CAMPING
Life is fun.
Personally for me, camping makes life even more fun. Just the thought of braving the wild, making your own food, sleeping under the stars (in the freezing cold), showers (?), and resembles-a-tree toilette. What could be better? Well probably a lot of things…but that’s not the point.
Growing up in the States, we who camp are spoiled. Camp sites come with water on site, hot showers, regular toilettes, electricity, one set price, and possibly a TV if you brought your satellite.
Then you move to Europe…
Recently I went camping with about 8 buddies of mine. Being in France we decided to check out Les Gorges du Verdon, the Grand Canyon of Europe. Situated in the south of France, in between Marseilles and Nice, Les Gorges sont tres joli, er are incredibly breath-taking. But the campgrounds are another story…
After driving for 6 hours to Les Gorges (Map Quest said it would take 4 hours…), incredibly fed up with the French national “road” system, I was expecting to arrive at a nice “state” park with park rangers in Khaki ready to bathe my feet.
Oh, was I in for a surprise. In French, ‘camping ground’ basically means “open field with or without, depending on how nice we are, maybe a bathroom.” After passing several campgrounds that fit that description, my first reaction of laughter soon died on my lips. Even though, I still wanted to laugh as we pulled up to our campground. The sign read, “Camping a la Ferme”, or “Camping at the Farm” (rabbit trail -- for how much the French hate English words being used as every-day words they have failed to translate ‘camping’). Haha. In the distance I could see a shepherd with his flock of 4 sheep…
The “farmer” I guess, came out and a little too eagerly offered us a site. Considering we were the only ones there, I could see why. But because we didn’t feel like sitting another hour in our cars, we accepted.
Then we took a look around at our surroundings.
The field was situated on the side of a small hill. The campground took up the bottom half of the hillside. In the middle of the campground, much to our relief, was a bathroom (ok, so we live in France but we haven’t gotten the everything-can-be-used-as-a-bathroom mentality quite yet!). Of course, it was still European -- Uni-sex, Turkish toilettes (also known as squatty-potties), actually very hot showers, and a huge painting of a rock-climbing mermaid on one side of it.
Our site was on the higher side of the campground. It was probably the nicest site in the place, considering you got a nice view of the whole campground and the surrounding scenery from it…including the mermaid…
After convincing ourselves that it wasn’t all that bad, (and it really turned out to be an awesome campground) we began to unload the cars and set up camp. Our tents, a big 6 person and small 2 person, were up in about 10 minutes. Next, we threw our sleeping bags and bag-packs into the tent and then piled back into the cars. Our destination?
Les Gorges du Verdon.
Les Gorges were about a 10-15 minute drive from our campground. L personally have never seen the Grand Canyon, so I can’t testify as to how this compares to it, but it was the most beautiful site I have ever seen. Just the beauty of the rock, shrubbery and blue sky combined together was just amazing! The thing that I enjoyed the most or was most beautiful in my eyes, was the water. The river that crept through the bottom of the canyon had this beautiful Caribbean blue/aqua green tint to it. It looked so inviting!! Yet once in it, one could only stay for about 5 minutes or less it was so cold! I took a lot of pictures instead…
Next, we took a short walk to a look-out point at the top of the canyon. From it we could see about a half-mile of the canyon before it turned the corner. After the look-out, we took a short walk along the edge of the canyon. For me it was very sensational to stand on the edge of a canyon and look several hundred feet down at the river, slowly creeping on.
At about 6 o’clock we headed back to the campsite. As there was no electricity, thus no light, we had to start thinking about eating while we could still see what was going into our mouths. Not only that, but as the sun started its decent, it started to get colder and colder – colder than I thought it could get in May. Thus most of us wanted to wolf down some good camp cookin’ and then either hit the sack or spend some time practically sitting on the fire to avoid the cold…
Out of all the camp cooking I have had, the meal we had that night was exceptional…scrupulous as I like to put it.
What was the meal?!?!
HOBO STEW
Yea, so you have probably heard of it, but I am telling you, if I lived back in the day, I would have been a hobo because these guys ate good!
Basically you take several sheets of aluminum foil and lay them out, one on top of each other. Next you put all your favorite veggies, chopped finely, several hamburger patties, your fav spices and some butter onto the foil. Afterwards, wrap it up nicely – making sure there are no holes or openings. Finally, place it on the coals for about 30 minutes.
And afterwards, woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooowwww!!!
The hamburger patties have soaked up all the veggies juices and spices and vice versa with the veggies and hamburger juices. Hot, tasty and plenty of it --- couldn’t get better. Truly, truly amazing!
After spending about 3 hours around the campfire telling crazy guy stories, those that I won’t go into detail here, we crashed into our tents. Oh, it was so cold and uncomfortable! I had 2 sleeping bags, a good pad, my long-johns, and several long-sleeved shirts and yet I was still cold and uncomfortable. Never the less I still got some good sleep, considering the long ride earlier that day.
THE HIKE
The next morning we got up (yes seriously, I know it amazing, we actually got up…), ate some breakfast, several of us fried ourselves in the shower (but oh so refreshing!!), packed a lunch, and jumped back into the cars. It took us about 15 minutes to get to the top of the trail head we had picked out. It was about 11 o’clock…7 hours later, 6 o’clock precisely, we were at the end of the trail. I have never hiked a longer yet more beautiful trail in my life!! It totally changed my perspective of hiking! I am love with it now…
From walking through California-like forests, to Amazon rain jungles, to beside the Caribbean blue river, to being at the top of the canyon looking down, to mile-long tunnels and limestone gravel trails, this hike had it all!! I absolutely loved it. Of course afterwards, we were so tired that we about fell asleep before we got back to our cars…
Rabbit trail--- that night we had ravioli from the can, heated up over the fire. Yea, a big step backwards from Hobo Stew. Needless to say I had to visit the squatty-potties that night as well. I won though…and I also wore more clothes and grabbed an extra pad which made the night absolutely 100% better!
The next day we grabbed some breakfast, packed a lunch, basked in the showers, and took down camp. And here is another funny thing about French campgrounds---we go to pay, expecting the guy to say, you know, “well it is 20 euros a night to stay here.” Instead he goes, “uh, you will need to pay the following—4 euros a car, 5 euros a tent, 4 euros a person, and 5 euros a night.” So after 30 minutes of rounding up and rounding down and consulting the calculator we came up with the price. Just one of those things that the French are notorious for – “why make it easy when you can make it difficult?”
After that we crammed into the cars. We hadn’t done any shopping or picked up any new stuff yet all of our stuff seemed to have multiplied somehow. We were headed to Les Gorges encore. We were going to attempt another hike. This one was about 5 hours long and in the opposite direction that we had gone the day before. The first hour was spent getting to the bottom of the canyon where the 2 trails split. Here we ate lunch and then 3 of us continued on, me included. This trail had a narrower trail, with nothing between you and 100 feet to death. Thus it was by far more exciting and just as beautiful (God having blessed us with 3 days of perfect weather)! We had to cross the river twice, usually I am fine with that, but this was a little hairy. Brian, the guy who got this trip together and also scouted out the trails, said that this passage across several rocks to the other side was a piece of cake. We, me and Seb, only realized too late that Brian is a rock climbing pro and thus everything is a piece of cake. But, thankfully, we kept ourselves out the cold, fast, very blue river, though not before asking Brian what he had been thinking! J Halfway through the hike we happened across a cave and were crazy enough to go spelunking. It was a very interesting cave, always going up at a steady incline and very, very muddy. Once we got to the top or were it was to hard to continue we turned around, only to realize that because of the mud we would be sliding down and out if we weren’t very careful. Anyways somewhat muddy we emerged from the cave. There were 2 other hikers that happened to pass by as we popped out, but they passed by as if seeing 3 American guys, speaking English very loudly and somewhat muddy, emerge from a cave was a normal, daily occurrence.
Sadly, unlike the day before’s hike, we had to go back the way we came to get to the cars and our 6 buddies. So at about 5 o’clock we were at the bottom the canyon looking up at the last 30 minute lap of the hike, all uphill with the afternoon sun blazing down on us…and very little water. No joke, and don’t call me a girl, I about fainted several times. But at the top it was all worth it. I was very tired, but very proud of myself.
The torture, that I about didn’t survive, was the 6+ hour ride back that night. I was hungry, tired, sore, and very frustrated again with the lack of direction or creativity of the French road “system”. However, we made up for it by pulling into the KFC in Grenoble at about 10 o’clock. Yes we are True Americans…
Enjoy today because Life is fun.
