Abby Goes Pseudo-Camping

I’ve been meaning to write this post for two weeks now. It has moved from day to day to day in my bullet journal and I finally have gotten around to it today.

Father’s Day weekend I went camping.

Not like, dirt and sleeping bags and tents camping, but it was camping for me. Nate’s dad and stepmom were on their way home from a trip to Georgia and we went down to meet them when they passed through Columbus. They had taken their RV trailer with them so we all decided to stay at the KOA in Buckeye Lake, Ohio.

If you haven’t been to a KOA before, they are essentially little camping grounds that have sites for primitive camping, little sleeper cabins with varying features, and RV sites and hookups.

Because there wasn’t comfortably enough room in the RV trailer for both Nate and myself, we decided that we would camp.

Bless his heart, Nate didn’t even ask me about the primitive camping sites. He just went straight for the sleeper cabins.

So for clarification purposes…I have never camped before. Like...my only experience with anything even remotely close to camping is my family trying to stay in a cabin during a family reunion and watching my mother pull back the bed sheets to find bugs in the bed and then more bugs in the shower.

It was bad.

There were tears.

It’s probably no surprise that when I texted my mom a picture of the cabin, her response was just “Good luck.”

It’s not that I am totally opposed to the idea of camping, I just don’t know how to camp and have slight PTSD from the bug thing. I want to like camping but there are some conveniences (like showers and soap) that I am not really comfortable with the idea of not having.

It’s for this reason that Nate elected for the little cabins. We would have a place for ourselves with a bed, locking the door, and easy access to real showers and bathrooms. I could handle that.

In the interest of full disclosure, I did have a slight freak out the day before we headed down to Columbus. Nate mentioned that we may need a fan and would need to bring bed sheets, pillows, and towels and I kind of lost it. I was caught totally off guard and was not thrilled about the idea of having to take our sheets to a cabin. (If you’ve ever dealt with bed bugs, you get viciously protective of keeping your bed things clean and bug-free).

After a minor panic attack, we figured out that the KOA could provide linens for $12 and we were sold. So started the weekend.

In a nutshell, the weekend was actually lovely. The cabin was air conditioned (a blessing in the 95 degrees, 100% humidity weather) and the bathrooms were clean and nice. Although…there was a bug that crawled out from behind on of the handles in the bathroom. After feeling my stomach drop, I kept my cool and just doused him with water.

Crisis averted.

While it wasn’t truly camping, the weekend made me feel a little more comfortable with the logistics of camping. If you know me at all, you know that logistics are my thing. I need to know how things work and how they will go before I can be totally okay with doing something new.

I’m not at the “Yeah! Let’s camp at Boundary Waters!” stage yet, but I am past the “Ew...cabins? Gross.” stage.

Everything is a learning experience and I think this one was a really good one for me. I’m actually a little intrigued with the concept of getting more comfortable camping, but shhh don’t tell Nate that yet or I’ll end up at a campsite next weekend. :)