Coming soon to a campground near you.
With nowhere else to go, a lot of Quebecers will end up camping chez nous this summer, possibly for the first time. You can expect to see a spike in sales of tents, along with a spike in swearing at tents.
Because of a recent change in Deb’s employment, she and I can’t have a real vacation anyway, so our plan is to get in a few camping weekends before September. Monday evening, we sat down to book some sites online. Based on availability (or, more specifically, lack thereof), I feel like a lot of couples were doing the same, and I suspect they were having similar conversations, something like this:
“Check Parc de la Yummagumma for the weekend of the 24th.”
“Nothing available.”
“The 31st.”
“Nope”
“August 7, 14, 21, 28?”
“No, nope, nada and nope.”
“What about le Parc National du Moustique Engorgé? ”
“Ditto. Wait! There are two rustic sites available the last weekend of July.”
“Book it! Book it!”
“There’s no car access, it’s a 20-minute hike to the site, or you can get there by water.”
“Book it! Book it! We’ll buy kayaks.”
“We carry our camping gear in laundry baskets!”
“We’ll put everything in garbage bags and tow them behind the kayaks. Book it! Book it!”
“There are pit toilets.”
“Don’t book it! Don’t book it! What else?”
“There’s Parc Oosumnoo.”
“Where is that?”
“I don’t know. Ummm, seven hours north. There’s mention of ‘tundra’…”
“Put a pin in that. Keep looking.”
“All the provincial parks seem to be booked solid. Maybe we should look at the private campgrounds. Or we could just camp in the back yard…”
“I want to be by the water!”
“I could put the sprinkler on…”
“Hang on! I found something. It’s called ‘Rusty Blaze Campground & Sausage Emporium.’ Wooded sites, electrical hookup, meat tutorials… Oh, this is cute: ‘Bring the brats for bratwurst, hit the mini-putt links before chowing down on some links, then go tubing down the Lazy River followed by tube steaks.’”
“That’s terrible copywriting…”
“There’s a tent site right beside Sauerkraut Delight Dairy Bar. I’m booking it.”
“Wait a sec, I’m looking at the reviews on my phone. ‘Unearthly shrieking at all hours…’ ‘Animals in petting zoo seem petrified…’ ‘Lazy River is actually meat effluent…’ ‘Too many Germans…’ Well, that’s not very nice…”
“But it’s available. And they accept pets!”
“I bet they do…”
“Fine. Google ‘nearby campgrounds with no killing.’”
“Looking…”
“Wait: ‘minimal killing’; I’m okay with the odd squirrel.”
“Eureka!”
“You found something?”
“No, that’s the name of a campground, or rather ‘wilderness experience’ it says here. Eureka Luxury Campaporium.”
“Is there anything available?”
“Don’t you want to know about it first? It seems fancy. There’s something here about ‘complimentary finger bowls.’”
“It’s for the sap.”
“‘Our entire nouveaux-forest facility is 100% sap-free.’ Wow. It says the whole place is boardwalk ‘so you can experience the majesty of Mother Earth without ever touching Her.’ They offer pre-pitched canvas-and-frame tents with turned-on servants.”
“WHAT?”
“Sorry, I misread that: ‘turn-down service.’ But they do have valet parking.”
“We don’t need all that stuff. We just need a place to pitch our tent.”
“But what if our neighbours are noisy? Wait: not noisy; pretentious. The make of our tent is ‘Bubba Country.’ It smells like reclusive aunt.”
“We’ll keep to ourselves.”
“Except when we ‘luxuriate in the carbonated mineral-water pool.’”
“Is there anything available?”
“There are three sites available on the weekend of the 14th: ‘Dragée,’ ‘Haute-Milieu’ and ‘Douchetière.’
“Check the map.”
“There’s no map. It just says, ‘Map? Please…’”
“Well, pick one, any one, before someone else books it!”
“Okay… Douche it is… two people, tent… $208 a night!”
“Book it!”
“Plus taxes!”
“Book it!!!”
“Plus automatic 20% gratuity!”
“BOOK IT!!!”
“AGGGGGHHHH!… Okay, we’re booked.”
“I’m so excited.”
“Yes, camping is so relaxing.”
Drinking Tips for Teens 
I booked a week on Crete and hoe now, it will go ahead, since my trip to Japan was cancelled “at the last minute” – well 5 days before I was meant to fly.
Hope – no garden tool of negotiable affection.
I hope for you too. I would love to visit Crete some day. I’d like to visit anywhere at this point, actually. (Sorry about the German crack; it wasn’t me, it was those mean commenters!)
I just want to go there for touristic reasons, not for occupation (old German cracker)
I liked the German crack! And the turned-on servants. And the meat effluent, especially. All of it, cracking good. And sadly true of our state down here, too. As a sidebar (sorry to use that jargon), I went out solo mid-week way back in early June and was shocked to see most of the sites taken at 1 pm on a Wednesday before school was even officially out. So when I did find a site I put my freak show on to dissuade others from asking if they could share my site with me since all the others were taken. Took my shirt off, opened a beer and put on loud, strange music. Started mumbling to myself and breaking logs for kindling. Works every time. Be well…
What an image… Full-on Martin Sheen Apocalypse Now freakout.
Well, your post was wildly inventive and entertaining…thanks. Camping “chez nous,” I can dig it.
I can absolutely sympathize. I spent a few hours trying to book a couple of sites for a few days in a popular campground – it has a few warm crystal clear lakes, a mile from the nice beach by the sea, 20 minute drive to other beaches where you don’t actually have take a half mile hike into the water to take a swim, the only drawback is that the parks vegetation is about 40% pine and 55% poison ivy).
Well, it was actually a few hours planning out which sites have the best access to the lakes and not too far and not too close to the bathrooms, and then, starting from the moment when the booking opened, about 45 minutes trying to book anything – anything, and watching helplessly as every available site got booked for the entire summer.
Like watching the nukes take out one city after another in some 80s thriller. Okay, maybe that’s a little dramatic..l
Well, I already knew camping sucks. Thanks for the confirmation.
City boy.
And proud of it!
These are desperate times for the camping classes. “Turned on servants”…too funny.
My favourite part.
That guy in the photo, studying the instructions, could be my dad. In about an hour, he’ll realize that page is actually for assembling a charcoal grill. I do not understand the attraction of celebrating a ritual of simulated homelessness.
As the expression goes, you don’t miss your water until you have to walk across someone’s sleeping bag to get it.
Dryly put, well said. I appreciate not having to hold my water, because I cannot get the bag unzipped.
You probably would have been able to social distance at the sausage place
Two wieners apart.
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