So by nature I am not terribly adventurist on my own. When I was married, I wanted to go everywhere and do everything. But now that I am a single, thirty-someting year old mom of three I find that I dream a lot, but I don’t necessarily have the guts to really go for it. So in an ‘i’m on a journey to find the better me’ sort of way I decided that I would take my kids camping. Yes I said camping! But hey that wasn’t enough, i’m on a roll here let’s add my three teenage siblings and my 52 year old mom to the mix. After all I have an eight passenger Suburban with a roof rack and our newly acquired bike rack to boot.
So at the time we lived in Vancouver, WA which as you may know is right across the river from Portland, OR. So when deciding where we were going to go camping believe me we had a lot of choices. As close as 5 minutes away from the house. So we checked a couple of them out, but I came to realize that I wasn’t happy with any of them because they were too close to home. I knew myself, I would sneak home and take a shower in the privacy of my own home and then it would be hey it’s Tuesday night…isn’t Survivor on? All the while the campsite would sit empty.
So I returned home and in going online found a camping spot 100 miles away on the Oregon Coast. Perfection! Far enough away to let go of all the hassles and stresses of everyday life and close enough that it would only take a couple of hrs to drive there. So we decided on a 5 night 6 day trip. Long enough to relax but just short of insanity that often comes with a trip with mom and 6 kids. So here’s is how it went….
The Plan:
Finish Friday work early to leave at noon – nope, didn’t get home to pack the car until 4:30.
Ok plan B, frantically pack the car and leave by 5:30 – nope that would have been too easy.
Reality? Left the house by 7 with mom, 6 kids, 2 ice chests, $300 in food, a propane grill, 3 tents, firewood, 3 bikes, a scooter and a rip stick, blankets, pillows, sleeping bags and shamefully the down feather mattress-topper from my bed to put on top of the blow up mattress because I take comfort seriously.
The Trip
7:00 pm – SEAT BELTS!!!! I yell from the front seat, because after all, the last of my patience was gone with the last fight of who was sitting where and why since one was older then the other they should have their pick of seats and he doesn’t want to sit next to her because she will look out of his window…..I’m exhausted just telling the story!
So if you have ever lived or visited Portland you know that Friday traffic doesn’t stop till 9ish. We were only 15 minutes into our road-trip when the ‘are we there yets’ started. Whose idea was this?
7:45 pm – This was what I thought was my breaking point (little did I know that it would get worse). Now when a mom yells, you as the kids know to pay attention. But when a mom starts speaking in a low, somewhat growl like sounding mutter you KNOW you’re in trouble. So I quietly let all of the children know that no, we are not there yet, that they better ALL have their seat belts on, that if I hear anyone kick, scream, mutter, swear, scratch, claw, tease, whine, hiss, moan or groan that I would pull over and they would die a slow and painful death. Upon ending my self indulgent speech, I definitely felt better and I felt even more satisfied when it actually worked for about 13 minutes before they started again. Only then did I realize that that was all I had in my arsenal. In that moment I was a broken woman.
8:10 – With nothing left to threaten them with I then resorted to bribery….burgers of course. If they could manage their idiocy for another 40 minutes I would buy them mass quantities of food.
9:20 – So we managed to get almost all of the way there when the bike rack started rattling which required us to stop for the 3rd time to fix that. Mind you this is only a 100 miles from home, it should be a trip that takes less then 2 hrs….right?
10:05 pm – We arrive at the dark, sleeping camp grounds.
10:10 pm – We park at our campsite.
10:11 pm – My mom and I look at each and simultaneously ask each other, ‘What have we done?’
Now how in the heck do you keep 6 hyper kids quiet and put up 3 tents in the dark? Whose idea was this? Oh, right….mine. I hate it when I don’t have someone to blame!
So using my cell phone as a light I am attempting to raise the what must be Taj Mahal of tents with it’s 22 pg instruction manual. I got it on clearance at Sears for $100 bucks. Little did I know that it had two entrances, two rooms, a canopy on both ends, it’s own door mat and entrance cover. Like really?!?!?
I’m supposed to do this with the light of the moon and a cell phone? Darn-it, I knew I shouldn’t have gotten divorced. To never have to deal with setting up a tent would be worth staying in a lousy marriage!
10:30 pm – 1st collapse.
10:39 pm – 2nd collapse.
10:55 pm – Half the tent is standing, the other half lays on the ground like a deflated balloon. But that’s ok, we can sleep in the north wing for the night. I look over and my 52 year old mom and her 3 kids – they have their convenience store tents up, and they are sleeping already. I look back at my side with my Taj Mahal tent looking like an abstract version of itself and then down at my 3 kids sitting on a log, hugging themselves, rocking ever so slightly back and forth as the frost bite sets in.
This must be my breaking point. Surely it’s going to get better.
11:00 pm – I tell my kids to get the bedding this is as good as it gets for tonight. Is it possible to whisper-yell? Yes, any mother will tell you it is. Because it was about the time that my 10 year old daughter was dragging my down feather mattress topper through the dirt that I reached my breaking point. Surely, hopefully?
11:15 pm – Snores all around, night creatures making their night noises and it was only then that I asked myself, did I go to the bathroom? Because after having three babies that were 10 and 11 lbs, I never make it through the night without going to the bathroom. What was I thinking? If I don’t go now I won’t be able to go to sleep. I just got warm though. Do I even know where the bathroom is? What if I get dragged in the woods, no one would even know I was missing till morning where they would find my lifeless body, with my luck likely naked. And I didn’t shave my legs, so it would be my dead, lifeless, naked, hairy body. So I texted my mom (yes, 1 tent away from me) that if she didn’t find me in the morning, she would likely find my ravaged, dead, lifeless, naked, hairy body in the woods in the morning and to bring a blanket to preserve whatever of my dignity was left. And then decided to brave the dark, treacherous night and chance losing my very life to go to the bathroom, I followed the well worn trail from our campsite not knowing what laid out there in the vast darkness only to find the bathroom about 10 feet from my tent with just a tall hedge in between the two. Totally irritated with myself I tried to stomp the rest of the way to the bathroom but found that I didn’t even have the energy for that.
11:40 pm – (Yes I literally fretted about whether to brave the 10 feet to the bathroom for 25 minutes) I am back in bed, my buttocks slowly thawing from the freezing toilet seat and that is when I feel sand in my bed. Whose idea was this?
6:27 am – Oh my god I must have slept in, my kids are not in the tent and the sun is so bright that is has to be like 10 in the morning….Nope, 6:27 am if my cell phone is telling the truth. Upon poking my head out of the tent I see my 52 year old, fully rested, showered, dressed mom sporting an ax chopping more wood for the fire that she has a full breakfast cooking on. Wa-What? Sometime in the night I lost my hairbands and I realize that I look as crazy as I feel and in the light of day I can see that we are literally surrounded by people and campsites who all seem to have taken the same meds my mom found. Surely this isn’t natural? I carefully look around for Ashton, knowing with a fierceness that I am not from the same planet that these people are and surely I am getting punked.
6:28 am – MOM’S AWAKE!!!!!! LOOK EVERYONE, MOM’S AWAKE! As the entire surrounding campgrounds look at me stumbling out of my half deflated Taj Mahal tent with 2 different shoes on, shorts that I have not pulled out of their wedged spot and crazy woman hair. Oh the joys of camping! Whose idea was this? Oh that’s right, we covered that!
6:29 am – Coffee? I ask. As my mom hands me a cup, she confides that she is happy I survived the night from the dangerous bathroom trek.
So we spend the next two hours setting up the campsite and decide to take a nice long walk with the kids on the beach, the kids have swimming shorts on, my mom and I are laughing at life. Ahh we can relax now.
10:20 am – We return to the campsite, my mom decides to give 3 of the boys an education on proper woodchopping technique, the 2 girls are off with my 3 year old to the bathroom, and I am sweeping the Taj out when I hear, ‘MOM, THE CAR’S ON FIRE!’ I’m half crawling, half rolling out of the Taj and I see black smoke pluming out of the Suburban. My mom and I run to the car open the front door and look inside and that’s when all the windows start exploding out of the car. We grab out purses out of the front seat and grab the kids and start running, as the entire car is engulfed in flames and tires, glass and finally the gas tank explodes. Yes explodes! Sending horrific black clouds of dingy smoke into the air. I didn’t cry, I just stood there with my hand over my mouth in disbelief. Quiet numbness swallowing me.
How was I going to get to work? I clean houses for a living, it’s not like I can just hop on a bus with all my cleaning equipment. I’m a single mom…..there was no 2nd car.
In the end everything within 15 feet was incinerated: 3 cell phones, 50 cds, 2 bikes, 1 scooter, 1 tent, 1 car seat, 4 jackets, 2 ice chests, all of our food, a trash can, my make up, camping gear and all of our clothes burnt to the ground with the car.
So what can you expect when your car explodes 100 miles away from home at a campground?
Well the fire marshal arrives with the entire fire station and watches it burn since there is no source of water to put fires out and then threatens you, to not even consider leaving the burnt shell behind as that would be abandoning your vehicle which is punishable by law. Followed by putting caution tape around your entire campsite while they take 3 hrs to investigate how the fire was started, so that you and your hungry almost naked kids (they still only have their swim trunks on) have to sit in the field.
That the campground has policies that there are no refunds for people who ‘change their minds about staying at the park’, but we were welcomed to use their phone since ours burned in the fire. I politely asked what their policy is when the campers’ car burns to the ground because the campsite does not have adequate sources of water in the case of a fire? And that had my car not burned with half our campsite we would have stayed….
And finally, that the entire campground stood watching the fire for the hour that it burned and with the exception of two families no one said a word to us. Just quick glances with pathetic ‘wow, that sucks’ looks on their faces. The other campers did however, go into our taped off campsite that we weren’t even allowed into, to take family pictures in front of my burnt to the ground blackened shell of a Suburban. Posing and laughing as if they were in front of a tourist attraction.
In the end, the camp grounds decided ‘just this once’ to refund my money for the remainder of our reservation. The car was towed (on a flat bed since it had no tires left), the two families who talked to us were very kind – one made our kids lunch and the other said there were drinks in their ice chest and to take whatever we needed throughout the day while they were gone.
4:35 pm – Just 19 hrs after arriving, we are leaving when my brother and his wife came with two cars to pick all eight of us up with what little we had left.
How did the car catch fire?
The neighboring campsite left their fire smoldering and sparks drifted in through an open car door and started the upholstery on fire. Go figure!
It’ll be ok mom, I have insurance!
When I got home I called the insurance company to see about getting everything underway because I just knew that my car and our belongings would be replaced. Hmmmm, not so lucky.
I received just under $4000 towards what I still owed on the car (that was what they said my car was worth even though KBB was $10+k), for my belongings to be covered I would have had to had home owners insurance – that one was the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard, well until they didn’t believe that it was an accident and demanded my cell phone and bank records to prove that I didn’t hire someone to set fire to my car to get out from under what they call a ‘gas guzzling car pymt.’ I provided them with these requested items and upon further interrogation I ended the conversation with this nice little thought.
“Do you really think that I would travel over 100 miles away with my 52 year old mom, 3 teenage siblings and my 3 kids to burn down my only way home and half our campsite? Really is that what your saying I did? Are you serious?” This was my breaking point!
How did this affect my life?
I lost half of my clients because I just couldn’t get to them. My mom let me borrow her car twice a week to keep my closest clients. I owed $6000 on the car, the insurance company paid $4000. Aside from the car, the fire burned about $10K in property. But the fire didn’t hurt anyone or spread to the surrounding landscape, and we survived. Truly a reason to be thankful.
And my campfire story will always trump everyone else’s!