vacation all i ever wanted

my kids are off visiting their dad...and i can't stand having an empty house. it IS nice and peaceful...and lonely. i'm not like most divorced parents, who get a weekend of no kids every other week... my kids are with me all of the time. and? that is how i want it. i wouldn't have it any other way. however, my husband probably grows weary of it every now and then, so i told him we could go on vacation while my kids were gone.

in a moment of temporary insanity, i agreed to go camping in yellowstone for a week.

back the truck up.

me.

camping.

in bear country. in a tent.

what the HELL was i thinking??? i hate camping! i hate being dirty! my idea of "roughing it" is staying at a hotel that hasn't been recently remodeled. like the excalibur in las vegas, for instance. or... sleeping on the couch (which is something i never do...). what i'm trying to say here is that I DO NOT CAMP. ever.

the campground i picked out did have flushing toilets and pay showers. yay for running water. yay for husbands who put up with incessant complaining about being cold, scared and swassy. (that is not a typo. thanks, drive through...)

we made the drive up to yellowstone pretty uneventfully. we stopped off for some sandwiches in alpine junction, where i hit my head rather hard on the latch mechanism of the shell on my husband's truck. super awesome sauce. the teton mountains are absolutely spectacular. i will post some photos on facebook later. paul has them all on his camera.

we got to our campground and because i was the one who had made the reservation (and i am the planner/organizer/pants wearer when it comes to these kind of things), i went to the counter to check in. the lady asked if i had camped in bear country before... and that is where things went to poop really fast. i said to her, "i haven't camped for like 15 years. and i sure hell haven't camped in bear country." she then rattled off a list of RULES TO FOLLOW unless YOU WANT TO SUFFER DEATH BY BEAR, which included her circling little bullet points on the campground map in bright orange highlighter. she did the circling on text that was upside down to her (so i could read it...) which i found somewhat calming... and distracting... wait. where was i?

hells. bells.

at the end of THE RULES YOU'LL FOLLOW IF YOU WANT TO LIVE, she proceeds to further inform me that a male grizzly bear lives near the campground and that he walks through it ALMOST EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. WHAT. THE. F. AM. I. DOING. OUT. HERE?!??!

she tells me to call 911 if i see him. great. i'll do that. thanks, lady. i will not sleep for the next four nights. and damn, i had planned to keep my stash of beef jerky under my pillow.

we found our space without any trouble and decided we really liked our little spot we'd been assigned. just as we got our tent set up, our neighbors arrived. sigh. they had two camp spaces because they had a large group. they were LOUD. they didn't know how to set up their tents. and THEY WERE ALWAYS COOKING. and driving the wrong way on the one way streets in the campground. OMG. and? they stayed all week! LUCKY US! i was convinced their constant cooking was going to get us eaten by a bear. one of them had a hair dryer - and he used it. every day. i wish you could have seen his hair. it was... indescribable.

speaking of hair. guess what i intentionally left at home? because i'm a a real camper, dammit?

my flat iron and my hair dryer. i never go ANYWHERE overnight without my flat iron. no.where.

so. we're here. we have the tent set up. the food in the cooler is cool. we have the stuff to make s'mores (11 dollars later. we forgot our stuff to make them at home, so we had to buy the fixins in the park...)

but the real question: does this girl sleep at night???

you'll have to stay tuned to find out...