Camping's for the birds

My girls came up with this great plan on how to spend the upcoming summer.

“I know, Dad,” my baby declared excitedly, “let's do a lot of camping this summer.”

Whose child is this anyway? She should know by now that her Dad's idea of roughing it is spending a weekend at a Marriott where the TV remote is broken. I'd enjoy the great outdoors a lot more if they moved them indoors. I don't much care for things that creep and crawl around in the dark in search of a sleeping bag to invade. And don't even talk to me about snakes. Why some people have such an unnatural affection for total inconvenience is beyond me.

The last time I went camping was some eight years ago. We went with a group to a well-respected campground, which was accredited by a least seven major campground accrediting associations, whatever that means. The place was filled with campers of all sizes, shapes, and color. Some 600 webbed lawn chairs, the type of webbed lawn chairs that Jenny Craig customers tend to avoid, dotted the countryside. Retired folks with their short pants, black socks with sandals filled those lawn chairs while the stench of bug repellent filled the air. There were more people there than mosquitoes, if that is possible. This wasn't a campground; it was an upscale migrant worker camp. I couldn't for the life of me see why this place was so popular, but apparently it was. It was sort of like pitching your tent in Times Square.

Like our pioneer ancestors, when supper time came we sent someone for pizza. I enjoyed my meal but my arms were sore the next morning from fighting the flies and gnats that wanted that last piece of pepperoni just a much as I did. Soon after supper, dark fell and our little camp settled down for a long mid-summer night's nap. Everything was quiet except my pizza-filled stomach, which had commenced to rocking and rolling in a manner that would make Chuck Berry proud.

It was probably the sausages, but it also could've been the 10,000 gnats I ate that were causing my discomfort.

It's a good idea to stay away from any type of rich food if the nearest facility is a Porta-Potty located a half mile away from your campsite. This is especially true if you happened to have left your flashlight at your Aunt Rudy's the weekend before.

When using a Porta-Potty it is always a good idea to leave everything you might have on your person, necklaces, rings, cell phones, etc. back at the camper. No matter where you drop your personal items they will go into the same septic abyss, never to be seen again. And even if you could retrieve your valuables you wouldn't want them back. Trust me on this one.

I do enjoy one thing about camping and that one thing is breakfast. We all got up about 6 a.m. but it was probably 9:30 before we could get our backs unhinged enough to be reasonably mobile. Those little thin camper mattresses have crippled more people than snow skiing and those flimsy lawn chairs have a way of putting a hitch on one's get-a-long. Finally, we managed to move around enough to prepare a wonderful breakfast of eggs, grits, bacon, ham, biscuits, juice and coffee. By the time we had finished our meal the sun was beating down on us unmercifully so everyone went for a dip in the creek. Everyone except me. I went on another adventure in the land of fiberglass toilets.

Mercifully, Saturday night came and the Watts family went. We loaded up the van, lied to everyone about how sorry we were that we had to leave early, and headed gleefully toward Gamewell. On Sunday my daughter started getting sick and on Monday we had to take her to the doctor. The old sawbones allowed she had caught a “bug” probably from swimming in a dirty creek. The antibiotics and the office visit set us back about $200.

For that kind of money she could have gotten sick at a nice Sheraton somewhere. One with thick mattresses and free bug repellent.

Benjie Watts of Gamewell is a columnist for the News-Topic. If you want to leave a message for him him call 757-4300, category number 4335.