Our Camping Weekend

We just purchased a pop-up camper this weekend. It was a heck of a deal, because the guy who was trying to sell it lived about 3 hours out of town…and we got it for about $2200 below NADA. So – off we went to buy it, and we finagled it to where we could pick it up Friday to have an inaugural camping trip over Labor Day weekend.

We went to our favorite camping spot way out of town (there was a LOT of driving last week), and set up camp. Because it’s relatively unknown, we had no problems with space, it was us and 4 other campers (yes, it’s a great spot). But one of these campers didn’t fully understand Camping Ethics. They ran their generator for hours at a time, placing it far away from their spot, but very close to ours with the help of an insanely long extension cord. Greg and I let it slide. They turned it off for 2 hours, and then ran it for another 4…we took a deep breath and decided to go for a quick 4-wheeling trip.

When we returned, they had turned on a baseball game on their car stereo and were blasting it into the forest. Loud, deep, sports-sounding voices and crowds screaming. Far too much noise for any sort of camping ‘peak’ experience.

I was frustrated, and paced around camp thinking whether or not it would be worth going over and asking these people to turn down their noise. Greg and I went over to the truck we had borrowed from my dad to pull the camper (no, we don’t have one of those yet) and looked to see what he had by way of obnoxious CDs that I could use as ammunition. Good ole dad never lets us down in the obnoxious CD category. He travels a lot and had a wide assortment of middle-eastern music as well as a few ‘Learn to Speak Hindi’ CDs.

Greg looked them over critically, and then looked at me.

“I’m going to go over there, and ask them to turn it down. If they don’t, today we’re learning Hindi.

We’re ALL learning Hindi.”

And with that he marched down to their campsite. I watched the gestures, and heard a “SURE! Not a problem, really sorry!” And I suppose I was a bit disappointed, because really, revenge is so much sweeter…initially. But I really didn’t want to learn Hindi, I just wanted silence. And my manly husband grabbed the bull by the horns and dealt directly with the problem rather than indirectly.

Which caused me to look at myself and my actions and realize that I’m getting way too ‘city-fied’ for my own good. And it also made me look at Greg in a whole new light.

And laugh each time I think of the line “We’re ALL learning Hindi”.