Camping in Hell

I had an interesting weekend. My older son was gone from Friday through Sunday afternoon on a church retreat. My younger son was invited to a slumber party at one of his friend's house on Saturday night. That means no kids on Saturday night. What to do with this rare time?

Saturday during the day Kevin, Heath (younger son), our two friends, and myself planned a kayak trip on the Chestatee River in Dahlonega. During the entire week the forecast for Saturday was rain and thunderstorms. On the way up to Dahlonega the weather looked horrible, and we had little hope of actually getting to kayak. However, by the time we made it to the river, the rain had stopped so we went on our trip down the river. I had never kayaked on an ocean kayak before, and it has made me appreciate my little inflatable even more. I was on a tandem kayak with Heath. We were really fast, but the boat wasn't that easy to steer. It was an easy river, so we were never in any danger. My problem with the ocean kayaks is that they are "self bailing" which also evidently means that water comes in from the bottom as well. All of us were sitting in soaking wet pants the entire trip because of it. The day turned absolutely gorgeous on the last half of the trip.

After the kayaking, we went to the square in downtown Dahlonega where they were holding the "Bear in the Square" festival. We looked around at the crafts and food. I was particularly interested in the Spinners Guild that had their spinning wheels up and were showing everyone how they spun wool into yarn. Since I am a knitter, I was intrigued by this. It was pretty cool.

On the way home from Dahlonega, Heath fell asleep, and the four adults started weighing in our options for our child free night. We had talked about going down to Decatur to the Brick Store Pub, which has an excellent selection of beers on draft in addition to delicious pretzels. Then I thought up the idea of going camping for the night. We called around to some local campgrounds and finally settled on the one at Stone Mountain Park, since we were sure that there were sites available. The State Parks weren't answering their phones, so we decided to not risk driving out to Fort Yargo, only to be turned away.

We packed up our tent and camping supplies and dogs into the van in record time. We decided on all four of us sleeping in our one mammoth two bedroom suite of a tent to save time on getting everything set up. My tent is giant. It actually has a wall separating the two "bedrooms." We wanted to make sure to get to the campground and everything set up before sundown. On the way to Stone Mountain, we stopped by Publix and picked up some stuff at the deli for our easy, cook-free dinner. I had fried chicken, potato salad and fruit salad. It was very yummy and peaceful eating it and looking out at the lake and the mountain.

We had chosen to camp in a primitive site in the tent camping area because we had assumed that these sites are generally more private. Plus, it's easier to get a lake site because a lot of folks don't like to live without their water and electricity. When we arrived at the site, it appeared that the sites were almost on top of each other. I had never camped so close to other people that I didn't know.

We had a nice time eating our meal, and hanging out by our "fire." I put the word fire in quotes because after trying for almost two hours, the most we ever had was a few burning paper plates. We never succeeded in getting our wood burning. We also could watch the fireworks from the Stone Mountain laser show. That was pretty cool. It started to get cold, so we turned in earlier than we probably normally would have, around 10:30 PM.

Going to bed was useless, I came to find out, because I was not going to get any sleep that night. The campsite immediately behind us decided to party it up. If you have been camping before, you know that there is a lights out time so that people can actually sleep. The people behind us were very loud, and very close, close enough that we could hear every word of their conversation. After two hours of this, I had had it and went out to let the woman know that it was too late. I approached her very nicely and informed her that it was 12:30, that she was being too loud and no one could sleep. She immediately said "I'm not doing anything wrong, I can do this if I want to." I told her that she was doing something wrong. Campgrounds had lights out times so that people could sleep. It was well past that time and she needed to tone it down. She had four teenage kids along with her and there was plenty of beer and wine being drunk. I think she was probably pretty trashed. One of the boys with her told me that they would keep it down. Then the lady (who was by far the loudest of them) told me that if I had to come out again that she would tell her kids to be quiet. I told her then that I was not planning on coming out again. She needed to keep it down now, and if I did have to complain another time about it, it would be to the ranger.

After this she was quieter for about five minutes, and then proceeded to call everyone that she knew on her cell phone talking in a loud voice, asking people out to party with her and joking that she would be in jail. Also, about this time, a group of high school kids from prom arrived a few sites down and partied it up the whole night. I guess since those people were being noisy, our camp neighbor figures she can be too. At this point, our friend has had it, zips open the tent and yells out for people to keep quiet, that we're trying to sleep and he's annoyed. The lady behind him starts saying how it's not her, it's people down the beach a ways. He responds that if it's not her making the noise, then she doesn't have to be concerned, he's not talking to her. But of course...she IS making noise and after he shuts the tent and tries to go back to sleep, she continues on and on. We can hear her talking to her teenagers about us, and then she makes the comment "I wonder what would happen if I pee down this hill," knowing fully that our tent is downhill from her. That did it. My friend hopped out and told her to cut it out. One of the teenage boys yells out to my friend, bizarrely, "Do you go to college?" My friend answers that yeah, he did go, like over ten years ago. Then the teenage boy strolls over and tells my friend that he can't tell him "how to camp," that no one tells him what to do and that he's going to put "a bunch of knots" all over my friend's face. My friend asks if the kid is around 15, the kid answers yes and asks how old my friend is, who responds that he is 40. I don't know what the kid was getting at. I don't know if he thought we were some college kids that he would be happy to beat up or what. Just weird.

So we've had it by now, the other female in our party goes up to the bathroom to find a number for the ranger. There isn't one posted, but she found a flier and called the emergency number from there. The office was closed, and no one was there, so the emergency number turns out to be the police. Three cops show and question the lady. They kept asking her repeatedly, "Are you being loud?" She kept responding with that same "I'm not doing anything wrong" crap that she gave me. I don't know what else the cops said to her, but our friends did hear the lady ask the cop if we were the ones who called and complained, and he told her they had had numerous calls.

She finally shut up and went to bed. I don't think the cops did squat to her. They also failed to do anything about the partying prom kids, who proceeded to whoop it up until well past four.

About an hour after the cops left, there was an explosion and a splash of orange flame at the lady's campsite. I have no idea what she did to cause that, but it was way to close for comfort to me. We talked within our tent about what to do, if we should pack up and leave or what. I was too stressed out to sleep, and at this point, everything is scaring me. I may have dozed off for a while because I woke to a trickling noise on our tent and footsteps. I hopped up to see what was going on (fearing the jerk was peeing on our tent), and my husband must have been thinking the same thing because he made it to the tent door quicker than I did. There was no one around, and evidently the trees were dropping things on the tent. I was so keyed up, that I felt at that point anything could happen.

Eventually morning came. I went up to the bathroom to take my shower. While I was there, a few women came in. One was complaining of the cold and warmed her hands in the hand dryer. She seemed nice, but I didn't know who was who in the light of day, so I wasn't super friendly. Another lady came in and brushed her teeth. I knew she wasn't one of the troublemakers. Then a teenage girl came in and I gave her a brief glance and realized she was with the loud lady. I didn't say a word to her and went back to our site.

Everyone in the campground is waking up by now. No one had really talked to us the night before, but now people in other sites close by were being really nice to us. The one lady who was brushing her teeth in the bathroom came down and offered our dogs some leftover steak. The people in another site next to us struck up a conversation about our camping equipment. After we had packed up everything and were about to leave, we talked to the "equipment lady" some more. We talked about the horrible loud night, and she said that she had never camped there before, and had never had noise issues like that camping at the state parks. We agreed.

I believe the surrounding campers were friendly in the morning as a way of showing they appreciated our attempts at quieting the loud lady. The loud lady's teenage bunch were out of the tent in the morning, but I never did see her.

When we were leaving, I told everyone that I was going to the front office and let them know what happened last night. I explained our ordeal, and the lady there said they were worried there would be problems with the prom kids and that the cops were supposed to patrol until 11. We told her all of the trouble happened after midnight. She felt bad about our disaster of a stay, refunded our money, gave me a rain-check for another night free, and then told us where the sites were that we would be happier at. It turns out that the primitive campsites at this campground were the cheapo spots, so it attracted some of the wrong types of people.

So, after this ordeal of a night, I've had a chance to think. All I keep coming back to is the loud lady and her crazy response to being asked politely to be quiet in a campground. Not so long ago, anyone would have immediately apologized and quieted down immediately. Her immediate response was to tell me that she wasn't doing anything wrong. Was she on drugs, crazy, drunk? I don't know.

Increasingly, I am running into more and more rude people. My husband attributes some of the problem to poor cell phone behavior. People seem to think they can chat at anytime at full voice. Is this what started it all? Is it TV? What is the deal? The end of civility eventually will be the end of civilization. I fear we are heading there fast.