random thoughts – Day 1,200 – (Friday) – accommodations

 

Another beautiful day. After the many days of rain, I intend to appreciate every minute of the nice days.

Ferris wheel! June 30, 2010.

On this date in 2010, I was at York Beach, Maine with Mom, my sister, and my three nieces. That year, I was home for vacation from the Tennessee chapter of life, and we stayed at The Anchorage Inn. We did tourist things like ride the trolley and the Ferris wheel. Of course, we went to the beach, ate seafood, had lots of ice cream. I saw my friend who lives there. It was fun. I would do it again any time. 

York Beach is where my family vacationed for many years of my childhood. Once or twice when I was very young, my grandmother rented an apartment we all stayed in, but by the time I was 7 years old or so, we had a tent.

We would load the car with the essentials – clothes, sleeping gear, and sometimes an electric fry pan and portable TV. It was quite a spectacle when it was five people and all the gear in a little orange Datsun we called "The Orange Lemon" because it always seemed to need fixing.

We’d load the roof rack and leave our sturdy and dry house and drive to Maine (and when I was 7, we went international with a trip to Canada), to live in a cloth house for a week or so. 

Our cloth palace -- years of
vacation accommodations.

The tent was tall enough that we had bunk bed cots. Our stuff would be piled on the floor of the tent, but not touching the sides of the tent because it would leak in the rain. For some reason, stuff all over the floor was acceptable on vacation, but not at home. It seemed to rain a lot, or equally likely, it rained once or twice and the memory of Dad using his Army Reserve skills to dig a trench around the tent in the rain in the dark is what stuck in my head and attached itself to all family camping trips. 

My family loved camping, but I’m not sure I ever saw the appeal. As a kid, I didn’t have a choice, and as an adult, I tried it a couple times with X2. Both times, we camped at Land Between the Lakes National Recreational Area in Kentucky. The tent was tiny compared to the cloth palace of my youth. Both times it was during a stretch of oppressive humidity. It rained (poured, thundered!), and time was spent in the car. So yeah. At least I tried.

Given the choice between a hotel, cabin, B&B, rental house, tent, or just staying home, I can say with confidence and conviction that a tent would be my last choice. A hotel without room service is as rustic as I want to be.