Nature? No thanks!

 

This week's Spin Cycle, brought to you by Gretchen at Second Blooming is on The Great Outdoors.  Excellent 80s movie, by the way.   But I'm not sure that's what she intended :-)

 

 

Now I don't think it's a secret, as I have never really hidden the fact that 1) I'm not a camping/outdoorsy kind of girl and 2) I'm not really an animal person either.  I've had friends of mine be like "do you like kicking puppies, too?  No, but I don't fawn all over animals when I see them.  I'm more like "yeah, cute dog" and then move on.

 

 

My idea of roughing it is staying at a Holiday Inn Express or Best Western.  The way I like to see nature is at the zoo when things are contained.  I'm sorry, but...that's just me.  On most of my attorney trips I stay at pretty nice hotels.  T, on the other hand, on his work trips stays at ones where their trucks can stay.  On his most recent trip, they were out late and he was starving...I said "why don't you order room service?"  Um, yeah, he was at a Best Western.  He cracked up.  I guess I'm a little spoiled.

 

 

Now, I have my reasons for not liking the outdoors.  As a kid, my family went camping weekly.  My parents bought us a pop-up camper, and we traveled to many of the state and national parks in the south while we lived in Alabama.  And I'm not saying they weren't fun trips.  They were, and I got to see a ton of really cool stuff. But man, the hiking.  The hiking blew so much.  My dad is the kind of guy who will start on one trail and go to another and then another.  Four hours later we'd be done.  And I swear, every trail ended with one of those huge flight of stairs to get to the parking lot.  An asthmatic like me hates that.  We also regularly stayed at Stone Mountain in Georgia.  It's a huge stone mountain.  They have trams that ride up there, but no...we hiked up the damn thing.  Did I mention it was a stone mountain? 

 

 

My least favorite part of it was the bathroom situation.  I hated having to haul our stuff to a public restroom and use those disgusting showers.  Bugs everywhere, and they were so dirty.  I was absolutely traumatized when I was a little girl by this one experience.  We stayed at Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky.  The bathrooms there were awful.  Those huge daddy-long legs spiders were everywhere.  It was like a scene out of Arachnophobia.  My sister and I freaked out.  We'd try to use the toilet and they'd start crawling up our legs.  I'm not exaggerating either.  I'm still scared to death of those things.  I know this probably isn't healthy, but I'm pretty sure I didn't pee for the rest of that trip. 

 

 

Now this isn't to say I'm going to raise my daughter to be some sort of prissy girl.  If she wants to go camping with friends (and their families, obviously, because it sure as hell won't be me) or join Girl Scouts, that's fine...just as long as she doesn't expect me to be a Troop Leader.  I'll gladly take her to all the zoos she wants.  But camping?  Um.  No. 

 

 

So that's my "Nain take" on the Great Outdoors.  They're fun for some but not for me, man.  Give me the comfy beds, TV and room service, and I'm so there.  I'll stick to watching the guys on Duck Dynasty to get my fill, thank you very much.

 

Stop by Gretchen's and see what others have to say!  There may be some outdoors people there!