Tent or Hotel?
I really am in the mood to write, but I want to write about something random and not about life details. I've been perusing the old writer's block archives and think I'll draw on some of those to get the gears going.
Would you rather spend the weekend camping in the woods or at a luxury hotel? Why?
SUCH a hard answer, yet it seems not at all. Something quirky about me is that I absolutely love staying in hotels...not so much the dodgy kind, but there still is something endearing about them, too. I don't need a luxury hotel. I'm happiest in a Marriott. If they're up to Marriott standards, they usually feel fresh and new, clean, and with a ton of pillows and perfectly comfortable beds. I love staying at Marriotts. An old friend of mine used to work for Marriott, so we would often stay at them for fun and bring a DVD player, the Wii, board games, groceries to make in the kitchen, and just stay up all night being crazy. The best Marriott I've ever stayed in was on Main Street in Park City when we had a villa and brought other friends. It had vaulted ceilings, a huge dining room table and marble counter tops on the kitchen island, a living room with a fireplace, bay windows, and a giant TV, a king bed, a hot tub, two bathrooms, laundry room, and more...and the employee rate that day was only something like $40 a night. It is so fun to play at hotels and be in a different part of town and walk around exploring. I feel so 'posh' or something. So, I love hotels.
...HOWEVER. I LOVE CAMPING. And when I camp, I'm a tent girl. None of that RV/pop-up camper stuff. My first purchase when I got my last [higher-paying] job was a tent and a bunch of camping gear. I love so many things about camping...staying up late and hearing nearby campsites singing songs with a guitar and seeing the glow of campfires around the area, listening to wood crackling on the fire, bonfires in general, starry skies, waking up early (5am-ish) to the sunrise and the birds chirping, being cold in the morning and wearing sweatpants and hoodies, having dirty hands braided hair and smelling so much like campfire that you can't tell just how badly you stink, watching shadows through the tent, playing cards at the picnic table, heart-to-hearts or deep conversations (they seem to always happen on camping excursions), road trips to get to camping areas, hikes, swimming, tinfoil dinners, s'mores, campfire stories, vault toilets, and on and on. I have a few camp memories I especially love dearly. One is from Girls' Camp before my home district became a stake. We used to have camp at the Camp Hiawatha Boy Scout camp and use the old spider-infested canvas tents (not my favorite part!). We were small-but-mighty and had nightly fires with stories, songs, camp awards. I remember the tiny mess hall where we played cup games (Clap, Clap, Bongo Drums! and Parlez-vous Francais?) and one year watched "Gorillas in the Mist". Once I wrote a song about the skunk that came in my tent and shook my bed for 45 minutes while the 4th years were on their hike (to the tune of "The Other Day I Met a Bear"), and another song to the tune of "Ironic" by Alanis). I loved that camp because it was so private, surrounded by forest, rustic. We'd throw flour on the fire when the Priesthood would tell ghost stories (Dexter was the best with his Molly Becker legend). I loved listening to loons in the middle of the night on the lake, and imagining Native Americans on the island a century ago. We always did a "secret sister" (like "secret Santa") assignment during the week. I loved how close we all were, how private it was. I made so many close friends from other areas. Sister Ontto and Becky Smith were my favorite leaders! Those were the most spiritual times of my life.
Another fun camping memory was from when Ethan and I road tripped to San Diego and camped at Joshua Tree National Park. That was the first time we really spent a lot of time together, about six months after we met, and it was the trip on which I told him on the way home that I liked him. The camping excursion was so much fun. The most hilarious part was how incredibly windy it was at Joshua Tree. I have a four-person tent, so it's tall and we had a hard time getting it to resist the wind. After we got it set up, the wind picked it up out of the ground and blew it across the camp like a tumbleweed! I chased it and picked it up whole and carried it back, and Ethan was dying laughing saying I looked like Atlas Shrugged and he wanted a painting of me carrying a tent like that in his house someday. It blew away again. I started to grow frustrated and laughed hysterically and fell on the ground as Ethan chased my tent all across Joshua Tree. After a couple hours we got it set up and started a fire. We made instant mashed potatoes over his tiny little bunson burner-esque camping stove and sat in our camping chairs under the clearest starry sky. Ethan wore a cowboy hat and read Louis L'Amour to me until we went to bed. I remember hearing the campsite down the way singing songs and seeing the orange glow from their site and listening to their laughter. The boulders around us were giants and shadowed the sky. The next morning we packed up and drove through the park, wondering how these trees inspired the pioneers to think of Jesus beckoning them and got a good laugh from it. We found a nice little desert hike through an oasis of palms. I didn't have water and after a mile or two got pretty overheated so we cut it short and decided to extend our trip and drive over the Ortega Highway to the ocean, where all the campsites were full and we had nowhere to stay (I was chill, E stressed a bit, perhaps at the prospect of sharing a hotel room), and serendipitously an old friend from my ward in Michigan whom I hadn't spoken to in years saw a Facebook post from me asking if anyone lived in Oceanside/San Diego area, and she happened to be living there so we head to their place and had a blast. Great trip.
Soooo...still no firm answer.
I think if I had to choose one, it would definitely be camping in a tent.
But the occasional hotel weekend would be very welcomed. :)
Would you rather spend the weekend camping in the woods or at a luxury hotel? Why?
SUCH a hard answer, yet it seems not at all. Something quirky about me is that I absolutely love staying in hotels...not so much the dodgy kind, but there still is something endearing about them, too. I don't need a luxury hotel. I'm happiest in a Marriott. If they're up to Marriott standards, they usually feel fresh and new, clean, and with a ton of pillows and perfectly comfortable beds. I love staying at Marriotts. An old friend of mine used to work for Marriott, so we would often stay at them for fun and bring a DVD player, the Wii, board games, groceries to make in the kitchen, and just stay up all night being crazy. The best Marriott I've ever stayed in was on Main Street in Park City when we had a villa and brought other friends. It had vaulted ceilings, a huge dining room table and marble counter tops on the kitchen island, a living room with a fireplace, bay windows, and a giant TV, a king bed, a hot tub, two bathrooms, laundry room, and more...and the employee rate that day was only something like $40 a night. It is so fun to play at hotels and be in a different part of town and walk around exploring. I feel so 'posh' or something. So, I love hotels.
...HOWEVER. I LOVE CAMPING. And when I camp, I'm a tent girl. None of that RV/pop-up camper stuff. My first purchase when I got my last [higher-paying] job was a tent and a bunch of camping gear. I love so many things about camping...staying up late and hearing nearby campsites singing songs with a guitar and seeing the glow of campfires around the area, listening to wood crackling on the fire, bonfires in general, starry skies, waking up early (5am-ish) to the sunrise and the birds chirping, being cold in the morning and wearing sweatpants and hoodies, having dirty hands braided hair and smelling so much like campfire that you can't tell just how badly you stink, watching shadows through the tent, playing cards at the picnic table, heart-to-hearts or deep conversations (they seem to always happen on camping excursions), road trips to get to camping areas, hikes, swimming, tinfoil dinners, s'mores, campfire stories, vault toilets, and on and on. I have a few camp memories I especially love dearly. One is from Girls' Camp before my home district became a stake. We used to have camp at the Camp Hiawatha Boy Scout camp and use the old spider-infested canvas tents (not my favorite part!). We were small-but-mighty and had nightly fires with stories, songs, camp awards. I remember the tiny mess hall where we played cup games (Clap, Clap, Bongo Drums! and Parlez-vous Francais?) and one year watched "Gorillas in the Mist". Once I wrote a song about the skunk that came in my tent and shook my bed for 45 minutes while the 4th years were on their hike (to the tune of "The Other Day I Met a Bear"), and another song to the tune of "Ironic" by Alanis). I loved that camp because it was so private, surrounded by forest, rustic. We'd throw flour on the fire when the Priesthood would tell ghost stories (Dexter was the best with his Molly Becker legend). I loved listening to loons in the middle of the night on the lake, and imagining Native Americans on the island a century ago. We always did a "secret sister" (like "secret Santa") assignment during the week. I loved how close we all were, how private it was. I made so many close friends from other areas. Sister Ontto and Becky Smith were my favorite leaders! Those were the most spiritual times of my life.
Another fun camping memory was from when Ethan and I road tripped to San Diego and camped at Joshua Tree National Park. That was the first time we really spent a lot of time together, about six months after we met, and it was the trip on which I told him on the way home that I liked him. The camping excursion was so much fun. The most hilarious part was how incredibly windy it was at Joshua Tree. I have a four-person tent, so it's tall and we had a hard time getting it to resist the wind. After we got it set up, the wind picked it up out of the ground and blew it across the camp like a tumbleweed! I chased it and picked it up whole and carried it back, and Ethan was dying laughing saying I looked like Atlas Shrugged and he wanted a painting of me carrying a tent like that in his house someday. It blew away again. I started to grow frustrated and laughed hysterically and fell on the ground as Ethan chased my tent all across Joshua Tree. After a couple hours we got it set up and started a fire. We made instant mashed potatoes over his tiny little bunson burner-esque camping stove and sat in our camping chairs under the clearest starry sky. Ethan wore a cowboy hat and read Louis L'Amour to me until we went to bed. I remember hearing the campsite down the way singing songs and seeing the orange glow from their site and listening to their laughter. The boulders around us were giants and shadowed the sky. The next morning we packed up and drove through the park, wondering how these trees inspired the pioneers to think of Jesus beckoning them and got a good laugh from it. We found a nice little desert hike through an oasis of palms. I didn't have water and after a mile or two got pretty overheated so we cut it short and decided to extend our trip and drive over the Ortega Highway to the ocean, where all the campsites were full and we had nowhere to stay (I was chill, E stressed a bit, perhaps at the prospect of sharing a hotel room), and serendipitously an old friend from my ward in Michigan whom I hadn't spoken to in years saw a Facebook post from me asking if anyone lived in Oceanside/San Diego area, and she happened to be living there so we head to their place and had a blast. Great trip.
Soooo...still no firm answer.
I think if I had to choose one, it would definitely be camping in a tent.
But the occasional hotel weekend would be very welcomed. :)