Life in the Public Eye

As evening at the RV Park and Campground in Valdez, Alaska was closing in, I was sitting at the picnic table at our campsite while Barbara was switching the van from day mode to sleep mode (a process that takes 5-10 minutes). I looked up to find an older gentleman standing before me.

“I’m a dentist,” he said “and I want to tell you that I am impressed as hell!” I looked up at him with what I am sure was an expression of profound confusion. He pointed at my hand. I glanced over and saw a limp piece of dental floss that I had just used still wrapped around my right index finger. “Terrific oral hygiene!” he exclaimed before strolling back to his truck camper in the adjacent site.

On another occasion, while we were camped in a very crowded campground outside Denali National Park, a woman from the neighboring site wandered over to see what we were cooking for dinner. “That smells delicious!” she said peering into the skillet of onions, peppers, and mushrooms that I was sautéing for pasta sauce. She proceeded to explain that she was a nutritionist and expounded at some length on her and her husband’s dietary practices on the road providing somewhat more details of the digestive effects of said diet than I truly required. Then she invited herself to take have a tour of our matchbox-sized camper while her husband confided in me that the reason that they had had to rent the full-sized RV they were driving is that his wife was claustrophobic in the teardrop camper he had previously purchased. 

Welcome to life lived in full view. Life in the public eye is not just for politicians and the famous. When you are camping and living out of a vehicle virtually everything you do except perhaps using the toilet is open to public inspection.

Speaking of the toilet, the beginning of this week found us in a beautiful campground in the Canadian Rocky Mountain National Park. I have gotten quite used to sharing washroom facilities with my fellow campers. It is normal for showers to be in short supply, particularly at the most popular shower times (morning and early evening). Usually there are only 2-3 showers for each 5 or 6 toilets, because, to be honest, getting a shower can be important but it is rarely urgent.

For some reason, however, the men’s washroom (and women’s too, I was told) at this particular campground near Jasper, Alberta has just one toilet and 7 showers! The effect of this was that a queue formed every morning for the single commode. I saw this line get as long as five-deep in the morning with each of the waiting silently praying that the person currently taking his turn required just a “brief call.” Yes, the cubicle did provide a modicum of privacy, but those just outside the thin metal walls took a profound interest in the goings on inside notwithstanding. When it was finally my turn up at bat, I could not help but feel a little self-conscious when contemplating the discomfort of those still waiting on the bench. Performance anxiety at its worst!

I never had to wait for a shower though!

One of the things that many campers share most generously with each other is the gift of sound. If you do not camp, you may think of a campground as a place where the sounds of nature predominate and human voices are kept to a whisper. I am sorry to disabuse you of this idyllic notion. Loud music, yelling, boisterous (i.e. drunken) laughter, and snoring are among  the least offensive audibles our neighbors produce. Gasoline powered generators are among the most offensive.

Oddly, generators are often not permitted in private campgrounds but they usually are in government run ones. Imagine someone running a very loud lawn mower right next to your deck while you are trying to relax with family and friends. That will give you a sense of how disruptive they are.  Sometimes there are restricted hours when generators can be used but often not. One campground in British Columbia simply suggested that generator use be ‘limited.’ What limits our neighbors there were planning to adhere to, we never found out. At 10 pm, we packed up and move to another site in a different section of the campground where we couldn’t hear it. I am guessing they ran the thing all night.

Generally, we’ve figured out if a neighbor starts up a generator the best thing is just to grab your stuff and move to a new spot. They will run it as long as they are allowed or even beyond. Last week a dude was running his two hours after quiet hours began. Finally, a complaint to the authorities shut it down (only because we were in Canada where citizens respect authority).

For whatever reason, I have very bad campground karma. If there is but one camper in the campground playing loud music or running a generator, he will invariably be in the spot right next to mine.  Sometimes I am camped next to someone who runs their truck for several hours for no discernable reason! Maybe they just enjoy buying fuel.

In Hardin, Montana one night we camped next to a guy taking a motorcycle journey on his gleaming orange Harley-Davidson. Nothing wrong with that, I was a rider myself in a previous life. However, in addition to playing very loudly a radio station whose format would be best described as “Worst music of the 70s” (think Captain and Tennille and Firefall), every 10 minutes or so he would walk over to his bike and kick over the engine. Then he would rev the accelerator for 2-3 minutes and before shutting it off again. The pipes were among the loudest I have ever heard.  I wanted to ask him if he was afraid that the bike wouldn’t start up again if he let the engine cool down and suggest that he get a more reliable motorbike like a Honda, but I suspected he wouldn’t receive my counsel with the goodwill that was intended. He finally quit the engine revving at about 10:30 pm. When we left the next morning, he was still sleeping so unfortunately, I never got to see if a Harley is able to turnover with a cold engine.

As if the inquisitive eyes and intrusions to the ears from one’s fellow campers weren’t enough, many campgrounds have signs informing you that cameras are recording your every move. Others have bright lights that keep the premises lit up like day all night long making sleeping in a tent nearly impossible.

So why camp at all? Well, for one thing it costs perhaps a quarter of what a bottom end motel would run. We simply could not afford to travel for this length of time if we were not camping. But that aside, every once in a while, you end up at that perfect place that is quiet and dark on a night where the stars fill the heavens and the air is just cold enough to keep the mosquitos wherever it is mosquitos go when it is cold.

Such a place is the nearly perfect Two Jacks Campground near Banff, Alberta where we are ensconced for our last two nights in Canada. Midweek and at the tail end of the season we have this heavily wooded and spacious park largely to ourselves. Human noise has been at a minimum, just the occasionally car or truck going by on the service road.  

Sadly, it’s only nearly perfect. On the first night we still had to put up our blackout curtains before sleeping because the washroom which is about 100 meters away was lit up with bright lights that stay on all night long. On the second night a party arrived just as we were ready to turn in and spent 45 minutes trying to shimmy the backside of their large RV into the site next to ours. All the while the diesel engine of their truck protested with noisy groans and belches of burning oil. At least they didn’t have a generator.

On the plus side, with so few campers in this park there is rarely a wait for a toilet.

Neither is there ever a wait for a shower here.

There are none.