| 777 | Summer Stories Up the Creek Without a Chair |
2013-03-01 |
On our summer trip to Utah, we spent a few days in Moab. For years Amy (wife) had visited Moab and always stayed at Up the Creek Campground. The small campground is located in a residential area, near the heart of town. It is a tent only campground and all of the sites are walk-in. They provide carts for moving gear from your vehicle to the site. It was my first visit to the campground, but I thought it was about as good as it gets.
We were in Moab in the middle of June and the Campground Manger/Owner said she had not had a day off since the Campground opened for the season in the Spring. Over the weekend that we were there, she took her first days off and a substitute host filled in.
The host was a young woman that had moved to Moab to pursue her outdoor recreation dreams.
We first met her as she was making her rounds through the campground. It was obvious that she was looking at our camp. She then came over to talk to us.
She started the conversation with 'I just love your ...'
Amy and I both started thinking of what she might love of our camping gear. We had a new MSR Zing Tarp that was very special and unusual. To cool our drinks we used a Yeti Cooler, the Cadillac of Coolers for sure. It was sunny (as usual in Moab) and we had a couple of solar arrays out trying to catch some rays and convert them to energy. Our tent was the classic Bibler Eldorado. We had a unique sand mat to help define our living space under the tarp. We used a Western Mountaineering quilt like sleeping bag and had extremely comfortable Thermarest Dreamtime mats. And lastly we had iPads sitting out under the tarp. Just what did she see that she really loved???
Well, it was none of the above. Instead it was our REI Stowaway Chairs. Her boyfriend worked as a river guide. They camped often, but they did not use chairs. She wanted a chair and wanted to know more about ours.
The chairs are REI Stowaways. We chose them because they did not weigh as much nor take up as much space when packed as regular sized chairs. We like the chairs too, but Amy's chair had cinder holes in the seat from her playing with fires, and my chair was only usable because I had sewn it back together on several occasions. Oh, REI might exchange my chair, but it is so torn and ratty, that I would be ashamed to try and return it.
We just laughed and told her about the chairs and why we liked them. So many people go through life not knowing whatit takes to make them happy. Our host knew just what would make her happy, it was a chair. We hope she got one!
Oh, later we found out that her boyfriend also made tent stakes to use while camping on the rivers' sandy beaches. We visited him at the shop and bought a stake. It was huge. We used it at almost every camp to help secure our large Zing Tarp. The large stake could also be used as a prop for a horror movie. The good guys would wield the large stake and the vampires would go a runnin'.
Happy 'I just love your chair' trails
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