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How to have a miserable camping experience this Memorial Day
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photo from morgueFile.com
Memorial Day weekend is the "official" start of Colorado's camping season. Thousands of city dwellers cram cars and RVs full of "stuff" and race up I-70 to secure a first-come campsite.
Here are some tips on how to have a horrible, no-good, very bad camping trip that would make Alexander proud.
- Wait until late Friday afternoon to head up to the high country.
- Arrive at campground after dark only to discover it's full.
- Drive around to seven other campgrounds after dark to find out they too are full.
- Be reprimanded by a camp host for not arriving before Wednesday noon.
- Pull over on the side of some dirt road in the mountains in the pouring down rain. Haul out the tent and discover the poles are missing.
- Make sure kids are good and hungry. The plan was to have a wiener roast over an open fire at the first campground you went to.
- Be a good hour and a half away from the nearest fast-food place or convenience store.
- Throw sleeping bags, clothes, everything out of the car searching for the stupid tent poles (your spouse swore he or she packed them). Remember it's pouring down rain.
- After a cold, sleepless night in the car, drive over to Harry's Round-Up Ranch campground, complete with tepees and plastic horses.
- Discover your tent lot is squeezed between two monster RVs with Direct TV dishes invading your vertical space.
- Collapse onto damp camp chairs and enjoy the view of a plastic horse's butt.
- Realize when you searched the car you left the cooler full of food along the road where you slept in the car.
- Find out after the fact that your oldest child is allergic to stale Twinkies (it's all they had left at the souvenir shop).
- Stay awake all night long listening to blaring re-runs of Happy Days (neighbors have Direct TV, remember?)
- Experience the outdoorsy scent of exhaust fumes from neighbors' generators.
- Peel back your tent flap to see if it's really raining and discover someone's Great Dane is using your tent to relieve himself.
- Upon leaving, get a bill for your one night that would've paid for a night at a motel. "It's the amenities!" The camp host says fanning your last three twenty-dollar bills in his hands.
- Spend nine hours siting on I-70 between the Eisenhower Tunnel and Georgetown.
To avoid the above scenario consult REI's Outdoor Recreation Information Center at the Flagship store in Downtown Denver.
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