It has been a few years since there has been an occurrence of this, and I had my silent reservations but went in with fingers crossed and a hopeful heart! I suppose I should clarify what kind of camping I'm talking about for anyone who might not know our situation well. We are tent campers.
Our previous camping experiences in Indiana were in a small tent of Nate's that just barely fit the two of us sleeping. I think we graduated from foam mats and sleeping bags the very first time we went together, to a queen size air mattress the second time. Don't hold me to the details, I think I might have repressed some of the memories. And I'm confident Nate had as well as, because I DO remember, he especially had a difficult time in our first camping trips due to very poor sleeping and back pain that came with sleeping on or very close to the ground! Enough time had passed that he was ready and eager to try again.
However, this time, things were different. Our basic run-of-the-mill air mattress had bit the dust and we had invested in a higher quality queen size mattress that was double tall, which allowed much more clearance between the floor and the top of the mattress. Nate also sold me on the idea of purchasing an 8 person tent that was on sale and a great deal. (Sidebar: Who the heck rates these tents? What they mean to say instead of 8 people, is 8 toddlers. I'm sure of it.) I was going in with fingers crossed and a hopeful heart.
Nate was pumped, and I was hopeful we were in for an enjoyable weekend. We headed north to Slave Lake. It's the furthest north I've been in Alberta. (Although we did drive north for lunch on Sunday to a place called High Prairie, so technically that is the farthest north I've been.) I was interested in seeing the great north :) We left shortly after I got off work. I packed the meals I had prepared for us the night before so they would be ready to toss in the cooler and we could hit the road. The drive was about 3.5-4 hours there. As we would randomly think of some important items we hoped the other person had been responsible for, we both saw the value in checklists and decided, next time we should do one of those. But for this trip we began a mental list of thing we might need to buy once we got there.
Upon arrival, we caught a beautiful sunset, pitched the tent, and enjoyed a campfire before bed. The tent size was great. Nate was able to get the air mattress pumped up by using an outlet from an RV down the road when we realized the manual pump was going to take about 8 hours to inflate our jumbo mattress. And yes, please visualize Nate walking through a campground with a queen size air mattress on his head. It made me laugh, and feel thankful he was willing to ask for help to get that thing inflated. The unfortunate and somewhat alarming reality was the number of mosquitoes that were were now living among. But we did come prepared for those with mosquito coils, bug spray, and the newly released bug belt deterrent fans.
I almost lost Nate to hotel planning after a first poor nights sleep, but not wanting us to give up too easily and waste the effort we had gone to in order to get there that weekend, I suggested we try to stick it out another night. I offered my ear plugs, because the biggest issue was noise. And especially as Nate is a light sleeper, it affects him the most. But even for myself, a fairly heavy sleeper, it was a rough night. Our campsite was directly adjacent to a local airport which is no big deal during the day. We found it could be interesting to watch the helicopter tours coming and going and the fire fighting airplanes take off and return. But that first night a there was a helicopter that came in for landing in the wee morning hours and it just about sounded like they were going to crash right into the tent. Shortly after that a thunderstorm shook the area. Not great sleep.
However, we were able to do extensive napping the next day and then get good sleep that night. It was free from late night helicopter landings, thunderstorms, and with the addition of earplugs for Nate to drown out any dogs barking etc. it made for some pretty restful sleep!
And its amazing what decent sleep can do to an outlook. The rest of the weekend was enjoyable, but I have to admit I was looking forward to coming home to a proper shower and bathroom!
The night before we left we celebrated our 4th anniversary be doing dinner out at a nice restaurant, so I was happy we had that experience, not just camping to commemorate our 4th year together! But I think we had a positive enough experience this time, we might even not wait a few years to try again.
