Crazy day!

Well, I knew from the time I planned it that packing up my site, going to the Vineyard, then moving to a new site all in a day was going to make for a crazy day. And to put it simply, I was right!

I woke up a few minutes before 8...which is pretty late for me these days. (I’ve given up on alarm clocks all together for right now…it’s hard to sleep in in a tent). 8 was a late start though…as I’d planned on checking out at 8 when the office opened. I figured I’d be too late to make the 9:30 ferry, but that I’d have plenty of time to make the 10:45 one. I got packed up as quickly as possible, loaded my car and drove down to the bagel place for breakfast again. Apparently I hit the post-church rush, or just the general Sunday morning late breakfast time rush, but it was INSANE in there! I figured it’d take just as long to find somewhere else though so I got in line and got some food. But by the time I finished eating and drove down to the parking lot by the bike trail, it was already 10:40 and I had about 4 miles to ride to get to the boat. So clearly 10:45 was not happening. The next ferry wasn’t ‘till noon, which in the end was good because it gave me time to call about camp sites for tonight. Finding a camp site for the night before labor day turned out to be more difficult than I’d expected. But I found one that wasn’t too terribly overpriced. More on that later.

So I finally made it on the ferry at noon. Taking my bike was nice because I got to go through the auto line and skip the ridiculously long, cattle-like passenger line that had already formed more than 20 minutes before the boat left. I beat most everyone else on and got my choice of spots on a very crowded ship. I sat outside and didn’t get sea sick at all until I was getting off. When I went down to the lower part to get my bike I could only see outside through a small open square at the end. Seeing the land lurching up and down as the boat moved brought me surprisingly close to puking. Then, when I decided to ride off the boat rather than walk as was recommended, the boat rocked and I nearly fell over into a crowd of people! (I hadn’t meant to put my toe clips on but I guess I just did out of habit).

I have just one word to describe Martha’s Vineyard. Cluster. I could add other words but they would be less nice. It wasn’t that bad, but there were just soooooo many people there! The crowds were unavoidable. But I got to do some shopping and had a really good sandwich for lunch once my stomach recovered. I had planned to bike to the other town on the island and take the 5:00 ferry from there, but I couldn’t get a straight answer from anyone or any map about what was bike trail and what was scary narrow road riding. It was very strange…everyone had a different answer, and all the maps were different. I got frustrated trying to figure it out though and was honestly a bit tired of biking, so I decided to take the 3:45 ferry back from where I was. I got back to my car right at 5 and was so glad to be there instead of just getting on the ferry. Turns out to be a really good thing too because I got lost many, many times along my drive and had to do a lot of backtracking. I thought Plymouth was a very small area by the coast but apparently the town of Plymouth covers a HUGE area even though there aren’t many people here. So even though this camp site is in Plymouth, it is close to nothing at all. The road actually turned to dirt and back to paved again, with all sorts of twists and turns and craziness. Just what I needed as a cap to my already crazy day.

The nice thing is…once I finally made it here everything just feels right with the world again. I have an adorable little site with a view of a little pond. It was dusk when I came in and the light was just perfect (though my camera was dead…doh!). Camping in general just makes me so happy. It’s always relaxing to be outdoors…especially lately when the weather’s been so nice. And I love my tent too…it’s becoming my little bedroom that goes with me everywhere. It just happens to be movie night at the camp site, so now I’m watching Coraline, a perfectly crazy movie to end a perfectly crazy day. It all seems like one big long drug trip! Alice in Wonderland for the next generation?