Ah, the great outdoors. What a beautiful place to see everything fall apart. Two years ago I made the mistake of suggesting a camping trip to my boyfriend, Jared, of only seven months. Now, I know some of you might be thinking, “She’s crazy. Seven months is a long time.” Well, you’re right seven months is a long time, or at least it seemed like a long time two years ago, which is how I ended up on the best and worst camping trip of my life.
I had been watching the weather for weeks, praying that the predicted storms would pass. As we drove we could feel the sun beating down through the open sunroof. My prayers had been answered. The windows were down and the radio was up. In between trying to stop my hair from blowing into a large mustache across my face I was also trying to cover Jared’s mouth to stop him from singing. As you can imagine, it was turning out to be a perfectly cliché road trip, that is, until we got lost.
An hour later we ended up in a town that might have well have had dust balls blowing through it. Our car was below empty and the only gas station around required cash and consisted of one pump that looked more like it belonged in an antique store than it did in a gas station. We had 20 dollars in our pocket, which might have been enough to “pop some tags,” but definitely not enough to fill up our car. While emptying our pockets, we learned that the GPS wasn’t entirely wrong in the route it had taken us. However, while it may have shortened our driving time it didn’t take into account the two-hour ferry ride plus the four hours we had to wait until the ferry was actually scheduled to depart.
Six hours later we stumbled out of the car and kissed the ground. We had made it. That night, we saw a million shooting stars burn through the sky. I realize now how rare that would be, but at the time I just accepted it as a sign that we had survived the hardest part of the trip. It turns out we saw a meteor shower, which should have been even more of a sign, but unfortunately the worst had yet to come.
The nice weather held out for a couple of days and we both admitted it was turning out to be a great trip. Our one hardship had brought us even closer together. We could survive anything! Or so we thought, until a huge storm hit.
We sprinted back to our campsite and frantically began zipping up tent windows. An innocent sprinkle turned into Mother Nature launching a full on attack against us. We tried to fight back but every time we hammered one tent stake into the ground the opposite one would fly up. As Jared continued hammering I tried to hold down the rest of the tent, but somehow I ended up getting twisted up inside. Drenched inside the nylon sushi roll of our tent, I knew it was time to admit defeat. We stood in front of our tent and watched as it was turned into a makeshift kite. The only thing keeping it from flying away was a puny string we had used to attach it to our picnic table. I tried to cover my mouth as I peeked over at Jared who was fuming, but I couldn’t stop myself from bursting out laughing. It was a disaster. Jared just stared at me until he too couldn’t help, but start cracking up. We ran to the car and watched out the window as our campsite was slowly turned into a lake.
I’m not embarrassed to admit that we abandoned camp that night in favor of a hotel room. Unfortunately, we paid for it the next night when an army of tiny frogs invaded our tent. I stood outside with a flashlight and watched frogs fly as Jared captured and tossed them out. For the rest of the night we laid on the broken air mattress we had accidentally packed (the least of our problems) and listened to the pack of angry frogs outside.
The worst had passed, but neither of us was about to admit that out loud for fear of jinxing our trip again. The next couple of days we had perfect weather and when it was time to pack up and leave we both found ourselves wishing we could do it all over again. Sure, everything that could have gone wrong went wrong, but hey we had passed the test; we were still together.
