Utah - May 9, 2010

Our Campsite in Utah (Scofield State Park)

Just as the sun was beginning to peak around the horizon, I woke up shivering. The sides of the tent were wet and the damp cold had seeped through the sleeping bag.
“I’m so cold,” I said, not particularly caring if Mateo was awake to hear me, or if I’d wake him up with my complaining.
“Me too,” he replied, as if he had been awake just as long as I had, shivering and thinking about the dampness like me.
“I think I have enough room in my sleeping bag for the both of us,” I suggest. And, without hesitation Mateo attempted to climb into my sleeping bag.
I have to tell you at this point that this is a laughable thing for me to have suggested. We’re both overweight, and even two trim adults would have a hard time sharing a sleeping bag meant for one. But we somehow managed to squeeze into one sleeping bag without tearing it at the seems. The body heat instantly put me back to sleep.
When I woke up an hour later, it was because my body could no longer stand to sleep rigidly straight trapped in a skin tight bag. At this point, I didn’t care if it meant I had to get up and make the coffee in the morning cold, I had to get out of the sleeping bag (or force him out of it). So I squeezed out, sat up in the tent and soaked my sleeve on the side of tent in the process. I promptly jumped into the car and blasted the heater. It took roughly half an hour and several slow laps of driving around the RV camp for the engine to warm up enough to heat the car properly. By then Mateo had made a warm nest of three sleeping bags all to himself in the tent, and he fell back asleep for another hour. I was now wide awake and couldn’t go back to sleep, so I made coffee on the propane stove and took a shower in the bathroom meant for RV campers.
Bathing in public showers is always an adventure. First you have to find a place to put everything: your toiletries for use during the shower, the toiletries for use just after the shower, your dirty clothes, your clean clothes, your towel, AND your shoes and socks.
Then you have to make sure the door is securely shut. Usually there is some trick to lining up the lock with the latch, lifting the door slightly, or just hanging a portion of your shoe or other personal item over or under a door to indicate “occupied.”
Then you have to figure out how the shower works, which way to turn the knob for hot water, and how to avoid the stream of water until it has reached the proper temperature.
In the end I had to put all of my belongings in the spiderweb infested window sill because it turned out to be the only dry spot in the shower compartment once you have the water running for any length of time. I swear this water went uphill to soak my socks. I guess that’s the nature of showering in these kinds of places.
And let me ask you something… do you use those shower benches? I mean, other than to hold your shampoo bottle or to use to balance for washing your feet, do you actually sit your naked butt on a bench in the shower? This seems just plain wrong to me. Like the sensation of peeing with your clothes on… something your body/mind won’t let you do without some serious convincing. Especially as a female I think sitting on a wet bench is unnerving. That being said….. I do not squat over toilet seats. If the toilet seat is dry, I sit on it. I learned, from the AIDs awareness campaigns in the early 90s, that toilet seats are actually inhospitable environments for things like AIDs and such, so I go ahead and sit in peace when I pee. But sit on a bench with my bare butt?! No way!



-CB