If I could, I would send Chris to his favorite place in the world for a week. I would go with him if he wanted me to, but my favorite place to visit is very, very different. This video shows why separate vacations aren't always a bad thing...
inspired by : 1) It’s time for an adventure! What is the best place you’ve ever traveled? Tell us a bit about it and show us what to do if we were to go there.
**I was not as sunburned as I looked, thankfully**
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This is continuation of my post 5 Things That Make a Camping Trip Great. While camping is like pizza to me (there is no bad pizza) there certainly are those things that can make it merely a good camping trip and not great one.
Here are few things that can take a camping trip from...
Great to Good
1. Seeing your team lose, live!!! While Oklahoma is my team, I still follow and support Georgia Tech (I actually spent more time at GT than OU). When a college friend was selling tickets to the GT-UVA game, Dana and I decided to purchase two and take the opportunity to go camping. I figured this would be a perfect game to go to. GT was highly ranked, undefeated, and playing a Virginia team that hasn't had a good football team since 1990. Surely, this would be in the bag. Yeah, not so much. While our seats were great, everything about Georgia Tech's play was terrible. They came out flat and made UVA look like they were the ranked ones. Can I get my money back, Ashley?
Dana being smug because GT is losing.
2. Lack of cell phone coverage. So camping in the foothills of the Appalachians, while beautiful, isn't cell phone friendly. I'm not normally one for needing cell phone coverage while camping, but we left the dogs at home for this trip and I was a bit curious on how they were doing. If there had been a problem there would have been no way to contact us. Fortunately for the free wi-fi at the campground, we were able to communicate via messaging on Facebook.
3. One lane gravel roads. Due the lack of cell phone coverage, we were unable to find out if one winery, Sugarleaf Vineyards, was accessible for a truck towing a camper. We decided to risk it and let me tell you, it was stressful. This one lane gravel road was the worst road I have been on in a long time. Plenty of potholes and plenty of blind bends. Fortunately for the trip to the winery we encountered no other traffic. We were not so lucky leaving the winery. Backing up with a camper is not easy and I'll leave it at that. We came out unscathed but I don't need any more gray hair.
4. Crowded campgrounds. When we go camping, we don't come to socialize with the other campers and, frankly, would rather be the only people out there. When we made reservations, there were only three spots left so I knew this was going to be a crowded campground and boy was it. It was kid hell, as I had to dodge little Hell's Angels as I walked to the restroom. For further reading on why this sucks, see number 5 below.
5. Loud, Drunken Rednecks. As if crowded campgrounds aren't bad enough, throw in Billy Ray, his first cousin/wife Bobbie Sue, their 12 chil'ren, and plenty of Busch Light and Boone's Farm and you've got a recipe for disaster. Oh yeah, did I mention they were our neighbors? Quiet hours evidently didn't apply to these asshats as they sang Skynyrd and loudly laughed into the wee hours.
All in all, it was a good trip. Honestly, take away the rednecks and the Georgia Tech loss and it would've have been a great trip.
If you camp, what are your camping pet peeves? Do you have any funny or harrowing stories to share?
TweetChris is back & inspired by a recent camping trip...hope you enjoy!
just outside of Charlottesville, VA
Ok, so I didn't title this "10 Things That Make a Camping Trip Awesome". Nope, I didn't want to focus on just those things that made our recent camping trip awesome because for every awesome there is usually a terrible. Instead I'm going to provide 5 things that make a camping trip go from good to great in this post and 5 things that make a camping trip go from great to good in another post.
Good to Great
1. Beautiful weather. Nothing says "its a great time to camp" than fall weather. Chilly nights and mild days. Combine that with bountiful sunshine and camping is on point.
also near Charlottesville, VA
2. Well-maintained campgrounds. You never know what you are going to get when you make a campground reservation. Pictures don't always tell the whole story and for every bad review you can always find a good one. When there is only one campground where you want to go, well, there is no choice and you get what you get. The KOA in Charlottesville was nice. Nestled in the foothills of the Appalachians, there was plenty of fall foliage, nice level sites, each with their own campfire ring, a nice store, and clean restrooms.
3. Free WiFi. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know that when you are camping you are supposed to become one with nature and all that jazz and that's fine. But fall camping coincides with another love of mine: College Football. I schedule camping around OU's games so I won't go if they are playing in a tough game. So they played Kansas this camping weekend so I wasn't really concerned but having WiFi afforded me the opportunity to run ESPN's GameCast and keep up with it, play by play.
4. Nearby libations. Dana and I are all about supporting local wineries and breweries. We don't necessarily go out looking for them, but if they are nearby, you can bet we are going to make a stop. I didn't do any research ahead of time but was told that there were some wineries in the Charlottesville area. Much to my surprise and delight, there were four of them within ten miles of where we were staying. Unfortunately Klaw isn't old enough to drive, so we limited ourselves to two of them. We will get the others next time.
Dave Matthews's Blenheim Vineyards
Sugarleaf Vineyards
5. Cooperative children. We've only taken Klaw camping once before and he was good. Since that time, he has, how do I say this, developed a penchant for throwing temper tantrums periodically. Not that he is ever bad but sometimes he shows his tail, as on old family friend used to put it. This trip he was great! He went to bed when we did, slept the entire night, and even was good enough to allow us to stay the entire 4 quarters of a GT-UVA football game. Thanks buddy!!!
Chris, Klaw, & Buzz
Do you enjoy camping? What are do you think makes for a great camping trip?
With Chicago in our rear view mirrors, there was not much else for us to look forward to. We had no plans to make any detours and the rest of the trip plan consisted of an overnight stop in Ohio and then another overnight stop in eastern Pennsylvania before arriving at our ultimate destination in New London, Connecticut. Dana has been to Connecticut before for about a month. Now my tour there was longer than a month but she had had enough after a month. Certainly there wasn't much for her to be excited about. In fact, now that I think about it the only thing that kept us motivated to get there was, well, I had to get there because of my job. We were going to be arriving to our rented home, a home we had only seen in pictures.
I don't remember much about this part of the trip. Or maybe I choose not to remember because it meant that the trip was almost over or that it wasn't that great in this part of the country. Either way our stay in Ohio was fine and the stay in Pennsylvania at the Delaware Water Gap/Pocono Mountain KOA was fine as well.
Just to give you an idea of how we felt about these last two days, I will say that there was only 1 picture taken during this time period. I will include it here just to try to make this entry a bit longer. It does have some significance as Dana is a HUGE Eagles fan. Not the Philadelphia type but the music band type.
I would like to sum up this trip because it truly was one of the best times of my life. I relive it over and over. I'll do it in the form of a survey type style. The answers below are mine alone. Dana's may differ so if you are curious about hers just ask her. If you've taken the time to read all of the last half-dozen or so posts that I've written, I appreciate it. Hopefully, you've at least enjoyed the pictures. As pretty as they are, they don't do justice to and definitely are no substitute for the real thing. And maybe, if you ever find yourself making a cross-country trip, you can refer back to these post for ideas of where to or not to stay and things to do.
Best Campground: We actually stayed at some pretty nice ones. Since I can't narrow it down I'll give a couple. Salmon River RV Park in Elk Bend, ID and Sioux City North KOA, South Dakota. Both very well kept and ran by nice people.
Worst Campground: No contest. West Liberty KOA. Cow pasture, crappy hosts, BP gas station.
Best Drive: From Wells, NV north to Salmon, ID. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. Oh yeah, and they had Native Americans on dinosaurs on the side of the road.
Worst Drive: All of it across Iowa, and all of it after Chicago.
Best National Park:Yellowstone. Wasn't expecting much. Completely wrong.
Worst National Park: None. That's why they are National Parks.
Prettiest Scenery: Idaho and Montana
Ugliest Scenery: See answers for "Worst Drive"
Best Person interacted with on trip: Other than Arynn and Dane who we knew already, definitely Marcia from Salmon River RV Park. The girl who kept serving us beer at Craggy Range is a close second.
Worst Person interacted with on trip: Lady from West Liberty KOA. I can give a number of reasons but they are pretty harsh so I'll refrain in this capacity. Dude with dog, Ghost, at LaSalle RV Park in Columbia, MT is second. He wanted to make Samson his bitch. I don't think so.
After getting up and getting on the road from Sioux City, SD our plan was to drive west across Iowa and stay in east Iowa at a KOA that is no longer a KOA, probably due to our comments. I will talk about that later.
It was a pretty easy drive across Iowa and not scenic, in my opinion. While we were driving down I-80, or across on I-80, I should say, Dana came across a sign for Elk Horn. We were caravanning, so we carried walkie-talkies to communicate with each other. When she saw the sign for Elk Horn, she radioed over and asked if I wanted to go. Maybe if it was Elk Cove, as in the Elk Cove from the movie Overboard, I would have shown a bit more excitement. I mean, who doesn't watch that movie when it comes on TBS every week? Ok, maybe just me. Anyways, I guess I didn't fully understand how much Dana wanted to go until we had driven ten miles past the exit and she wasn't responding to any of my radio calls. Well, we ended up turning around and headed to Elk Horn, Iowa, the center of Danish ethnicity and home to the Danish Immigrant Museum. If you didn't know, Dana is of Danish descent. The museum was brand new and I will admit, there was some pretty neat stuff inside. This ended up being a good place to stop and let the dogs stretch their legs. As for the town of Elk Horn; not a place you go to on the weekend to get your party on. That is unless your idea of a party is tractor racing down Main Street.
After the brief excursion to Danish America, we continued onward to West Liberty, a small town just outside of Iowa City, home to the Hawkeyes. Iowa City being home to the Hawkeyes, not West Liberty. As I mentioned earlier, we made arrangements to stay at a KOA there. Much like most of Iowa we had seen already, there wasn't much once you pass Iowa City. We get off at the exit for the KOA, follow the signs and end up pulling into a BP gas station. Well we continued to follow the signs that led to the back of the gas station and into the KOA. We could still hear the traffic from the interstate at the entrance (a stone's throw from I-80). We park and go into what was the KOA lodge. It did not resemble any of the lodges we had seen before and when our host (I think that's what they call them at KOA) came out, she was not dressed in the nice embroidered KOA shirts and I definitely knew that corporate KOA had not been out here in a while.
We checked in and pull around to our spot. The RV park was bound by a cow pasture, whose aroma permeated the air, and a mobile home park. We had not stopped to pick up any food for the night so we needed to go out after we got set up. We asked the host for the closest grocery store and she sent us down the highway to the booming metropolis of West Liberty. We drove through what was the downtown area, past what looked to be a business district, but no grocery store. We had plenty of people staring at us and I'm sure the thought that West Liberty might be our last stop EVER crossed both our minds at one point. We got the hell outta dodge and drove back the direction we came and ended up having to drive back to Iowa City to find a grocery store. I'm pretty sure that the cow pasture adjacent to our RV park was home to the cows that would become the West Liberty Saturday night special. I'm sure you don't need a grocery store if you kill your own animals. Talk about fresh.
Needless to say we got up early the next morning, skipped breakfast, and got on the road. If the saying were "give me West Liberty or give me death," we would most assuredly choose death. A bit into our drive that day we saw signs for the Presidential Library and Museum of President Hoover, located in West Branch, Iowa. We had some extra time since we expedited our exit from West Liberty (what's with all the "Wests" in Iowa?) so we decided to stop. The small town was actually pretty neat and the grounds where the museum and grave sites of President Hoover and his wife were very well kept. This was probably the nicest site in Iowa. No offense to anyone from Iowa who reads this. I'm sure our experience was jaded by the former West Liberty KOA.
We make it to Naperville, Illinois, a large suburb outside Chicago, early evening to see our friends Arynn and Dane. I met Dana through Arynn in Charleston, SC back in 2001 so it was certainly good to see her again. They had a Cocker Spaniel named Piper who our dogs enjoyed hanging out with. Dane and Arynn, who knew I was a big Cubs fan, surprised us with tickets to a Cubs game. I was thrilled! I had been to Wrigley back in college while on a road trip to see Georgia Tech play at Notre Dame. Tech lost that game and I honestly don't remember the score of the Cubs game or who they played, but I do remember where I sat and even have pictures of Harry Carey leaning out during the 7th inning stretch singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." Dana and I had also seen the Cubs play in San Fran while stationed in Monterey. The Cubs lost that one but I won, seeing as how they had Lagunitas IPA on-tap at the stadium.
I digress. Well Dane and Arynn had to work the day we were going to the game but we had planned to go over to Chicago early to meet Aimster, a friend of Dana's, and a friend of mine from the submarine community, John Red-face, as he is known to us. Dana and I took the train in from Naperville and we all met at the Rock Bottom Brewery downtown. Dane and Arynn were planning on meeting us at the stadium before the game. It was noon when we arrived at Rock Bottom and we didn't leave for several hours.
Dana's friend had to go but John asked us if we wanted to go back to his place which was not far from Wrigley. We had nothing to do for a while so we hung out, maybe had some more beverages, and John escorted us to the stadium where we met up with Dane and Arynn. It was nuts around Wrigley. We found a bar to pre-game for a bit and finally made our way into the friendly confines of Wrigley Field. Our seats were AWESOME! Ten rows up from the field on the 3rd base side. Carlos Zambrano had lost that day in San Fran when we last saw the Cubs play and he was back on the mound today. Long story short. The Olde Style flowed and the Cubs' homers flew and in the end, the Cubs destroyed their opponent. It had been a fun day. I could definitely live in Chicago.
Ok, so I forgot about the Badlands in South Dakota, but the previous post was long enough so I'll just include it here. I also forgot about one of the most memorable moments we had with the dogs on the trip.
After the nice long day we had visiting Rushmore and Wind Cave National Park, we realized that the dogs really needed some time to run around. Dana had found a state park that was along the way back to the our campground in Rapid City. You are probably asking "how did she do that?" Well, by this point we figured that we needed internet in some form or another. I had only made reservations at campgrounds for a week or so out so, we needed some way to look up places other than calling our parents to look some up for us (which they did on a couple of occasions). We had very cheap cell phones but still internet capable so we bit the bullet and got it on my phone. It was slow with terrible graphics. But it worked. I digress.
When we left Bozeman, packing up the camper was an adventure as I had to accomplish it in a blizzard. Dana and I had not yet caught up to the technology in the 21st century and had cell phones with no internet. I know, right? Well, needless to say it was not as easy as it is now with smart phones to get the weather. Truly, my meteorology skills had declined since college.
In order to see more states that we had yet to see, we drove east to North Dakota. We had the ultimate goal of driving east to North Dakota, just to say we did it, then drive south to South Dakota and see Mt. Rushmore. The drive was a bit too long to do in one day so we made arrangements to stay in a convenient place in North Dakota. Convenient was about it. This campground, located in Belfield, ND, which had full hookups and level sites was in the middle of a tree farm. We were the only people there and the campground was not manned. Honor-code payment. It was kind of creepy but fortunately the Trappers Kettle Restaurant was close by. A unique dining experience, to say the least.
When I told my dad we were heading to Bozeman, he pronounced it Boozeman. It's kind of funny if you know my dad, because a booze man he is not.
Our drive from Glacier led us through some scenic areas of Montana. We took roads less travelled, past a frozen lake, through Bald Eagle infested forests, to finally the Bozeman KOA. Again, there was snow all over the ground so, the pics you see on the link are not the views we had. It was a nice KOA though. We had intentions of only staying one night here also, but intentions sometimes go awry. After we got set up, we decided to go exploring. Turns out, Bozeman is a pretty cool town. We made a pitstop at PetSmart for a Halti for Boomer and listened to a saleswoman try to tell us how to walk our dogs. You can imagine how that went over. After PetSmart Dana forced me to go to the Bozeman Brewing Co. were we sampled some really good beer. If I lived in Bozeman, I would be a regular at this establishment. After a couple of beers, we left and went to find a place to eat. As I mentioned Bozeman is a pretty cool town, home to the Montana State Bobcats. We finally decided on the Montana Aleworks Bar & Grill. This place was awesome. Huge selection of beer and the food was awesome.
Idaho was indeed beautiful but what I really wanted to see was Glacier National Park and Montana. My great buddy, Dollar, worked at GNP over the summer one year while we were in college and all of the stories he told made me wish I could go right then. Well it only took 10 more years before I had the opportunity to go. I'll admit that I was a bit sad leaving Salmon River country but the drive north to Montana was extremely scenic.
Yeah. So after driving through the misleadingly wide state of Nevada, our journeys turned a bit North; actually a lot North. Neither of us had been through Idaho at all and it happened to sit in between California and Glacier National Park, the first place we planned to spend two nights. There aren't too many campgrounds open this time of year in the Northwest so I had to take what I could find.
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Ok. So we really aren't about to be on the road again unless I can see into the future and the Navy is planning something they're not telling me. This series of entries are in honor of the three year anniversary of our trip cross country from California to Connecticut. Why the three year anniversary? No good reason except that lately I've been reminiscing about all the places I've enjoyed living and many of the fun excursions I've, sorry we've, been able to take. So, appropriately, three years ago, we began that 21 day camping journey that, to me, was one of the best times of my life. I'd like to share that with you.
This trip was made in our 2000 Coleman Niagara Elite pop-up camper, thanks Wade and Karen. She's fully equipped with two king size beds, small fridge, small stove, toilet, shower, and dining room table. Oh yeah, she's got central heating and air, the latter of which we certainly didn't need on this trip.
Dana cautioned me not to get too lengthy and don't recreate every minute of every day of that trip because boredom would quickly set in to the reader. As much as I hate to say it, she's right. So I'll just pick out the highlights and every few days or so post a new entry. Enjoy!
Reno, NV
This was the first city we stayed in after we left Pacific Grove. Dana and I made an arrangement not to drive any more than 8 hours a day and Reno met that criteria. I had done a little bit of planning before we left so we had reservations for the first week or so. This night was spent at the Reno KOA at Boomtown. There honestly wasn't anything special about this particular day but I do want to mention that this was day one of seeing either snow on the ground or falling to the ground. Oh yeah, and it was here that we purchased our KOA Membership which saved us plenty of money along the way.
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Well, it is official. Klaw's first camping trip is complete and if he could talk I'm sure that he would say that he had a terrific time. Ok, mostly a terrific time except when he was getting knocked around and down by three dogs.
