NapKamping

Possibly more ambitious than my summer plan to compete in seven triathlons in seven weeks was my naïve idea that I’d actually spend every night in the NapCamper. Note to self: saving money on mattressing is no savings at all. It feels like cheating somehow to stay in the occasional motel, to have spent a week in my friend Kelli’s guest room, and to be writing this from my KOA Kozy Kabin, but I was forthright in an earlier blog: I did not grow up in a camping family. I also didn’t grow up in a boxcar, or any place else where I might have spent my nights on 2 inches of foam and a slice of plywood.

At McKinney Falls State Park in Austin, TX

The best things about camping—as those of you who didn’t grow up traveling from one Ramada Inn to the next already know—are the very things that would make us bat-shit crazy at home. It takes about 15 minutes to make a cup of coffee, for example. First I have to unpack the one-burner propane stove, screw it all together, swear a few times trying to locate the lighter, wash the soup pan because I didn’t do it last night and now it’s full of ants, wash the coffee cup/press because I forgot to do it yesterday, boil the water, and then wait for the liquid to steep and cool. I would never leave the house in the morning if I had to deal with such a drama. Hiking to the bathroom is inconvenient, showering is sketchy, there are no pillow-top mattresses, ants and skeeters abound, and don’t even get me started about the internet access.

In 1896, Helga Estby, a 36-year-old mother of 8, and her teenage daughter, Clara, walked from Spokane to New York City. That’s right, they walked 3500 miles. I don’t know which is more amazing, that they survived the adventure in the wilderness or that they survived each other’s company, but nevertheless, these two women traipsed across a mostly undeveloped country in dresses and with only a pistol, some pepper spray, and Clara’s curling iron. Compared to this, my “roughing it” moments have consisted of washing dishes with a sock because I didn’t have a sponge and stopping to pee by the side of the truck somewhere in the New Mexico desert because I drank too much Coke Zero between one rest area and the next.

My biggest hardship has been weather—in Texas, it was over 100 during the day, and the evenings weren’t much cooler. Outside Austin, at McKinney Falls State Park (the falls were non-existent due to drought), I slept sporadically because Frida lay outside the camper panting so heavily I thought she’d die. At one point, I draped her with a soaked towel to cool her. She hadn’t shrugged it off when I awoke to check on her hours later.

Frida looks for water moccasins and fried chicken on the
shores of Lake Austin.

The previous night, we had camped at Emma Long Municipal Park, which is “in” Austin the way that Hawaii is “in” the United States. A long, hilly drive—including one so steep I thought the NapCamper would slide off—took us to Lake Austin; I thought we’d see a grocery store along the way, but Woe to She Who Makes Assumptions, so I was low on vittles when we arrived and dinner consisted of four bite-sized Squirrel Nut Zippers, a bottle of warm Perrier, and a Larabar.

Emma Long Park is built along one side of the narrow lake (which according to a local, is filled with water moccasins—“They come out at night and they chase you,” I was told); from it, you can gaze at the mansions lining the opposite shore and relax to the never-silent buzz of jet skis. The picnic tables were stenciled with a list of NOs—no open fires, no open alcohol, no feeding the birds, etc—but sadly, no “don’t treat your park like a landfill.” When the day-goers left at dusk, the grass was littered with trash. I can see how you might neglect a candy bar wrapper or an empty can, but there’s some deliberate decision-making involved in walking away from twelve empty Busch cans and the crumpled box they came in.

Reading at my Kozy Kabin.

Camp-for-pay grounds—a Good Sam in Ft. Stockton, Texas, and a few KOAs—have been a good blend of outdoorsiness and moderate convenience, and with the un-air-conditioned, rustic NapCamper, I don’t feel like I’m spoiling myself. In Amarillo, the elderly KOA employees were exhaustingly friendly and tidy in their khakis and yellow uniform shirts. As campers checked in, an employee driving a golf cart (occasionally with a pet cat riding along) escorted them to their site, showed them the amenities, and drove back to the office 100 yards away. At night, one of these men pulled a haywagon around the grounds with a tractor, Kenny Chesney’s “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy” playing on his scratchy speakers.

I stayed at the KOA in Cortez, Colorado, a few miles from Mesa Grande on Tuesday night, missing a tornado warning by one night. There I met a nice family from Australia and spied on a group of suspected polygamists who turned out to be Mennonites. What is it with these sects and the French braids and prairie dresses? A nice KOA lady dog-sat Frida for a few hours so I could check out the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park, so thank God I don’t have a reenactment of the whole peanut butter-parking lot fiasco. Here at KOA Moab, I have gorgeous view of the red rock cliffs, an air-conditioned Kamping Kabin, and a German man barbecuing in his Speedo next door.

My messy wilderness.

I wouldn’t want to do this every day, packing up and unpacking and hiking to the toilet at 2 a.m. with a flashlight and eating granola bars for dinner and spending my morning boiling water for coffee and planning the day with an atlas and then swearing at the TomTom when its route doesn’t match mine. But there is a satisfaction, despite the fact that I’m not roughing it ala Helga Estby or those two guys who carried their canoe across the Rockies, that I’m a pioneer of sorts, venturing away from the comfortable, safe, orderly routine that defines me at the NapCastle and the library and the gym, and creating another territory within myself, a vacation property that’s a tiny bit rougher, a bit less organized, and a little more elastic around the edges.