Vanlife Reality Check: Expectations and Bath Houses
I need to lower my expectations…
After our adventures in the Great Smoky Mountains, we drove to our campground in Asheville with the thought that we would make it a retreat of sorts: N. needed to take care of some business, and I needed to begin organizing my writing and familiarizing myself with the website-building program. (The learning curve in the technology department for this van adventure has been steep!)
The campground had come highly rated, with sterling reviews and boasts of, “All sites are mountain top camping!” Well, technically, yes. But I really need to temper my expectations when reading claims made in marketing material. (I know, shocking: claims online may not be true!) The first row of sites was called “Premium,” with concrete pads for the RVs and unobstructed views of the valley below and the mountains farther out in the horizon. Every evening campers congregated in this front row to watch the sunset.
The second row was called “Deluxe,” with gravel pads and unobstructed views of the HUGE Class A RVs in the “Premium” sites — most as long as Greyhound buses and with at least 4-5 slideouts. Although I would have preferred truth-in-advertising — perhaps classify these sites as “Great” and “OK” — I was content with ours; we had come to get some work done after all.
The thing that really messed up with my head was the state of the bath house.
I get it: all the people in the fancy sites probably have at least 2 bathrooms in their rigs, so they won’t be using the campground’s bathrooms. But we’re on a 20-foot Class B. Our bathroom is currently having an identity crisis and functioning as a closet/storage area, filled with books, toiletries, blanket, pillows, tissue boxes, a spare bike tire. For the record, N. is not happy about the closet/storage situation and would much rather allow the space to be what it was destined to be. But I digress…
I’m not asking for the campground’s bathrooms to rival those at the Ritz. But I do expect that a campground’s bathrooms will not give bathrooms in busy interstate intersections — the ones where you have to ask for a heavy key from an unsmiling attendant who’s sitting behind bullet-proof glass — a run for their money. In our five days here, I saw someone cleaning the bathrooms once! Once!
In protest, for the whole time we were in this campground, I just focused on work: I wrote blogposts, organized photos, planned our schedule. Well, it is what I meant to do here anyway, but I did it while sending resentful vibes in the direction of the camp office.
I shall sleep well tonight, knowing that tomorrow morning, we will pack up the van and leave this “Deluxe”-ness.
If you’ve read up to this point, thank you for letting me vent!