Camping

Here I sit on my nice fat Big Agnes air mattress, while April is laying on her super thin/lite Thermarest; she’s complaining my mattress is too comfortable. But when I bought it I told her she should get one, but no, she didn’t want one. Now she wants mine, and she’s not getting it! Ha-ha

We’re camping tonite. We almost sent the camping gear home yesterday but decided to keep it to try camping at least once. And we couldn’t find a good hotel/room so it’s good we have it.

We woke up at the nice hotel outside of Carnac, standard French bfast of croissant, baguette, yogurt, tea; missing the big full English bfast. We decided to explore the Quiberon peninsula. Its juts south of the mainland about 20 Kms, it’s quite narrow across for much of the way, maybe 100 meters to 1KM, down at the south end it expands to about 3KM wide.

At the first town we saw a great old hotel which was getting a wonderful sea breeze but they were full. April almost cried she liked it so much. It was then we decided to camp. We checked out the local camping site. It’s huge, more than 500+ sites. It clearly a zoo, kids on bikes everywhere, radios/Tvs blaring, dogs barking, lots of big groups in campers, maybe 2000+ people here. We pass this guy in his tiny black bikini, smoking a butt, shaving with his radio blaring, and we say we can’t stay here. We tour around much of the place, can’t find anything acceptable, then right back before the entrance we find an ok site backed by some trees. So April holds it while I go pay, when I get back she’s got this alarmed look on her face, and the shaving guy was in the tent next to us. His radio is blasting as I write; 9:30 at night. No idea when he’ll be going to bed (us either). Plus he’s got two little puppies that are growling/squealing at each other.

After we setup our tent we headed down the west coast thru some towns looking for lunch. Came upon a local mussel fest in the little harbor town of Portivy. I got the mussels and fries, April got a sausage sandwich, and we had a beer. Really nice local color.

Then we toured down the “sauvage coast”. Nice cliffs/rock. Looks like the area around Carmel, and Big Sur (but no trees here). As usual a strong wind from the west.

We hit a few more towns the headed back north to our camping site to enjoy the beaches. We sat at the west coast beach, gorgeous beach, it was low tide, we counted over 30 kite surfers going at the same time. And they had the wind-carts, sails on little dune buggie carts. April wanted to try one until she saw them go on two wheels and sometimes tip. They love their water activities here.

After a few hours chilling we headed back to our camp site, picked up a rotisserie chicken and potatoes (which are cooked in oil/fat right under the dripping chickens; also a baguette which was kind of like our napkin and a beer. Then we went to the eastside beach which was calmer, away from the wind. Man, what’s better than hot chicken, potatoes and bread to mop up everything.?!

Then we showered, setup our bags/pads, walked around the monstrous camping site. They even had a little restaurant area, beers, pizzas, ice cream, sandwiches, baked goods, etc. This is real salt-of-the-earth French middle class types. We fit right in! J

We planned our route for tomorrow (or should I say our “controlled wandering while being semi-lost“). The we hit the kindels to read before sleep. Who knows when that will come.

My sleeping pad is really really nice.