My First Camping Experience in the Mountains
I have lived in the country all of my life, but really had no experience with camping.When we were kids we would occasionally spend a night sleeping in the back yard, but that was the extent of my experience.Then I started dating my husband and all was about to change, he’s an experienced woodsman, and hunter.He’d been camping with his grandfather since he was a small boy.
We had been dating less than a month, when he suggested that we go to mountains of West Virginia to camp over Labor Day weekend.The romantic in me visualized a secluded weekend spent in a rustic log cabin and drinking wine in front of a fireplace.This was not quite the way it worked out.
Our transportation for this trip was my fairly new snow white Chevy Blazer, the plan was that we were going to explore and go sight- seeing during the day and then find accommodations for the night, we forgot that it was a holiday weekend and at least 50% of the people from Washington DC had the same plan.We had not made hotel reservations; therefore the only thing we saw when we pulled into the various hotels and motels was the signs reading “No Vacancy”.He seemed totally un-perturbed by this and said “we’ll sleep in the Blazer and I know the perfect place to park it”.The “perfect place” was in a grove of trees at the edge of a meadow very near the top of a mountain.We arrived there well before dark, because he said there was a view that I absolutely must see.The road up the mountain and I use the term loosely, was deep ruts in mud up to the axles, that wound in and out around boulders, but we did manage to make it to the top, thank goodness for 4 wheel drive, but the Blazer was now two toned, the bottom half was black from the mud, but the top half was still snow white.My heart had finally started to beat almost normally again, when we started walking out across the flat meadow.It was a beautiful spot, but as we were walking, he said ‘I don’t mean to frighten you, but you should be aware that there are men in these mountains that haven’t seen a woman in a long time”.
My face had to have shown a little fear, because he continued his description of “mountain men”, he said, “you’ll have no problem recognizing them, and they will be barefoot, wearing bib overalls and have very few teeth.My heart just stopped, and I started looking behind me and all around, much to his amusement, if I’d heard a twig snap, I probably would have started running or climbed my husband like a ladder. Maybe it was just my imagination going into overdrive, but I could have sworn that I heard guitars and banjos twanging the theme from Deliverance. I had no idea that he had the type of straight faced, pile it on humor he possesses.I didn’t realize until much later on that I was being teased; but don’t worry I let him live; by the way the view from that mountain out over the valley was breath-taking. The valley below in the early fall sunshine seemed to go on forever.The checkerboard appearance of the farms and pastures far below looked like a painting.
I had thrown two light weight blankets and some small pillows (which he called inadequate,among other descriptive terms) in the blazer, for ground cover, hoping we’d stop for a romantic picnic lunch along the way.These were the only things we had to keep us warm, and it does get really chilly in the mountains.We finally settle down in the blazer to go to sleep, but realized that we would have to leave the back open, to make room for my 6’4” husband to stretch out.Then he began to tell me about the size of the bears that also live on this mountain. It was a long cold night. I had read many times about the stars looking like diamonds on velvet, in some of the romance novels that I like to read and had dismissed this idea as the author setting the scene for the lovers in the story. In those mountains with no light pollution from the cities, the sky did appear to be very black and the stars seemed so close you could almost touch them. I was totally mesmerized by this awesome sight.
The next night we saw a thunder storm go through the valley below us, in spite of the bears, I fell totally in love with the mountains. If I ever come into an enormous amount of money, I’m going to buy that mountain and build a log cabin on that meadow, with a big noisy dog to keep the bears away. After the long cold night and reeling from very little sleep, we started down the mountain in search of coffee, lots of coffee. We stop by the side of a river, and decided to freshen up and change clothes before going back to civilization so we wouldn’t look too scruffy.The water was so cold, that by the time I’d washed by face and hands, I was very much awake, still craving my coffee, but very much awake. We visited Seneca Rocks and Dolly Sods; which are part of the National Forest Wilderness area. We climbed rock formations and drove a lot of winding two lane roads all through the mountains. Tired and sunburned, we started the long drive home.
We finally found a motel, that actually had rooms available and I proceeded to soak in a good warm tub, and we slept in a warm soft bed; felt like heaven to me; after trying to sleep on the unforgiving cargo area carpet of the Blazer the previous night, civilization was a welcome sight. This was my introduction to camping and I will write about some of the other camping trips that we have made, but this one made the biggest impression on me and has given us many laughs about how naïve and gullible I was. He can’t get away with pulling this kind of thing on me anymore, after ten years together, but it can still make us laugh.
We had been dating less than a month, when he suggested that we go to mountains of West Virginia to camp over Labor Day weekend.The romantic in me visualized a secluded weekend spent in a rustic log cabin and drinking wine in front of a fireplace.This was not quite the way it worked out.
Our transportation for this trip was my fairly new snow white Chevy Blazer, the plan was that we were going to explore and go sight- seeing during the day and then find accommodations for the night, we forgot that it was a holiday weekend and at least 50% of the people from Washington DC had the same plan.We had not made hotel reservations; therefore the only thing we saw when we pulled into the various hotels and motels was the signs reading “No Vacancy”.He seemed totally un-perturbed by this and said “we’ll sleep in the Blazer and I know the perfect place to park it”.The “perfect place” was in a grove of trees at the edge of a meadow very near the top of a mountain.We arrived there well before dark, because he said there was a view that I absolutely must see.The road up the mountain and I use the term loosely, was deep ruts in mud up to the axles, that wound in and out around boulders, but we did manage to make it to the top, thank goodness for 4 wheel drive, but the Blazer was now two toned, the bottom half was black from the mud, but the top half was still snow white.My heart had finally started to beat almost normally again, when we started walking out across the flat meadow.It was a beautiful spot, but as we were walking, he said ‘I don’t mean to frighten you, but you should be aware that there are men in these mountains that haven’t seen a woman in a long time”.
My face had to have shown a little fear, because he continued his description of “mountain men”, he said, “you’ll have no problem recognizing them, and they will be barefoot, wearing bib overalls and have very few teeth.My heart just stopped, and I started looking behind me and all around, much to his amusement, if I’d heard a twig snap, I probably would have started running or climbed my husband like a ladder. Maybe it was just my imagination going into overdrive, but I could have sworn that I heard guitars and banjos twanging the theme from Deliverance. I had no idea that he had the type of straight faced, pile it on humor he possesses.I didn’t realize until much later on that I was being teased; but don’t worry I let him live; by the way the view from that mountain out over the valley was breath-taking. The valley below in the early fall sunshine seemed to go on forever.The checkerboard appearance of the farms and pastures far below looked like a painting.
I had thrown two light weight blankets and some small pillows (which he called inadequate,among other descriptive terms) in the blazer, for ground cover, hoping we’d stop for a romantic picnic lunch along the way.These were the only things we had to keep us warm, and it does get really chilly in the mountains.We finally settle down in the blazer to go to sleep, but realized that we would have to leave the back open, to make room for my 6’4” husband to stretch out.Then he began to tell me about the size of the bears that also live on this mountain. It was a long cold night. I had read many times about the stars looking like diamonds on velvet, in some of the romance novels that I like to read and had dismissed this idea as the author setting the scene for the lovers in the story. In those mountains with no light pollution from the cities, the sky did appear to be very black and the stars seemed so close you could almost touch them. I was totally mesmerized by this awesome sight.
The next night we saw a thunder storm go through the valley below us, in spite of the bears, I fell totally in love with the mountains. If I ever come into an enormous amount of money, I’m going to buy that mountain and build a log cabin on that meadow, with a big noisy dog to keep the bears away. After the long cold night and reeling from very little sleep, we started down the mountain in search of coffee, lots of coffee. We stop by the side of a river, and decided to freshen up and change clothes before going back to civilization so we wouldn’t look too scruffy.The water was so cold, that by the time I’d washed by face and hands, I was very much awake, still craving my coffee, but very much awake. We visited Seneca Rocks and Dolly Sods; which are part of the National Forest Wilderness area. We climbed rock formations and drove a lot of winding two lane roads all through the mountains. Tired and sunburned, we started the long drive home.
We finally found a motel, that actually had rooms available and I proceeded to soak in a good warm tub, and we slept in a warm soft bed; felt like heaven to me; after trying to sleep on the unforgiving cargo area carpet of the Blazer the previous night, civilization was a welcome sight. This was my introduction to camping and I will write about some of the other camping trips that we have made, but this one made the biggest impression on me and has given us many laughs about how naïve and gullible I was. He can’t get away with pulling this kind of thing on me anymore, after ten years together, but it can still make us laugh.
Posted by blog.houseboatodyssey1.com at 3/13/2009 11:49 AM 
Categories: Article, Redneck, Camping
Tags: camping Dolly Sods outdoors adventure picture humor
Categories: Article, Redneck, Camping
Tags: camping Dolly Sods outdoors adventure picture humor
I am glad that the blog is constantly evolving. This post just adds popularity
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