Kamping

I sit in my camp chair outside of our kabin at the KOA in Douglas WY, musing on a life of adventure. My child is still snoozing in the kabin, Buttercup is pacing the confines of her tether (two leashes tied together attached to the bbq grill pole), and Gallifrey is lounging on the porch behind me on his big dog bed. Jessie shared with me last night that she doesn't like this place, with this place defined as Wyoming (too wide open and empty--she likes cities) and the campground (too primitive--she likes 5-star hotels). The experience is somewhat different for me.

On the one hand, it's total luxury compared to the camping I did growing up, but on the other, it’s a weird kind of primitive. Maybe it's just been too long since I stayed at a campground. Admittedly, I have only stayed in a campground a couple of times because my parents would have considered camping at a campground a luxury vacation and not at all like real camping. Our camping was done in the woods with gear you carried in on your back after hiking all day. Food was cooked over a little fire in a thin aluminum pot (we had two pots--one for water, one for the meal) and it was some freeze-dried ration in a light-weight packet. All of you slept together squashed into a tiny tent that wasn’t even close to tall enough to stand up in, in sleeping bags on thin mats (if you were lucky).

Since then I have had occasion to camp  in a campground a few times. Once at Enota in GA with Jessie, all of her classmates, and their parents. We drove in with tons of food, firewood, big tents, air mattresses, chairs, linens, pillows, camping lanterns, extra clothes, etc. There was a communal bath area with flush toilets and hot showers, and there was even a dining hall for people who didn’t want to cook their own food. I have also camped in the Glacier and Waterton National Park campgrounds. Some of those sites even had electricity to them and their own firepits.

But nothing can compare to where we are now. This campground has sites for tents, hook-ups for RV’s, three kamping kabins, and stalls and a corral for campers’ horses. There are communal bath areas for men and women, a laundry room, a general store, an outdoor swimming pool, a fenced dog run, a volleyball court, a basketball court, and a mini-golf course. Our kabin (though only about 12 X 12) has a double bed, a bunk bed, a tiny table, a porch with two chairs, a fire pit, a picnic table, a path of grass, a bbq grill, a wall mounted flat-screen tv (very small, but hey!), electricity, a ceiling fan, and wi-fi. Does that even count as camping?

Now off to Wellington to check Buttercup into her stables and get settled into our hotel to get ready for the 2014 Rocky Mountain Irish Wolfhound Association Specialty Show, Puppy Sweepstakes, Obedience and Rally Trials.