Worst Week Ever (part 1)

I'm a very urban person. I like the convenience of walking down the street to go to the store, and I like having neighbors, even if they're only a wall away. I like sky scrapers and shopping malls and parks with lots of maintenence and public transportation. I like restaurants and... living in a house with a shingled roof over my head.

Now what possessed me when my best friend asked the question, "Crystal, do you want to go camping with me?" I don't know. What was I thinking when I said, "Sure!" I don't know. I plead Temporary Insanity for that one. In any case, I decided to go camping with my best friend and her parents in the middle of nowhere on the Upper Penninsula of Michigan. We were to go to the campsite of her parents' hippie friends which was actually more like their home away from home. They had a bullet trailer that was big enough for the two of them on their ten-mile square lot on a LAKE of all things.

We did this in the early summer of 2003, and I spent the night at her house in Bristol (Kenosha County, WI) the night before so that we could get going right away. I brought my CD's and we listened to quite a few of them (one of which was Evanescences Fallen) on her discman on the way up. With all the pit stops for her mother, the drive took about eight hours. We stopped a little past half way at a restaurant where I had the worst french toast I've ever had, and even smothering it in syrup did nothing for it. 

When we were almost there, it hit me just how remote the camp site was because there were no buildings for miles and miles and then there was a gas-station/hotel/truck stop/gift shop. We stopped there, and her dad said, "Okay, anything you need, you'd better get it now because there's eight more miles to go then we hit a dirt road and we're not coming back after that."

Being an inexperienced camper as I was, I didn't think to get many necessities, since I didn't know what exactly I'd need. We get back to the car and start going and, just like he said, about eight miles away, there was a dirt road. we were on that dirt road, bouncing around, surrounded by birch trees and weird ferns, for about a half hour. When we got to a certain point, there was a gate, and then the gravel disappeared and we were driving on grass. Her dad stopped the car and said, "We're going to walk from here." 

That's when we noticed something flying around inside the car, and we swatted at it and everything and got it out. I thought it was a bee, but... it was a fly. A gigantic biting fly. As we looked around the car, we noticed what seemed like thousands of them flying past the windows. With no mercy, her father opened the door, and we RAN as fast as we could down that path, swatting and screaming. I got bit twice then, even though you'd think that moving would make a difference. When we finally got to the site, her hippie friends greeted us outside. All I could think was that I wanted inside that trailer SO bad! I never thought a big, silver trailer covered in mesh and vines would look so inviting, but between the flies snacking on me and the afternoon sun beating down hard on us in that little clearing, I. Wanted. Shelter. But instead we all went over to the fire that was blazing hot, and we talked. Everyone was sitting down around it, except for me, the oddball who was slapping at the air randomly.

A little bit later, after doing a little bit of catching up, her dad went back to the car (actually a Suburban) and pulled it down into the clearing and set up the pop-up camper we brought with for us. As soon as it was set up, me and my friend ran into it and laid down on our side. We sat there in silence for about ten minutes and then I started crying, pretty much for no reason. Then she started crying, too, for the same "no reason." Her dad came in and looked at us and (can you believe it?) he laughed. We pleaded with him to only stay there for three days rather than the five we originally intended, and he said "he'd think about it."

*to be continued*