Yes, it's true. We're going camping. Camping is a concept the Rosiak family is, on the whole, entirely unfamiliar with. To say that my parents aren't campers is putting it mildly. When I did backpacking at Girl Scout camp, my parents thought, "Where did this 'love of the outdoors' come from? Surely not from us!"
As my dad will be quick to point out, we have been camping. Once. It went like this--we stayed the night in someone else's RV. Shortly thereafter, Dad got pneumonia. Clearly the pneumonia was caused by the "camping" and therefore we should never ever go camping again, ever, lest someone just DIE or something.
We also did a sort-of camping kind of thing. That is, we ended up sleeping in our minivan one night. We had been staying in a lovely resort just outside of Yosemite. Unfortunately, there were some fires in Yosemite, as happens every once in a while, so we had to drive around to a different entrance to go inside. While we were there blissfully hiking or biking or whatever ridiculous "getting back to nature" activity we were doing, the fire moved around and the forest service closed all entrances (hence, exits) to Yosemite Valley, which is where we were. Obviously everyone else got wind of this before we did, because once we found out, there was not a hotel room, cabin, or tent to be had. And there we were with our minivan--just miles away from our cozy Yosemite resort.
Brad and I tried to remain light-hearted, but when your parents' idea of "roughing it" is a Motel 6, it's not so easy. We lined up in the parking lot with dozens of other unfortunate people who probably liked camping a lot more than we did, and did our best to fall asleep. We were awoken at some ungodly hour in the morning by a forest ranger, who was directing the evacuation of the valley. We managed to get out, although not entirely unscathed. Dad, who slept in the driver's seat, had his foot wedged so tightly under the brake pedal he wasn't able to walk for a while. Mom was grumpy because her curling iron wouldn't plug into the cigarette lighter. I felt okay, because I'm short and able to stretch reasonably out on the back seat of the minivan.
Almost as fun was the horseback riding trip we took, after which Dad swore he'd never come within a hundred yards of a horse again. Wimp. Let's just say we've had better vacations.
At any rate, we are joining a longstanding camping tradition for a particular wine event. We'll be camping with a couple of other couples from the wine group, which will be very fun. I hope. I'm not crazy about the idea of paying for a shower with quarters and walking in the dark to go to the bathroom, but I think it should be really fun. At least there will be wine.
Posted by Shelby at July 12, 2007 01:03 AM