This ain't no party. This ain't no disco. This ain't no foolin' around.

This is a picture of one of the pits of hell….



Oh no…wait. That’s just our campground this past week. Sorry. Easy mistake.

I probably should not bash the campground. It’s not really their fault. It’s mine, I should have known better. In my opinion, camping is being “one with nature”. Finding a secluded spot and pitching your tent and your only neighbours are the deer, bunnies and birds. (and bugs) That is normally the way it is at our usual campground at Lake Cumberland. It is VERY small and usually there are few other campers. This was not the case at Fishing Creek, aka Happy Redneck VacationLand (HRV).

I know now that any place that allows Campers (meaning the things you tow behind your car) is NOT the place that I can expect to find a serene camping experience. Is this really their idea of a vacation?

In addition to the CamperPeople, it was not the best weekend for camping. It was 96 degrees in the shade with 200% humidity. Also, we had no direct lake access. We like to pull our boat up on the shore and be able to easily get in and out without hiking too far. Again, this is the way it is at our usual campground. At HRV, we had to either walk waaaaay down to the public beach or cut through one of the CamperPeople’s spots and climb down the rocky path to the beach. It was not an easy or fun climb. Especially for Bijoux. She was most definitely not enjoying HRV.

When we arrived Thursday, we got both tents (the sleeping one and the eating one) (matters not that we did not cook one meal at the campground) set up in the late afternoon heat. After that, it was way too hot to cook anything. Fortunately HRV is only about 8 minutes from Somerset, which is a pretty big town as far as Southern Kentucky towns go. So we had a choice of many fast food restaurants, settling on Pizza Hut. We left Bijoux in the car with the A/C on and she was fine with that.

Friday morning we found a BEAUTIFUL cove with a waterfall to bathe in. (no, I do not take showers in the public bathhouse with the CamperPeople) This cove was absolutely gorgeous. This is the peace I was looking for. I could have stayed there all day.



But after Matthew opened his eyes, he was anxious to meet up with his brother on the houseboat. We spent the afternoon with our nephews and their girlfriends riding around the lake and wakeboarding. Matthew did fairly well.



One problem with being on a houseboat with a dog is there is no convenient potty place for her. It looked like it was about to rain so we had to figure something out quickly. Matthew got an idea to get on one of the jetskis and drop her on the shore. Well one of the jetskis has battery issues. Matthew pushed away from the houseboat and tried to start it….nothing. Of course he had picked the wrong jetski. So his nephew has to come on the other jetski and rescue him. But first he drops Bijoux on the shore. In the pouring rain. If you look closely at this picture you see poor Bijoux standing there wondering why she was dumped and abandoned.



Finally Matthew gets on the working jetski and goes back to get her. It has stopped raining at this point, but both of them are soaked.



We ate dinner on the houseboat, in the A/C, which was wonderful. Then we went back to HRV and spent another miserable night. This night, it rained. Rained hard. All night. As if things weren’t wet enough before.

Saturday morning we headed back to the houseboat as quickly as possible. Since I didn’t enjoy cutting through CamperPeople’s camps and falling down the hill, I had Matthew pick me up at the wee dock next to HRV’s launch ramp.



See the rain clouds? It stayed like that until about 1 in the afternoon. But Saturday afternoon was gorgeous. We spent this day riding around with Matthew’s brother and his wife. Saturdays are crowded on the lake and of course our waterfall cove was occupied. They had found a different waterfall cove, so we went there. But the rain had caused all sorts of debris in the water and I don’t swim in debris. Nasty.

On the way back to the houseboat, we had to find a place for the Wee to wee. There was a small cove in the houseboat dock area (I forgot to mention that Saturday morning they took the houseboat back to the dock to leave on Sunday) so we pulled in and threw Bijoux in the water to swim to shore and do her business. She takes her sweet time about it and it was pretty hot that day. The water looked clear (no debris) so I got in the water to cool off. Tony and MarMae did not get in. Strange. After we got back to the houseboat they told me the reason they did not get in the water there was because all of the houseboats dump their waste in the water at the dock and the filtration system isn’t that great. Perfect! I refused to swim in leaf debris, but now you’ve let me swim in feces. It didn’t look or smell funny, so I don’t really know how true all that is. But it is something I would like to have known about BEFORE I jumped in.

Needless to say, Matthew and I took a shower (our first in 2 days) immediately upon returning to the houseboat.

4 people left the houseboat Saturday morning. So that means there was an empty bed. We went back to HRV and took our tents down and packed up. So hot. So much work. This is not relaxing. But the reward was spending the night on the houseboat with A/C. We came back and ate a nice steak dinner, watched TV and slept in air conditioned comfort. Now that’s a vacation!

We were supposed to leave Monday morning, but since we vacated HRV and they were all leaving Sunday we had no place to stay so we left too. Now I’m glad we did. We had so much to unpack and clean up Sunday night and we spent all day yesterday cleaning the boat. AND I had to work at 4 yesterday. No way could we have come home yesterday. So at least that worked out.

So…what did I learn this weekend? I learned that camping is not for me. I never went camping when I was a kid, so the first few times Matthew and I went it was a novelty. It was fun. Last year we had a bad experience with rain when we were packing up and I said “Never again”. Well now I am saying “Never again” and I mean it this time. There are plenty of hotels around that lake. Sure it’s a bit more expensive, but it’s worth it.

That’s it for now. The rest of this week will be spent preparing for the World’s Longest Yard Sale this weekend. It goes right past my grandmother’s house, so I am hoping to get a lot of traffic and get rid of some junk.