[Adventure 188]
We drove for five hours. We stopped once at the Vermont Welcome Center and then not again until we got to Camp Calumet. Realizing we were already exhausted, we ordered pizza and got to work setting up our campsites. Two campsites. One for the young adult couples, one for the parents and younger teens.
The young adults got their tents up with only a minor upside down poles mishap.
The old fogeys had a more difficult time. The enormous tarp lost a corner grommet and the adults ran out of the physical and emotional capability to cope. It seemed worse than it was in the moment. It wasn't as bad as the missing most of the poles for the tent incident of 2019, but it felt like it.
We finally sent the rest of the crew to the beach while we finished figuring out the tarp and set up the tents. Thoroughly and utterly spent, we still had airbeds to set up, a kitchen tent to organize, and bins and bins of things to organize and put away. Except we didn't have electricity with which to inflate our mattresses or get our fridges cooling. Luckily help was at hand and it was an easy fix and we were on our way forward.
And thankfully Gramma and Papa sprung for dinner and we had a wonderful time sitting around the tables chatting and eating good food.
My husband left the next morning, needing to get home for work and to be there when the electrician does work on our wiring. I spent the morning cleaning and organizing and unpacking. The rest of the horde spent the morning at the beach and hanging out with Onyx's camp bunkmate, who is also our family camp next-campsite neighbor.
Eventually it was time to drop Onyx off for Resident Camp, and everything was seemingly going fine until we arrived at their tent and Onyx couldn't find his giant bag of bedding and a huge squishmallow that we stuffed into an XL ziploc bag. The thought occurred to us that it may have possibly, mistakenly, gone home in my husband's car. I was just about to head back to our campsite to see if it was somehow there, when I uncovered it between the seats of the van.
Later that night the toilet in our private bathroom was doing odd things. I tried plunging it to no avail. As I was trying to figure out whom to contact, the amazing Kathy swooped in on her golf cart in what could only be said to be perfect timing and said she'd find someone to take care of it. Mind you, it was after 8PM on a Sunday. Not too long afterwards, I received a call from Julie who had talked to Alice who had talked to Kathy (or something like that) and someone would be over to take a look at the toilet the next day - so we could move to a different bathroom in the meantime. It's this that I love about Camp Calumet - their response was quick and kind and apologetic and they made sure we didn't have too big of an interruption in accommodations. And when I mentioned it's the first week of Camp and the bathrooms are new (we painted them during Spring Cleaning Weekend!), and that I understand it takes time to work out the kinks, I was thanked for being so understanding.
Every year it's something. I didn't take the tent incident well at all. My husband is probably ready to never to battle with a tarp again in his life. But we always regroup and make the best of it. It's because we had to buy a new tent two years ago that we had enough tents for people to sleep in this year.
The best part of our first forty-eight hours at Camp was falling asleep listening to a group of young people chatting animatedly - about what, I'm not sure, but they were definitely having a good time.
Comments
Post a Comment