Camping Woes

The wind whipped around the edges of my horse trailer, and I briefly wondered what would happen if a tree fell on top of me. I'd be stuck in the tack compartment, cocooned in a sleeping bag, surrounded by saddles and snack food. How long would it take the other campers to realize a tree had fallen on my trailer?

Then I chuckled to myself. We weren't that close to the woods line, I was safe.

Half a minute later, a pair of hobbles slipped off the hook on the side of the trailer and fell on my face, rendering me terrified for a few horrifying seconds.

So I love camping. There's something fun about getting up in the morning and just relaxing. Starting a fire. Being outside. Reading a book in a folding chair.

But, as one does, I have camping stories.

Like the time I was kayak camping and a friend carried an entire cast iron pot in his kayak and made peach cobbler while in the wilderness.

Or "bare essentials" kayak camping with just some Chef Boyardee cans for food and a hammock to sleep in...and the hammock stretches so much during the night I wake up and find I'm basically sleeping on the ground.

Or the time we went kayak camping and the river was so high we just...car camped in the parking lot. *ducks head*

Or the time I rode my horses to a nearby bluegrass festival and camped overnight with them and someone set off fireworks beside the horses and...yah...I never went back.

Or the time we were camping at an endurance race and someone's horses got loose and raced about the camp and nearly trampled our tent.

Or the time we took the pull-behind camper to a church conference and the truck decided to stall everytime we went into reverse (so getting into the campsite was a challenge), and then the hookups were damaged and we blew 2 tires on the van while driving into town to get equipment to fix the hookups and we pulled into the wal-mart parking lot with only two tires to find the Wal-Mart is permanently closed and then the friend who was going to pick us up got lost and we finally got back and managed to get something worked with the hookups but that backfired when we accidentally electrocuted the whole camper so every time you touch it you get shocked and in the end we just went without lights and AC for an entire week in the middle of a KY summer.

Or the time we did a Ragnar race during a hurricane and the entire field flooded and tents were drifting down in the current and mud was everywhere and the race was cancelled halfway through the event.

And then just a few weeks back, when I forgot my 20-year-old tent was technically just a kids play tent....and not a waterproof outdoor tent.... hence me sleeping in the horse trailer for two nights, with a damp sleeping bag and backpack...and a drenched play tent in the back of the truck.

I like camping, but let's be honest, nothing beats my nice bed.