I realize that my next post is supposed to follow suit of my previous few and be about traveling with school-age kids, but today I really need to vent. It has to do with our new neighbors, injustice, inconsideration, and snarkiness (is snarkiness a word???). Of course it also has to do with a campground…
We have put approx. 45 thousand miles on our trailer in the last 2 years. We have met thousands of other people on the road, including the good, the bad, and the ugly. But we hadn’t met snarky until yesterday. I should probably explain that we are dry camping in a public campground on a lake; we pulled in on Monday, snagged the best spot in the campground (under the only tree), and moved our son’s camper in 2 sites down since the site next to us was occupied (by someone we knew no less). We talked with the camp host, who said that when the gentleman in the next site moved in a couple of days, that we could move our sons camper over and the site change would be no big deal (for payment). Fast forward 3 days later, with our neighbor pulling out. He pulls out, I pull our van into the site while I hitch up my son’s camper to move it over. This is not a busy campground, but possession is 9/10ths of the law, right?(well, it’s not! lesson learned…) Getting out of the vehicle, a lady approaches me walking over from her spot and informs me that they are moving to that site – she has been waiting for him to leave for 3 hours, she wants the site, and she will fight for it. are you serious??? it’s a camping spot lady. and there are 25 more nearly exactly like it, all open for the taking. I nicely let her know that we had been waiting for the site for 3 days so that we could camp next to our son. She didn’t care – she had been waiting for 3 hours, she wants the site, she will fight for it… ummm, ok…
Even in the 4 months of being the lone camp hosts at a 77 site campground, I have never come across such blatant nastiness; most people tame their bad attitudes once confronted by some sort of authority. I told her that I would let the camp host know of the situation, and that he could decide the outcome. At this point, I didn’t really care so much about the site; I mostly just really didn’t want to have such neighbors for the next week and a half! So, while I drove over to the host site, the intruders pulled their truck around our van (which I left there and took the truck), and were throwing garbage bags of camping ‘stuff’ out as fast as they could (they still had to move their camper too). The camp host came over and asked them to move since we had site possession first. They Refused; would not leave, were in-your-face nasty at the host. The host’s boss ended up coming over, and I left and went in my rv since I knew that I had the right to the site and things were getting ugly. The host came to me apologizing, but said that I needed to move my van and that the boss had given the site to the usurpers. I’m still not sure why; maybe their lying about who was there first had a part in it (wouldn’t want to seek any witnesses now would we?), maybe it was the whole confrontation vs. lack of backbone (and since I know the boss, he knew that I wouldn’t give him guff like these people), but I think that it was mostly pacifying the snark (and her hubby and granddaugher who are just like her). So now, Lucky Us; we have new neighbors – they have a nice slide-in truck camper, they have a snazzy boat, they keep a clean site. If only their personalities matched their camp.
So, what is it with snarky campers? I guess that you could say, what is it with snarky people in general, but something about camping is a recipe for run-ins of the not so pleasant nature. Whether it is folks running their genes at all hours, having a loud drunken brawl at 1 a.m., or RVers that are so special that the rules don’t apply to them. While we have met far more super wonderful ‘neighbors’ while in campgrounds, it seems that when you do run into a nasty, they are extra nasty.
It is a popular saying that all clouds have a silver lining; (I’m digging here) and have come up with the silver lining in this cloud (which is going to hover for the next 10 days), is the reminder to Play Nice. Which I guess means that I will have to repress the urge to install the hardwood floor in the toy hauler this week (you know, with running the generator, the chop saw, the air compressor for the nailer…). Because someone has to be the adult, and goodness knows the sweet camp hosts don’t need anymore nasties in the campground.
So, there you have it, a reminder to Camp Nice – and don’t let the snarks get to you…