Some Blog Site

I do not like camping.

Camping is pointless.

Campgrounds are annoying. I am not a social person. Why go somewhere to get away and relax when there are a bunch of people right next to you?

I take each kid somewhere individually each year. For example, this year I took Beta, just him and me, to Cedar Point for the whole day.

And I took Alpha backpacking.

People who know me were curious as to why I was rounding up camping equipment.

“A tent? I thought you hated camping…”
“I do. That’s why I’m not going camping. I’m going backpacking.”
“What’s the difference? You walk around, you go to a campsite, and you sleep in a tent.”
“No, there’s no campsite. The difference is you make your own camp, wherever you want.”

Some people still weren’t quite clear on the concept.

The key is to find a national forest or national park that allows for backpacking (or what they call “dispersed camping”). That way you can camp wherever you please. Well, almost – they don’t want you camping next to the trail or near water. But it’s great – you walk along as far as you want and then you camp there. No “we have to make it 3 more miles to the campground”. And from the time we left the parking lot to when we returned to it, we did not see or hear any other people.

If you’re going camping to enjoy nature, then backpacking is the way to go, not camping. Or “campgrounding” as some call it. That’s the way to enjoy crowds and inconvenience.

Here’s a tip for you if you are having problems with another guest at the hotel: complain to the management, not to the guest.

The story:

We were at a hotel, on the second floor, and it was bedtime. The kids were doing a lot of running around while getting ready. There may have been some jumping off the beds too. I went to grab something from the lobby and when I got back to the room a stranger was right behind me, trying to get my attention. I thought he was going to tell me I dropped something, but he told me we were being too loud.

I replied the kids were getting in bed and it would be very quiet. He was not satisfied with that answer and proceeded to tell me very sternly that we needed to keep it down, way down, because he had a 6 year old. I thought about telling him that we have a 5 year old, so we win, but I just reiterated that we would keep it down and then he left and I closed the door.

That was 9PM.

The kids walked very quietly to their beds and everything was calm probably before the guy even got back to his room.

It was a very awkward encounter, and the awkwardness continued into the next morning. Would I run into him then? What if he ended up in line next to me at the hotel’s continental breakfast? Should I ignore him? Ask how his night was?

I think they left early – must’ve had a long day of driving ahead of them or something. Or he was smiling at breakfast so I didn’t recognize him. Either way, I didn’t run into grumpy man the next day.

But all that could have been avoided. He should have called the front desk and complained. The front desk then would have called us and asked us to be quiet. The end result would have been the same, but all the confrontation and awkwardness would have been avoided. Because the front desk would not mention who was complaining, I wouldn’t have been able to look for them at breakfast.

And the complainer is lucky that I’m a calm person. What if he confronted someone who had a temper and was already having a bad day? Things could have gone badly.

Please, hotel guests, go through official channels whenever possible and do not confront other guests directly.

Normally after a business trip I give a full recap of what happened. Not the working details, but the travelling details. This time I won’t give all the details – just a few highlights.

1. Just about everyone in Germany can speak English. My American co-worker and I were stopped and asked something by random Germans who thought we were locals. When we replied “English please?”, they asked the question in English. The question had to do with the location of some establishment, so we were of no help anyway. But in general, asking for English will not phase anyone.

2. On the flight over, there was a small boy who either is, or will be, a fan of roller coasters. There were a number of dips during the descent/approach to landing. Each time, he would laugh and laugh, I’m presuming because of the way it made his tummy feel to suddenly drop. It was much better than the standard kid-who-cries-during-descent. Not that I get mad at crying kids, I’m just saying laughter is a pleasant change of pace.

3. Every restaurant has pork. Most have many varieties of pork. Very few have any chicken. This is the opposite of America. At first we were glad to see something called “Schinken” on the menu. But do you know what Schinken is? Not chicken … it’s ham.

I don’t trust booking websites not to adjust their prices based on activity and interest. So when I’m planning a trip, I never enter my actual dates until the end. During planning, I add or subtract a couple of weeks to get an idea of ballpark figures.

Only when I’m done planning and doing the final booking do I use the real dates. A little paranoid, yes, but you never know.

And if I were really paranoid, I would use a different computer to do the booking. That way the IP address and cookies would not show any history of looking for prices.

This is related to our vacation, which was recapped on this blog.

One of the problems was that, due to the fault of the hotel, we had a problem buying lunch at the amusement park.

When I was talking to the guest services representative during the problem, trying to figure out how to get lunch, one of her suggestions was that I could buy a packet of meal coupons and have it charged to my room. I thought, but did not say, that a place with good customer service would have offered me free meal coupons to make up for how they inconvenienced me.

Since they did not offer that, and I don’t know that she was high enough up to be authorized to give away anything anyway, we ended up paying full price for our lunches. Which was what we were trying to do in the first place, but good businesses try to please the customer. If the customer is not pleased, what is he to do?

So the next morning, since we got back so late the day it happened, I went to the front desk with the hopes of getting either the meal prices refunded, or coupons for a free upcoming meal, or something. When I complained to the front desk, the lady there fixed the issue, thought about it for a second, then told me to wait right there until she came back.

I thought she was going to get some authorization or something, but she came back with a gift basket. Of course, being Hershey Lodge, it was a basket full of Hershey products. Although I was hoping for a free meal, I forgot to be disappointed and couldn’t help but smile at the sight of all that chocolate.

I think that’s why they do that.

And I’m sure all that costs them less than the price of one meal, let alone the six meals that our family would have needed.

Here are the contents:

A nice variety of items, and all the large sizes. But what they don’t want you to notice is this:

Not to look a gift box in the mouth, but it looks piled high with chocolate when it’s full because the bottom of the box is about halfway up.

Still, I did enjoy the chocolate. But I don’t recommend relying on the hotel room key as your only money source when in Hershey Park.

We took a week to circle Lake Erie. We never visited Lake Erie itself, just a few interesting points.

Day 7

After breakfast in the hotel room, set out on another adventure. We could see the shuttle bus stop from our room window, and we waited until all the amusement park people had left. We were off to Hershey Gardens – the botanical gardens that are part of the Hershey complex and are thus included in the shuttle bus routes.

The boys really enjoyed it. The gardens had a number of different sections:

(more…)

We took a week to circle Lake Erie. We never visited Lake Erie itself, just a few interesting points.

Day 5

After breakfast at the hotel, we left Perry. It was a few hours – starting on some backs roads because Perry (or Castile, I couldn’t figure out which was where) is not near anything. The plan was get up, eat breakfast, and leave, Then, 4 hours later, we would arrive in Harrisburg and eat lunch and then pop over to Hershey since it is right next to Harrisburg.

Due to the lack of breakfast options, it seems that everyone ate lighter than usual, because people were hungry about halfway to Harrisburg. Or maybe it took us longer to pack up so we didn’t leave right after breakfast. I forget which.

Anyway, thanks to the magic or smartphones, my wife was able to find a restaurant that we could get to before the kids melted down. There were a variety of chains, but we chose a place we had never heard of before – Country Cupboard.

It’s in Lewisburg, and it is well worth a stop. It has a large restaurant, but it also has a candy store and gift shop and stuff. You may be picturing a Cracker Barrel. That would be inadequate. This place is more like a complex, filling an area comparable to a few Cracker barrels put together.

The kids liked it. A lot. In fact, Beta still asks if we can go to Pennsylvania, just so he can eat at the Country Cupboard again. The food was good. And it was a buffet, so the kids could get what they liked and in what portions. There was a lot of variety, and it was a decent price. Nothing bad to say.

We eventually made it to Hershey and went to the Hershey Lodge.

(more…)