I never seem to sleep very well on vacation in tents although I love to camp.
Every vacation I go on seems to be packed full of fun activities like hiking, wine tasting, beach relaxing and off roading adventures. Whether it be driving in iceland or in the US, the adventure is always exciting. When it comes to be about ten o clock at night and I’m exhausted something always seems to go wrong.
As in nonstop noise from Robbie the Raccoon tearing our campsite apart at Morro Strand State Beach last week; all night long. Sometimes, when we go camping, we stay in a Two man pop-up tent, which is a lot more comfortable than a standard sized tent. But that raccoon still manages to find it’s way to our campsite for some reason.
In the past bad stuff always seems to happen to me and my nocturnal sleepy time.
It always happens, like clockwork.
I’m either sleeping in a wet puddle next to a mini Oktoberfest raging outside my tent from the beer hall tent located five hundred feet to my left ( Munich 2006) or I’m sleeping in two sleeping bags shoved inside each other and have a jacket on to protect from the bitter cold. (Grand Canyon, 12 degrees, 2009)
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Before I didn’t sleep for four days; making
dinner by lantern light. |
It could also be that a grizzly was spotted snacking in our camp site the night before we arrived (Denali National Park, 2005) Wandering with out glasses on through a Alaska “night” more like twilight to get to the pit toilets, was terrifying enough to keep me awake all night. As I tried to find the pit toilets in the endless twenty four hour Alaska summer sunlight I felt like the eyes of every grizzly in Alaska were upon me and I could barely make out where to pee at two A.M. I faced the eternal dilemma of using the lantern I’d spent days reading reviews on on sites like campingfunzone.com, in which case I’d be seen by the bear, or braving it in the dark and risking bumping into it unawares. I opted for darkness! Oh the joys of camping!
As much as I love to camp, sleeping on a sleeping pad on the ground probably means I will get no sleep at all.
So of course the first night of our camping trip I found myself thinking at three A.M. will some one please tell those damn raccoons to shut up!
We were trying to sleep; it was three a.m. And Robbie the Raccoon was being rude.
To be fair none of us camping buddies realized that a group of mangy, ridicules and damn it, cute raccoons would ransack our camp ground.
So after a evening of tasty beer, camp fire talk and a huge meal we did not make our camp ground pest friendly before pouring into our sleeping bags.
We had enjoyed a great dinner of turkey burgers and left over chicken flautas in the evening hours after a walk on the beach that flanked our camp ground at Morro Strand State Park.
This noise was all our fault. I was pretty sure that I had ear plugs some where in my car too, but you know when you are to tired to comprehend how to get the ear plugs to distract from the annoying noise and instead you chose to just lay awake and be miserable? That was me on the first night of our Central Coast adventure.
Camping and sleep; I’m beginning to think these two things just do not go together!
