It's a happy, happy day in my household!
Jimmie Johnson wins his 6th NASCAR championship!
But let's backtrack.....
We have some dear friends meeting us at Disney's Fort Wilderness for the first week of December. These friends, Bruce & Lisa, just became full-time RVers and headed to Florida at the end of October. They choose to make their home at Tropical Palms Resort through November. Tropical Palms is about 5 miles from Disney and we've stayed there for years, whether the Fort was booked, we didn't want to pay Fort prices, or we wanted to visit Old Town and see the car shows.
Trevor's birthday and Lisa's birthday are one day apart in November, Bruce and I are 3 days apart, in December.....freaky, I know!
Why not celebrate?!
Trevor and I discussed going over and camping Friday and Saturday night and coming home on Sunday for the Nascar race.
Immediately my thoughts were:
The RV has been locked up for 2 months. I need to open it up, bug bomb it, wipe and dust everything, wash all the linens, fill the propane tanks.....RV camping is a lot of work for 2 nights!
I suggested taking the tent instead. We weren't planning on cooking, we weren't taking the animals and we were planning on spending as much time as possible with our friends. Basically I just needed a place to lay my head at night.
Tent camping it is!!!
I booked the site for a grand total of $33.90, loaded up the truck and made our way to Orlando on Friday afternoon.
We made a quick stop at the grocery store for beer, snacks, beer, cinnamon rolls for breakfast and beer. We also grabbed some BBQ for lunch so we wouldn't be starving when we got there to set up.
One of the things we love about Tropical Palms is that it's smack dab in the middle of chaos. Every store, gas station or restaurant that you could hope for is right at the end of the road.
Surprisingly enough, at the campground, it's extremely quiet.
We checked in and backed into our nice shady spot
It took us about 10 minutes to assemble our home for the next two nights.
Our tent is huge which allowed us to put our bed in one corner, our bags and junk at the other end and still have room to move around.
We tent camped for years when Nate was young so we know all the ins and outs of 'roughing it'
But, I'm older and wiser now....I did bring a couple of creature comforts. My coffee pot and one of the beds out of our RV.
Yes, folks, that mattress you see through the screen came out of the RV, complete with the cord that attaches to make it a heated mattress!
I'm no dummy!
The weather was beautiful (75 during the day, 60 at night) and it was super cool to camp like we did back in the day.
I even brought our portable DVD player.
For such a short trip, I can honestly say, the only thing I missed about not having the RV was a bathroom. The good news was, we also brought our bikes and the bathhouses were right across the canal from our site.
(you can just see the nose of my truck in the center of the photo)
After our semi-elaborate setup, we strolled over to Bruce & Lisa's house and the beer started to flow!
We caught up with them and their new lifestyle and then took a walk up to Old Town for some grub.
(when tent camping, hair and makeup are pushed to the wayside)
Nothing goes better with beer than greasy, fair-like food!
Trevor had the 1 pound sausage burger with some fried pickles.
I had the blue cheese burger and fries
To understand the size of Trevor's burger, note that our plates are the same size!
No, he couldn't quite finish it.
Once the food was gone, we were not only buzzed but stuffed to the gills! We strolled around the car show, stopped in a few shops and waddled back to our home away from home.
Once back at the tent, we snuggled in and started a movie. Within minutes we hear a family setting up beside us. From what I could gather, it was Grandma, Grandpa, Mom, Dad and 3 small children. Without going into detail, one of the males names was 'Jose'
The first thing they do is start a campfire, on the ground, between our tents! Yep, on the ground in a pile of pine needles. The kids are screaming and squealing, the parents are yelling in Spanish and there's a ground fire 15 feet from my tent and truck. The rules given at check-in strictly state NO fires unless in approved fire pit but maybe they couldn't read English? Trevor finally decides to be the tattle-tale and bike to the office. We're usually pretty lenient with camping neighbors but I didn't want to wake up to an out of control fire.
Within minutes, the office guy shows up and the conversation goes like this:
(Hey, I'm in a damn tent, I can't help but eavesdrop!!)
Office Guy: You can't have a fire without a pit! You gotta put that out!
Jose: What do you want me to do with it? I can't move a lit fire!
Juanita (May not be actual name, it's the only Spanish name I could come up with): Can you bring us a pit?
Office guy: We don't provide them.
Jaunita: The horrible lady on the phone told me I could have a fire for my kids! She couldn't answer my questions, she yawned the whole time on the phone! She was rude! I was hesitant to stay here because of some of the reviews I had read......
Jose: How can I drink my scotch without a fire?
(Honestly, I can't make this shit up!)
Finally office guy tells them to enjoy it while it's there, let it burn out then maybe take a trip to WalMart in the morning to get a pit.
The minute office guy pulled out, they continued to stoke the fire.
Conceding that 'you can't fix stupid' Trevor and I drifted off to sleep.
Saturday morning we drove over to the outlet mall to possibly start some Christmas shopping. Before we rolled out, our brilliant neighbors were starting the fire up once again. (While setting up a huge umbrella to keep the sun off of them and while Mom applied sunscreen to her and the kids)
The definition of "Happy Campers"
To sum up our shopping experience, we laughed A LOT and bought very little.
Lisa did make some plans for the future (when she grows up)
And Bruce came peeked out of the closet
Only happy, secure people will pose for these type of pictures, knowing full well that it will be in my blog!
When we went back to our site for an hour of downtime, our neighbors were still burning their illegal fire and talking about showering and going to Disney World that evening.
Grandpa & Grandma were fighting because Grandpa didn't want to go and shower. Grandma was bitching while taking an extra seat out of their SUV for the trip, which she then placed UNDER the SUV. Now, everyone else was ready to go, and Grandpa was making them late. Finally, after an hour of pure entertainment, they hop in the SUV and back out.....right over the extra seat! As Grandpa gets out mumbling some religious stuff, "Oh Lord Jesus Christ....." the kids are antsy and whining and just as he's about to get into the truck, we hear the beeping. Something (maybe smoke or LP detector) was going off in the A-frame trailer they brought. He finally gets it to stop, unhooks the LP tanks, and off they go!
Phew, finally some peace and quiet!
Trevor and I had planned on going out to dinner for his Birthday, but then came beer.....by the time we all got hungry, no one was willing to drive anywhere.
We knew our best bet would be to take the shoe-leather express back to Old Town.
We ended up at the Mexican restaurant.
I had nachos, Trevor had a Cuban sandwich and Lisa took a picture of me taking a picture.
Dinner was excellent, the conversation just as good (or what I remember of conversation)
We then strolled the car show, shopped a bit and headed back, where we chilled at Bruce and Lisa's while making plans for our trip to Disney next month.
Bruce and Trevor did some bonding before we said goodnight.
Sunday morning, I woke up bright and early to the sound of critters. You would think that any, even semi-experienced camper, would know that you don't leave food out.
Well, then there's our neighbors.....
They obviously enjoyed their fire again the previous night and left the marshmallows in the screen room. A screen room is no match for some crafty raccoons. I giggled my ass off as I watched 2 huge critters carry the loot behind my site and stuff their faces with marshmallows.
I made my way to the showers while our neighbors slept in.
On my way back the hot air balloons were making their weekly trip around Kissimmee.
We got all packed up in 30 minutes and were about to go say our goodbyes, when neighbor Grandma strolled out of camp.
This was all that was left behind our site
I picked up the ripped apart, ant filled bag of now shredded tidbits of marshmallows and delivered them to Grandma. She looked at me like I was an alien and was shocked that coons had gotten into their food!
She then asked me if she should throw them out!?!
The scariest part of the whole story was that they were from Florida! Sometimes I wonder how people like that survive in life, but it was cheap entertainment for Trevor and I.
All in all, we had a great weekend with 2 of the best people we know!
Camping old-school style was really fun. Trevor and I agreed that we wouldn't want to do it for a week & we wouldn't want to do it in extreme temperatures, but it was perfect for us that weekend!
