Camping with Cats

 Monday afternoon, I left for the coast, with cats, to go camping.

Not really.  I didn't really go camping and take cats along.  Ha.  I took cats to dental appointments and camped out to make it easier on my old body.  But this strategy backfired.   

I had 3 long held appointments at the north coast clinic.  To make it easier on myself, I got reservations at a state park, in a yurt, so I didn't have to get up super early Tuesday morning, to be at the clinic with Tweetie by 7:30, drive home that night, and be up again at 3:30 a.m. Wednesday to head out again, with Storm and Mopsy.   

I didn't even try to get reservations, to camp in a yurt, at Fort Stevens.  Although that state park is huge and has lots of paved trails, its not for me.  The yurts are barren, without privacy and the constant traffic makes it a loud noisy place.  Fort Stevens, if not every state park now, caters to the RV and huge long trailer camping crowd.  I thought the yurts looked, in campsite photos, to be spaced farther apart, with vegetation between the sites, at Nehalem Bay.

I was wrong.  

I will preface the rest of this post by saying the yurts are fine tent replacements, if you pad the hard mattress or if a hard mattress won't bother you and if being jammed together with no barriers between campsites does not bother you.

The yurts are jammed together, the better to maximize money input I guess, and there are no wooded privacy barriers between them.  If I wanted to enjoy yelling drunk neighbors and barking dogs, I'd stay home in the city, or go join a homeless camp for a weekend.   What in the world is Oregon State Parks thinking, to build such awful crowded jammed together campgrounds and think that's what most people want.  We go camping, you idiots, to get away from drunken loud rude neighbors, constant traffic and barking dogs.

I arrived just before dark and had to chase the people in RV's with lots of excess vehicles, across from me, out of my own paid for parking space.  Wow, really.   Just like my block in town where I live, excess vehicle central.  The cul de sac resembles a parking lot.  Same with these folks campsite.   

Three or four old men then stood for hours by one of their many vehicles by the road, not very many feet from me, and stared, talking loudly, while I tried to unload.  I was fed up by the time I tried to sleep and their loudness and constant vehicles, being moved around, or just idling in the road, lights on, kept me cursing half the night.  Yup, enjoy the beauty of nature.

That's the back of one of their huge massive camping vans, taken from my yurt window, after it had sat there idling with lights on for long time.  I wanted to go out and start pounding the windows with my fists by then.  Fucking entitled a holes.

I disliked the yurt too.  On the one hand, it was kind of cute inside, but it was round, the furniture square and that made it seem really stupid.  It had a deck with a picnic table but only half the deck was roofed and the picnic table was out in the unroofed area.  You couldn't cook inside the yurt.  It had no bathroom either.  The yurt was intended as a more comfortable tent.  They are very expensive to rent and this one was pet friendly.  You pay more for those.  The cats I had with me would never leave the dog crate they were in, but I'm the rule follower.  Darn it.

 I was supposed to get key cards to allow me into the yurt, from a code protected lock box.  The lock box was already wide open, key cards available to anyone who looked.  There were two cards in it.  I had no idea what they were. Both were blank.  No instructions on how to use them.  I finally waved one of them the right way in front of some part of the door, and it opened.  The other one never worked.  Once inside, if you went outside, the door locked behind you. Forget that blank white card, and now you are locked out.

There was heat in the yurt, a small table, a bunk bed with a very hard plastic mattress, top and bottom.  I have no idea how anyone would get to the top bunk safely, let alone out of it.  The bunks were pyramid shape, so the upper one was much smaller.  There was an awful futon.    Your butt would sit way down if you tried to sit in it.  Your legs angled up but the bench seat was so wide, you couldn't get your legs to the floor, unless you scooted way forward.

The cats inside their dog crate.  You can't see them in there.  The traps along were to transfer them into to take to their appointments.  It all went smoothly, despite exhaustion and loud neighbors and traffic.  It wasn't a pleasant trip, but it worked, to get the cats their vet care.  You can see the upward angle from back to front of the futon there to right of the cage.  The dark green is its cushion seat (hard plastic). That is a very uncomfortable sitting angle, for a wide seat.  What were they thinking to put such things in there?   Must have been on sale.

The yurt had no bathroom, and I'm not getting up in the night to find the trail to the bathroom, and walk whatever distance there, through the rain.  So I take this little shower/bathroom tent with me and set up my own.  I have a bucket with seat lid, and bio bags.  I also had the firewood inside to keep it dry since it was pouring.  The tent itself, above, is right outside the yurt door, on the otherwise unusable yurt deck, since it was raining and only half the deck is roofed.  Below, is inside the tent.

 I couldn't sleep the first night due to the noise going on outside, but finally got a few hours.  The 2nd night, the hardness of the mattresses was so painful there was no sleep to be had.  You had to take your own bedding, and I didn't take enough to pad that hard mattress.  I later slept in my car during the day, yesterday, in parking lots, while Storm and Mopsy, two of the three cats I had with me, were at the vet.

Tuesday morning, I took Tweetie to the vet.  I spent the day in the area of the clinic, which is about 40 minutes north of the campground, and let Storm and Mopsy, sleep inside the yurt inside their large cat crate.  It had a shelf, for sleeping, a litter box, a bed, food and water.

Tweetie.  She's a nice cat.  She and her sister are very old now though.  I wanted her teeth checked again, because I'm not sure she could withstand anesthesia much longer, due to her age.   She didn't have any bad teeth thankfully, but got wormed, ear cleaned, and some other services.

It was better I wasn't there most of the day so they wouldn't be as nervous.

Storm is an older boy, who always looks half mad, even when he's not.  Mopsy and Storm are both from that huge Olson Lane colony left behind by the woman they depended on.  So they have been here 8 or 9 years and all the ones I took were adults then.  So their ages are judged between 9 and 12 years.

Mopsy McMuffin, who went on the coast trip with me and to the vet

There are always elk to be seen around Warrenton and Hammond.  Canon Beach visitors have put out lots of videos of elk herds on the beach, too.   Anyhow, this herd was casually eating along the road between Warrenton and Hammond.

The jetty, Area C, is still under construction.  That was, long ago, my go to beach and parking lot with restroom. I'd spend the day right there, sleeping, going out to the beach and along the dunes.  I could use the restroom, eat my lunch.   I love the beach, you could walk out to, and I loved walking the dunes trails too.  For two years now at least you can't do those things and the parking lot is mostly fenced off for the jetty construction workers.   Same old this time.   Area B has no outhouse and neither does Area A, so I went to the Ireland Beach.  I can't stay there long because there's no cell coverage and sometimes the vet tries to call if I have a cat there.  But there is a restroom there.

Anyway, Tuesday night it was quieter.  Most of the folk across from me were gone and I was happy about that.   But my exhaustion and the hardness of that plastic mattress got me and did me in.  About 3:00 a.m. someone began shooting off illegal fireworks probably on the beach.  And that was the end of my attempts to sleep.   I began packing to leave, and took Storm and Mopsy to the clinic, arriving to check them in about 7:30 a.m..  Then I  found parking lots, and slept in the car off and on the rest of the day, until 3:00, when I went to pick up the two cats. Tweetie was in the back too, along with my stuff, but mostly I'd brought stuff to care for the cats.

I was on my way home again by 3:30 p.m.  I didn't go east, on 26 to Portland and down.  I couldn't handle even the thought of dealing with more people and more cars and going through Portland was not tolerable to consider.  I was by then fed up with people.   The camping experience had been dismal and killed any thought I had of camping at Oregon state parks anymore.  It's too noisy and too crowded and too expensive.

I won't make appointments on successive days again.  I had a petsitter, who came here two or three times, not sure which.  I paid her $25 plus two large bags cat food.  I tried to pay her more, but she said she'd ask me a favor sometime.   

I drove down the coast instead, which was slow as hell, getting caught behind slow slow RV's.  Then I headed east out of Hebo on 22 and finally south on 99W.  I was so happy to be home, I hugged my cats and was delighted to see them and fell into my wonderful bed very early.

Advice to those still convinced a yurt is for them.   Yurts really will accomodate comfortably only two, for sleeping, if you usually sleep together.  If you don't like to sleep on a hard floor type mattress, bring your usual padding like you would for tent camping.  Bring a canopy.   You can't cook in the yurts and there's nowhere out of the rain otherwise to cook.  Bring your own bathroom and tiny tent for it.  The bathrooms are a trek.  Bring ear plugs.  The neighbors are way too close and often way too loud.   Pop up privacy screens would sure be nice too.