I spent a lot of my childhood avoiding the outdoors. As my boyfriend Sam once said, I was not ethically designed to be outside. I'm burnt to a crisp within minutes and generally become very irritable once the weather forecast hits 80 degrees. And, remembering very clearly my seven-year-old self's tantrum refusal to join my Girl Scout troop for one night in a cabin, my parents were understandably amused to hear that I wanted to go camping...in a tent...with some friends in the middle of July.
But that's just what I did! Real camping, with a fire and a tent and food that tastes like bug spray. None of that silly roof-over-your-head, climate-controlled, protected-from-bears stuff.
This camping trip was a weekend excursion planned with Sam and our friends Anna and Jonathan. Anna is a seasoned professional, in my eyes, having accomplished many successful camping trips throughout her 22 years. Jonathan had camped before, but only in the desert, as he had grown up in Dubai. And although it had been years since Sam's last school camping trip, he at least had some experience.
So, one rainy Friday morning in early July, we met at Anna's house to pack her car to the brim with her family's tent and cooking supplies, all of our sleeping bags and mats, a cooler with a few prepped meals, and more food to cook at our campsite. We would drive from Cincinnati to Mammoth Cave in just over three hours, set up our supplies, and have a relaxing night by the fire before our scheduled cave tour the next morning.
That didn't exactly happen. Our first sign of trouble was, well, a troubling sign: one depicting a truck icon on a steep slope with water waves at the lowered end, with the words "ROAD ENDS IN WATER" in large letters. It was hard to miss, but easy to ignore. There was no way that Google Maps would intentionally lead us to an impassable river, right?
It did, in fact. We were momentarily relieved by the second sign's message that listed operation times for the short draw bridge that would allow us to drive on. However, we had arrived just minutes after 6:00 pm, and it had closed for the day. There wasn't a ranger in sight, so we were forced to turn around and drive around the perimeter of the national park to the south entrance.
This is a good time to mention my previously undiscovered superpower: magically falling asleep when I find myself in stressful situations. It would turn out a week later that I had contracted mono at some point within the last few weeks, and this was likely an early manifestation of my illness. At that time, though, it felt amazing. I'll rely on my friends' descriptions of the area here: eerily silent dirt road at early dusk, Confederate flags hanging from more than a few porches, intermittent cell service...We realized later that, had we had some sort of emergency on the road, we'd likely be stuck. Keep that in mind as you read on.
I woke up close to 7:00 as Anna drove us into the main entrance of the park, past the visitor center and towards the clearly marked campgrounds with plenty of family cars in sight. We instantly felt better knowing that we were around so many people. The park had closed for the day, but we figured we'd find a ranger later on to complete our check-in. In the meantime, we set up the tent with the remaining daylight, and got to work on our dinner. As far as camping food goes, I felt like we were thriving, cooking our chicken sausage and rice on a portable stove top with Anna's grandmother's decades-old cookware. It was certainly a nice way to rest and hang out on our first night, never mind the bugs flying into our necks on their way to our bright LED lanterns.
The four of us settled into our tent after a few hours, chatting for a bit and then falling asleep one by one. It was remarkably comfortable; the tarp below us was a little smaller than the tent area, but the ground wasn't cold; and one of the poles that arched through one side of the tent was a tad short, but we still had plenty of room. It began to rain lightly, but I found it peaceful and I felt secure under the extra rain cover.
The next morning, I was awoken by Sam shaking my shoulder over and over, which was nothing new since I tend to sleep like a rock. I begrudgingly sat up, confused in the dark, trying to figure out what Anna and Jonathan were saying. Suddenly, a wave of panic washed over me. It was not morning. It was nowhere near light outside yet. I couldn't hear Anna two feet from me because the rain pummeling our tent was so loud. And, most importantly, nearly everything inside was soaked. We were shouting to hear each other, or so I thought in my melatonin-induced haze, and frantically pulling clothes, books, backpacks, portable batteries, and phones into the center of the tent.
We needed a game plan. Do we stay and wait it out? Hell no. Do we sleep in the car? Definitely not enough space.
Should we just make a run for it and try to get cell service? I mean, I guess, but...then what?
We had parked our shoes outside the tent on a rug acting as a welcome mat, so obviously they were soaked. I remember Anna counting down, "3...2...1...GO!" and all of us scrambling out of the tent like animals from a cage, shoving wet feet into wet shoes, wet backpacks in tow, yelling and clamoring towards the car. Ten feet felt like ten miles. We flung ourselves inside, squeezed between coolers that we had arranged for easy access and not for comfortable car rides. With Jonathan behind the wheel, we rolled slowly towards the visitor center. There wasn't another person in sight...all the families we had seen earlier in the evening were, presumably, peacefully asleep in their campers, or had already left.
The empty campground started to sink in once we arrived at the lodge. We needed a ranger, desperately. Every building was pitch black, and we were all trying to help calm each other down with possible solutions. At this point, sleeping in the tent was completely out of the question. Anna called the emergency ranger line, but they told us that the lodge was full and they would not be able to accommodate us overnight. We decided to try our luck at the nearest hotel, and set out again on the road.
If you've ever been to a national park, especially Mammoth Cave, you may be familiar with the lack of road infrastructure. Without street lights, directional signs, or clearly marked driving lanes, we crawled through the monsoon at about 15 mph. We would reflect back on this drive the next morning, realizing that, had there been a fallen tree or a stalled car in our path, we wouldn't have seen it until it was too late.
This was when my aforementioned sleep superpower came in handy. I groggily shuffled into a hotel at some point, maybe around 2 a.m., blissfully unaware of how ridiculous I looked with my try-hard outdoorsy French braids dripping rainwater, not to mention the eggplant-patterned boxers from Old Navy that I slept in. Somehow a room was already prepared for us, and back I went to my pre-mono slumber.
The next morning, I was glad to discover that the other three had been far more alert than I was the night before, and they had a solid plan to return to our campsite, assess the damage, and clean and dry our belongings, all while still making it to the cave tour we had booked weeks before. The 4-hour, 4-mile, $35 Grand Historic Tour was well worth leaving the hotel early in the morning. I did, in fact, catch the "cave bug"! And, not to mention, I thoroughly enjoyed the consistent 60º temperature underground. It was so hard to come back to the 90º, 90% humidity park at ground-level that we signed up for a second self-led tour that afternoon.
In the meantime, however, we prepped our campsite for the night ahead. Sam had been feeling sick since that morning and was not convinced that he'd be able to last through the night. I finally convinced him that there would be no more rain, we would take it easy, and we would have a nice evening. We did! We walked to the convenience store and laundromat near the main visitor center, and snacked on local cheese curds while successfully cooking (with a lot fewer bugs this time around). I unintentionally napped through a lot of our remaining daylight, but woke up before 8 the next morning after a dry, quiet night in the tent. The four of us started a small fire and sat around it in our folding chairs, waiting for water to heat for our coffee and oatmeal packets, which somehow turned out salty. I was so hungry that I couldn't have cared less.
The trip turned out to be a lot of fun and made me decide that, yes, I would be camping again. Rain or shine. Actually, preferably shine, but I'd make it work. I did surprise myself with how calm I stayed at the literal darkest moments (although, to be fair, I was conveniently asleep for the bulk of it), and gone was my childhood fear of bugs and dirt and grass and weather and, honestly, just the air itself. I found that I really like being outdoors, and enjoyed the lack of cell service once we weren't desperate to find help. So...to be continued?
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