Camping

It's Monday, and we're home from camping. The washing machine is working double time between our laundry and the blankets I took.

Steven was able to come Friday evening and stayed until early afternoon on Saturday. Then he needed to get home and work. He left shortly before 'the boat' arrived. The friends that were also camping with us, their parents have a boat and brought it out to the lake for the afternoon. It was sooo much fun! It brought back all the memories of the times we spent on peoples boats when I was growing up.

We had a great time. We couldn't have asked for more beautiful weather. It was perfect in the 80's all weekend long. Enjoyed the great outdoors, the time spent with family, and getting to better know the other friends that came. Thanks to my brother who pitched our tent and took it down! :)

While I'm kinda new to the whole camping thing, I thought there was some sort of camping etiquette that all people who camped knew about. You know, the kind of etiquette that just goes with being courteous and common sense.

For example, Friday night, people arrived one campsite over, at 11:00 to their campsite. Now that time of the night, you would think people just set up their tent and worry about unloading everything else the next morning. Not these people. Not only did they proceed to set up their tents, and everything else they brought, but they stayed up until the very wee hours of the morning talking and whooping it up. Hello?? Ever heard of quiet hours while camping?? We were in a tent, so we obviously were affected by their rudeness, but my sister-in-law who was sleeping inside a trailer was also awakened by the noise.

And while I'm on the subject of noise, how about radios while camping?? If you're gonna play it, play it softly and not so everyone in the entire vicinity can hear it. On Sunday morning, the campsite on the other side of us, had their radio on before it was even 7:00am! I thought the idea of camping was to get a way from it all?? The noise, the hustle and bustle. The positive thing I can say is it was music that I listened to back when I was in high school, so at least it wasn't totally annoying, or not understandable.

What about respecting peoples campsites?? I can't tell you how many times people walked within feet of our tent in the night to and from the restrooms, it happened during the day too. Campsite boundaries, not observed. Saturday evening, as Grace was finishing up something in the trailer, and I had walked to the nearby restrooms, a pair of women walked right onto our campsite and sat the picnic table. When I first saw the women, I wondered to myself who it was that Grace had met, but it turned out, the women were going campsite to campsite selling jewelry (funny, you can't even escape the door to door salesmen even when camping. LOL). It was weird, they just walked up onto our site, didn't even hesitate.

Grace and I talked a little bit about how these things and the lack of etiquette and how it could be a result of it being a state park campground and the type of people that are sometimes drawn to cheap campsites. But as I thought about it a little more since being home, I'm not sure why it is that I was so surprised by the above circumstances, the lack of common courtesy and common sense are for the most part an everyday occurrence in todays society.

Next camping trip: Mammoth Lakes in just a few weeks!