In case y’all should think that camping is all fun and games, let’s allow some reality to set in and admit to the seamy side of this hobby. Least I romanticize it, consider this:

1. We are having an issue with condensation on the canvas. Because the temperature outside is colder than on the inside, water condensates and drips can form. It rectifies itself during the day, but comes back in the night. It’s not terrible, but it is there and occasionally we have a dream about droplets falling from the night sky on our bare faces. Only it’s not a dream.
2. We are committed to functioning in this small space harmoniously. So we have had to look at the glass half full instead of half empty when we need to move about inside. We can pass in the hallway, but only if we stop and hug and do a little dance. That’s not all bad.
3.  Little Wicca is a velcro dog. She wants to follow me everywhere and be wherever I am. Why she needs to follow me twenty feet back and forth in the camper is a mystery to all but her. We have taught both of the dogs not to jump up on anything to avoid injuries, so they simply put their front feet up and ask to be lifted. We call this behavior, “Toes”. Wicca does “Toes” all day long and I am feeling like I have a toddler who is begging, “Pick me up, PIck me up, Pick me up!” I have to remind her,  “You are not the boss of me!”
4. Arnie is a putterer. He is wonderful at making things work better, smoother, more efficiently. So, when he greased up the ball of the towing hitch it just seemed routine to me. The problem is that it sticks right out of the back of the truck where I need to go for supplies and clothes every day. I have ruined two pairs of pants so far by smearing that grease all over both knees. Two hours at the seediest laundramat I’ve ever seen yesterday and it does not come out. I hate greasy balls.
5. But at least the facilities are really nice where we are staying for the bulk of this trip. Not like the leaky compost toilet on the Big Cypress trip. That’s a story with a memory attached! We had just come out of the woods on a hike and there it was. It was like an oasis in the desert. I needed a ladies room so desperately that I could overlook the conditions if I was quick……or, so I told myself. Walking past the sign with the bullet hole in it, I carefully removed the ipad and the cell phone from my small backpack, set them on the sink so that there could be no accidents in this “ladies” room. I finished up, retrieved the phone and tablet and carefully tiptoed towards the door on the slimey slippery floor. Then it happened. In a flash, my feet slipped apart and forward, tossing me flat on my back in the muck. I slid across the floor stopping at the wall. The ipad and phone skimmed to the far side of the room like flat stones over a pond. I laid there for a moment trying to determine what was broken or sprained. Determining that I was going to be sore, but relatively intact, I started to right myself. But the old high school skiing injury to my knee screamed at me and I knew I needed Arnie to come and haul me up. Boy, I hated to yell for help, so I sat there for a bit hoping to try again. But this is the Big Cypress Swamp and it was mucky and smelly and I was sitting in a room with a leaky compost toilet. Scotty, beam me up please!!! I tentatively called for Arnie with no response. I pictured him off staring at birds in trees through binoculars while I lay mired in stinky stuff

Finally, Arnie came looking for me. “Babe, are you in there?”, he called around the Ladies room corner. “Yes, I need help. I slipped and fell.” He bounded in, surveyed the scene with me on the floor in a heap and our technology scattered across the room. He did what any husband would do without even thinking about it…………he exclaimed, “Oh my God! The ipad.!”

I will spare you the filler. This is one of the those moments that we will laugh about forever. and one of those moments that reminds us that camping has a seamy side too. I decided to put it to music in the Appalacian style. Sing this to She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain:

She’ll be coming round the compost when she falls

She’ll be sliding cross the floor when she falls

She’ll be coming round the compost

She’ll  be coming round the comporst

She’ll be sliding round the comporst when she falls.

She’ll be slipping in the yuck much when she lands

She’ll be sliding cross the yuck much when she lands

She’ll be slipping and a sliding

She’ll be slipping and a sliding

She’ll be stirring up the compost when she lands!

YeeHa!