So we went camping this weekend. The girlies, Chris and I. It was really fun. The girls had a blast.
We went to Hickory Run State Park, which is not terribly far from Wilkes Barre. Lovely country. Weather was perfect – warm during the day and cold at night (45 degrees!), as it should be for camping.
Katie was psyched about her tent (maybe I’ll have pictures later). She has a little tent that she played in but she slept in our tent. Aside: Chris swears we’ll never go camping again until we get a new tent.
Anyhow, we had bratwurst for dinner, built a fire, the whole bit.
And then it was bedtime. My kids don’t like to sleep, so it was a challenge getting them to actually go to sleep. Especially in a tent, which was just far too exciting.
At 8:30pm, the extremely large Russian family that chose to locate one of their two tents less than ten feet away from ours (and no, I am not exaggerating) decided it was time to have some family fun. Loudly. I figured it would end close to 9pm, which is when mandatory quiet hours are enforced at the park. But 9pm came and went and it got louder. At 10pm, it still hadn’t stopped.
Both sets of college kids in our area of the park had shut up. And the sing-along from the tween group of girls. But no, not our cheery Russian friends. They shouted at each other. Loudly. They pretended to find bears every other second by yelling “BEAR!” at the top of their lungs to shrieks, fake screaming and laughter. And grandma seemed to be the worst offender – screaming to the family at the next tent over rather than be civilized and saunter over like every other person on the planet.
By 10:30pm, it had gotten old. The girls were restless. I was pissed.
So, I got up, no shoes and stormed over to them.
“I will tell you this one time nicely. You are too loud. It has been quiet hours in the park for more than an hour and a half. And people are trying to sleep. Some of us have small children. And you are being rude. If it continues, I will not come over here again. I will contact the park ranger.”
And I am sure I sounded and looked like a woman possessed. One of the teenagers mumbled “Sorry.” There was some grumbling in Russian. But they shut up.
I swear, if everybody else wasn’t so tired, I would have gotten a standing ovation. Because once Granny and family shut up, the whole place was blissfully silent.
I crawled back into my tent to get some sleep. I had grumpy girls at that point. They cried a little periodically throughout the night. All I could think of as a consolation was that it was probably keeping the neighbors awake. Ha!
But other than that, it was a great camping experience. The girls got up, thrilled to be out and about. They swam, they checked out rocks. Katie saw a chipmunk – no, two chipmunks.
Already looking forward to our next outing…
