zipper (it got stuck each time someone other than me used it). At one point during this display, he was in the corner of the tent on his hands and knees bouncing up and down shouting, “No, No, No, No, No!!!” Luckily by this time, one of the neighboring campsites shouted out some wonderful parental advice, it went exactly like this, “Put his ass in the car!” Only because I was so deranged by the lack of sleep, and the overall embarrassment of bringing a nuclear bomb to an otherwise quiet campground, I did not yell anything back. I just laid back on my sleeping bag and let the little imp tire himself out and fall back to sleep. If I was smart, I would have put a tube down his throat, and he would have aired up the mattress in about 20 seconds. Now, finally, we were able to finish off our second 1 hour nap at night (in lieu of sleep). Also, if we could have left in the middle of the night, we would have. I told Steph that I was thinking about burning the tent and all of our stuff with it, and just leaving a note on our friends tent explaining what we did – actually, they would not need a note, because they were only 20 feet away, and heard it all.

Chapter 6: Packing up my family (and pride)
Packing up our stuff was easy. I told Steph that once we all got up, I was just going to cram everything into the back of the Rav4, and sort it out once we got back home. I had everything packed up in 10 minutes flat. I did not want to wait around for the neighboring campers to get together and kill us, plus, it seemed that Stephanie was pretty much done with her camping experience (as was I). The funny thing was, we had everything packed and cleaned up before our friends even got out of their tent. We all had breakfast together, and then we took off for home around 10am.

As we were driving away, I think I heard a round of applause from the entire campgrounds. I pictured myself standing on top of the Rav4, with my hands clasped above my head saying, “Thank you, thank you very much, enjoy the rest of your day everyone. And thanks for the parenting advice when I needed it most.”

Chapter 7: What I learned
Here are some things I have learned:

– Camping with a 2 year old is not always as easy as it might sound.
– Fire-ants do not sleep at night.
– No matter what the situation is, there is always someone with helpful advice.
– That this was Stephanie’s last tent camping trip (and first).
– Demon possession is real.
– If I didn’t already have a vasectomy, I would have performed one on myself in the middle of the night with my camping knife

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