Checking in

This past weekend my daughter came up for a visit! I was so glad to see her. She arrived on Saturday and had to go home on Monday. On Saturday we went to a state park that is about 28 miles away. My parents and sister and her family were already there camping. My parents had left on Wednesday to go to the campsite, so they didn't even know that my daughter was coming for a visit. They were very surprised when we knocked on the camper door.

I hadn't been to this huge state park in many years. My parents go camping there all the time. It is so beautiful there with lots of trees, hilly roads and a large lake for fishing and boating. When we arrived at the park, we stopped at the front office and got directions to my parent's campsite. As my daughter drove us (we took my dog too) along the hilly roads, I kept exclaiming surprise over the high hills and curvy roads we were driving on inside the park. I was going "weeeee!"as we drove up and down the steep hills. My daughter looked over at me with a deadpan expression on her face and said, "Mom you definately need to get out more!" Hehehe! Up ahead there was a car stopped in the middle of the road and we could see some kind of animals moving around under the car. My daughter pulled up alongside them and asked them if they needed help. The male passenger just kind of shrugged and grinned and said that some baby raccoons had scurried under their car and they didn't want to move the car further. I don't know why he didn't just get out of the car and look under the car but he told us to go on and they needed no help.

Right after we arrived at Mom and Dad's camper, my Mom, Dad, sister and her daughter and friend were all excited and told us that they wished we had been there just a half hour before. They told us they had all been out taking a walk on the road that we had just been on. They said that as they walked along, they looked ahead and saw three small baby raccoons pop up their heads by the side of the road. Then the raccoons started running really fast towards them! Before they could react, these baby raccoons ran up to them and scurried up their legs and started nuzzling on their necks. I told my Mom, "Mom! You could have gotten bit and gotten rabies!" They just poohed poohed me and said that they were climbing all over their shoulders and my niece even said that one of the baby raccoons suckled on her finger! My mother had her digital camera and took dozens of pictures of them. I wish I could get some of those pictures and I would post them here. Maybe I will see if my sister can send me some of the pictures in email and I can post them later. There were pictures of Mom, Dad, my niece, her girlfriend, my sister and her husband all giggling and holding the raccoons. I will admit they were absolutely adoreable. My parents guessed that the mother raccoon must have been killed or Mom wondered if maybe the raccoons had already been exposed and been in human contact before them and the mother didn't want anything to do with them now. I kind of wonder if that might have been the case. When I told some co-workers about how nice this state park was, they told me they had been there and mentioned about the raccoons there and how they would come right up to people and acted like pets.

We had a nice time sitting at the picnic table right outside my parent's camper and we roasted some marshmallows over the fire and made some s'mores. It was getting very late at night and my daughter wasn't too keen on driving back to my house so we ended up spending the night in my parent's camper. My sister and her family had their camper right across the road from us.

I love my parent's camper. It is quite large and has a really nice kitchen and living room. Right off the living room are a couple steps up and a door to the bathroom which has a shower, sink and toilet. Then a couple more steps up from the bathroom is a bedroom. The couch in the living room makes out into a double size bed and the kitchen table can be folded down and made into another bed. My daughter slept on the "kitchen" bed and I slept on the hide-a-bed couch. Their camper has all the comforts of home. It didn't even feel like a camper inside. They have a stove/oven and a microwave oven in the kitchen and a tv and built-in stereo system in the living room. It is air-conditioned and has a hot water heater too so Mom can wash dishes easily. The kitchen floor has very pretty hardwood flooring and the living room is carpeted. They have come a long way from the old tents, tent campers and truck camper we had when we were kids.

I remember when I was a kid we had this old crappy beat up looking truck camper. We went on a trip and didn't really have a destination in mind. We just drove where the roads led us. My siblings and I were in the camper and Mom and Dad were in the truck. There was a little window in the camper that faced the back window of the truck so we could see our parents. Anyway, I remember my Dad pulling into this really nice camping park. We kids were looking out the windows and saw all these really nice campers all lined up in the park. The campers had nice lit up lanterns around them. We saw kids outside playing and we were all getting really excited because we thought this place looked so fun. We noticed that Dad kept driving through the park and wasn't stopping. It looked like we were going to be exiting the park soon! We started frantically knocking on the window facing the truck window...trying to get Mom and Dad's attention. We were saying, "hey let's stop and camp here! Why aren't we stopping here?" Dad pulled out onto the exiting road and down the highway we went. We were really disappointed. We ended up pulling over to a rest area many miles down the road and camped out there. When they stopped and we got out we kept asking why we couldn't camp out at that nice place back there? Mom and Dad just kind of muttered something and didn't really give a straight answer. Years later when we were older we talked about this and Mom and Dad laughed and sheepishly told us that when we pulled in to that swanky camping park with our crappy truck camper (looking like the Beverly Hillbillies) they were too embarrassed and just didn't feel comfortable. They said that as they drove through the park, they could see other campers looking at us all snooty like "what on earth is that". Of course we kids were so innocent and we didn't even think anything like that. It is a memory we all laugh about now.

I didn't really sleep in the camper. My daughter was comfortable and she fell asleep easily. I had not just my dog in bed with me but also one of my parent's dogs was laying with me and I couldn't move around easily. Also since I have slept at home with a CPAP machine (I have sleep apnea) for the last two years and didn't think to bring it with me, I just couldn't sleep. I am too used to having the CPAP. I probably fell asleep for a total of ten minutes. We didn't go to bed until around 1 am because we sat outside by the fire talking with my family. Dad had retired to bed at 10pm on the dot like he does at home. At 5:30 am, the electric coffee pot clicked on and started brewing. Mom got up a few minutes later and I hopped out of bed and got dressed. A few minutes later, Dad got up. We took breakfast food outside and Mom made eggs and bacon on the outdoor griddle. That hot coffee tasted so good while sitting outside and watching the sun peeking through the trees. Soon my sister walked over from her camper and then her husband joined us. We hooked up a toaster outside and made toast too. My daughter and niece and her girlfriend didn't want to wake up yet so we all ate and drank more coffee. It was a really nice morning and I got a second wind from my sleep deprivation. By the time my daughter and I left the campsite to go back home around noon, I was so sleepy! I took a nap when we got home.

Later that evening we went to my parent's house after they had come back home too. We watched one of my Netflix movies, The Queen. I wasn't too impressed with the movie. It was okay but not worth seeing a second time. I was surprised that it had been an Oscar winner. After seeing Notes on a Scandal recently, I thought Judi Dench's performance should have earned her the Oscar last year. Instead it went to Helen Mirren for her performance in The Queen. Oh well, that is just my opinion. I have another movie to watch that is an oldie but goodie. It is the 1954 movie The Long, Long Trailer starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. I haven't seen it in many years but I remember it was funny. I will be off work Friday so I will take it over and watch it with Mom and Dad.