Glamping is Not For Sissies

By Patricia White

      When we moved into our present home about two years ago we had designs on building a Gazebo in our huge back yard. I’m taking about a lot of wood and about 14 feet in diameter. It was to be our outside sanctuary in which to sit and drink morning coffee or adult beverages in the evening. We would not be able to see anything from the lovely Gazebo but each other, as our yard is completely surrounded by a tall wooden fence. I wanted to see people and much preferred a red-neck cocktail party in lawn chairs in the driveway. We put the Gazebo on the back burner. I woke up one morning and had dreamed we owned a motor home! After breakfast I told hubs I wanted to go look at some motor homes, just for fun. Before the day was over, we’d spent our Gazebo money on a sweet motor home built for two or maybe four very close friends. The name painted on the motor home was Storm.

     We camped with our four children in a tent for many years and still loved the outdoors. Now we would be doing what is currently known as glamor camping…..or glamping…We had become glampers! The Storm has a kitchen, a toilet, shower, a real bed and air-conditioning. You must have cooked on an outdoor camp stove, slept on the cold hard ground in a sleeping bag with three kids during a storm, buried the potty bags and sweated your eyeballs out in summer to appreciate this new luxury. 

     After many hours of shopping and outfitting, there we sat in the driveway prepared for take-off. Mr. Leblanc (hubs) noticed the newspaper still in our front yard and asked me to hop out and get it. When I opened the door, the steps deployed. That’s a very convenient feature, sometimes. I started down the steps and closed the door behind me before I got to the bottom step, so as not to let all the cool air escape. Well, just as the stairs deployed when the door opened, they sucked back into the side when the door closed. In this case, my feet were still on the steps when they sucked in leaving me airborne with nothing to do but grab for a sky hook and fall forward on my knees on the driveway. I was in a good position to pray, but I cursed instead as I clutched at my brush-burned knees. Lesson 1. Always lock the stairs when they are down…always, except when you go to bed for the night. Then you want the stairs sucked in and doors locked so no bears can sneak in   while you are asleep. I am just one who wants everything locked and bolted no matter where we are at night. There are probably no bears at Lake Conroe, but one never knows.

    After several hours setting up and figuring out how everything worked, we fell into bed dead tired. I heard a noise around 1 a.m. and had a strong sense someone or something was trying to break in. I heard it’s harder to break into a motor home than a vault, but the noise was unsettling for a girl who hates the dark. Hubs got up to go look out all windows checking for bears. I decided it was a good time to use the facilities since we were both wide awake. The bedroom is a step up from the rest of the bus interior. It is a very tight squeeze between the bed and wall and being our first trip out, I had not learned the short-cut…..When you’re worried about a bear, you don’t think about steps, or bedspreads that have slipped off the bed. I totally missed the step, slipped on the silky bedspread and flew into the hall. My butt hit the floor, spun around and I raked my forearm and elbow across the AC vent, scraping off all the skin. It burned like you know what. When I quit spinning my head hit the hinges on the bathroom door. OMG, I saw stars. I was ready to sell that son-of-a-biscuit eater and look for a Gazebo kit when we got home.

    Mr. Leblanc kept me awake for an hour or so in the event I had a concussion. By the grace of God, I finally fell asleep, and even better, I woke up the next morning. How else would you know you are not dead? I had a dreadful headache but was so happy to be alive.  I made coffee, filled my tiger mug and headed for the door. I opened it, the stairs deployed, I LOCKED then and headed out to stare at the lake and the family of ducks swimming nearby. My head was really throbbing, but we had no car to run over to the Urgent Care Clinic about five miles up the road. We were hooked up to too many things to un-tether. The reason we were not towing a vehicle was because we didn’t have one. We were encouraged by our RV salesman to hold off buying a tow car for a year until we decided if Glamping was really for us old city slickers. He said there was an Enterprise store in every city and they would happily deliver a car to us. Just call them.  No car payments, no insurance payments, no chance of getting separated from your new little wind-up toy going 70 down the interstate. Lesson 2. You need your own car, whatever it costs.

     Breakfast was fairly uneventful, unless you count the burn on Hub's hand from reaching into the oven to retrieve burning toast. We cleaned up the kitchen without ever moving our feet. Now that is pretty cool. We used up quite a few Band Aids and Neosporin between my elbow, my knees and hubs hand.  We dressed and were ready for a refreshing day in the outdoors on the lake. Hubs baited up some treble hooks on a throw line with chicken hearts and walked 100 yard to the edge of the cove. I grabbed my iPad, my mug of coffee and headed for a camouflage-glamp-chair to sit out my headache.

     Fifteen minutes later, I looked up and hubs was limping back to camp. He had a hook, a treble hook, in his leg. Little did I know I was fixing to perform my first surgery, ever! I got him inside and on the couch. I don’t know where the cutters came from, a God-send, I’m sure, but I grabbed them and cut the barbs off two hooks so that I could slide his jeans down around his ankles and do what I had to do. I then tried to cut the shank off but God’s cutters weren’t making a dent. Against hub's protests, I ran next door and ask a total stranger to come help me. He grabbed his cutters and followed me back. His strong hands were able to make the cut. Then the head nurse took over again. I pushed the hook gently…..if there is a gentle way to wiggle a hook that is stuck in someone’s leg. Then the neighbor tried his un-scrubbed hand at budging the hook. I kept suggesting we call 911. Then hubs said, he’d do it himself and no one was calling 911. Without shedding a tear, he pushed that awful barb right out of his leg.  Fragments of chicken hearts still clung to the hook. With hub's jeans down around his ankles, the stranger was ready to leave once the emergency was over. I thanked him for being a Good Samaritan and he left.  Right after that he and his wife packed up and left camp. I would have loved to send him a Bass Pro Shop gift card but with no name or address, he would have to be happy with the satisfaction of knowing he had paid it forward.  Lesson 3. Always pay it forward if you can……whether it’s picking up the tab for the person in front of you at Starbucks or helping a frantic mother remove a rock from her son’s nose or helping an old man with a fish hook in his leg.  

     I put in a call to our doctor and was informed that Mr. Leblanc was up to date on his tetanus shot. I cleaned his boo boo up with soap and water, peroxide and alcohol. I slathered some Neosporin on a sterile pad and wrapped some purple stretchy tape from my first-aid kit around his leg. Lesson 4.  Prepare a first aid kit and keep it stocked. You will probably need it sooner than later. Stick some good wire cutters in there too, just because I said so.

     My Mr. Leblanc re-rigged his throw line, popped on some more chicken hearts and took off for the water’s edge. The rains started after lunch before we had a chance to stow away our outdoor gear and chairs. We hurried inside where the comforts of home awaited us. Luckily, this camp ground had a full hook-up which included cable TV. I love a dreary, rainy afternoon, curled up on the couch watching a good movie. It was wishful thinking.  The TV reception reminded me of the 50’s when the first TVs came out and we accepted the snowy picture as normal. The two stations that came in clear were both in Spanish.  Yo no hablo Espanol. We played Scrabble and napped.  The Gazebo Kit at Lowe’s was calling our name.

      I brought previously-cooked food from our freezer so supper would be a breeze. I was so ready for easy. By then, it was 5 o’clock and hubs had our long-stemmed plastic wine glasses out and he was filling them. The rain had stopped. We headed out to watch the sunset in the still-wet camouflage chairs. My head had finally stopped hurting. Supper was on the stove. The slippery bedspread was off the bed and stowed in the outside compartment with the nasty fish lines. There were no red streaks running down Mr. Leblanc's leg. The wine and the lake calmed me. Not much else could go wrong tomorrow.

     By the way, the noise we heard in the night was the awning flapping when the night wind whipped up over the lake. Lesson 5. Never leave the awning up overnight.

     It’s hard to teach old geezers new tricks, but I think we got this now. The Gazebo is back on hold as of today. Our kids think it’s so cool that we are still adventurous at our age. What they don’t know won’t hurt then, The Lord watched out for us the next two days and never gave us more mishaps than we could handle, except maybe for the toilet overflow at midnight. Just call us the Glampets….Look out for us at a campground near you.