Growing Paynes: Fake Camping

We'd been looking forward to camping for a few weeks, but the weather hasn't been cooperating with us. We finally planned to go this weekend and the weather was on our side. All in all it looked like it would be a beautiful weekend. We should have sensed that it was too good to be true.

We couldn't get the National Park Service website to allow us to reserve a spot in advance like we normally do, so we just figured we'd get to Shennendoah National Park early on Friday to get one of the first-come-first-served spots. You see where this is going. We entered the park on our way to Loft Mountain (our campground of choice), where the ranger informed us that all of the other campgrounds were completely full already except one up north and they only had 15 spots left. She told us it was filling at about 15 spots/hour and we were about an hour away. Here's where a sane family would turn around, realizing that they'd been outwitted by the fates (and other redneck campers, sad to say).

But a sane family doesn't have a curly headed little girl crying in the back seat and her brother pouting out the window. Of course we pushed on and high tailed it to get up north to Matthew's Arm campground. We were making good time. So good that we got stopped and Gary was issued a ticket by the SLOWEST officer in the park service (not even a real cop, although the fee is real enough!)

Back on our way, with Gary cruising at a zippy 39 mph we finally made it to the campground. We were in line for a spot and waited for an hour while they determined whether or not there were any openings. The ranger took that opportunity to chat with the kids in the car, telling them they'd seen lots of poisonous snakes (rattlers, even) and bears with cubs in the area. After renumerating the ways in which they could die she gave them each a Smoky the Bear story to cheer them up. Nothing like a tale of a huge forrest fire to cheer up potential campers.

It looked like our luck had started to turn! There was one site left for us! We got to the site and realized that it was too small to even fit our tent, let alone all the other stuff we like to camp with. Curses were uttered under breaths, tears were shed, threats were made, promises of future camping trips were made, and finally a decision was made to abandoned the camping trip for the weekend. It takes a lot to get through to us that maybe our plan isn't the best.

It ended up being a great weekend. We found a cool place to stay in Luray, VA. It had a huge field in the back for the kids to run and play in and gorgeous views of the aforementioned National Park (so close, yet still so far!). We spent the night and walked on their riverside bike trail. It was gorgeous. The kids rode scooters and we all started to warm to this Luray/hotel idea. That night we ate in a local restaurant that turned out to have surprisingly great food. We went to the little theater in town and watched Night at the Museum II, which was a hit with our kids. They've spent enough time in the Smithsonian to get a kick out of seeing the exhibits come to life in the movie. We asked the locals for suggestions and found ourselves at Flotzie's road-side icecream stand and enjoyed some delicious frozen custard sundaes.

The next morning we went horseback riding. Grace has been asking me to take her horseback riding since she was 3 years old. Okay, that's only 3 years, but it's 50% of her life! She was thrilled to be able to go and pronounced it "the greatest day of my life". We rode for about 2 hours, through some open fields and then up the mountain into the woods. The views were gorgeous and it was a lot of fun. The kids claimed they liked hiking much better when the horse does the hiking and they ride.

After that we ate at another local restaurant and found an old-school park to play at. Our kids are used to parks where everything is padded and you can't get hurt. This was 70's style with a real metal merry-go-round, a see-saw that went 6 feet in the air and a huge metal slide. They loved it.

Over to Luray Caverns where we did the maze. It was supposed to be a 1.5 mile maze, but I'm pretty sure we walked at least twice that far by the time we found our way out. We toured the caverns and enjoyed the views there.

All in all it was a great "camping" trip. The camping trip that never was!