Meandering Mammoth Unmoved

The weather had not been cooperating. It was either too cold, too wet, too cold and wet, or raining.  So Mammoth waited.

The only thing we've did was check the extended forecast and sigh. But things were looking up! We bought an electric hand mixer yesterday.  Every RV needs one of those, right?  What if we were out traveling in May and visited a farmer's market and scouted out a couple pints of fresh, local strawberries?  You may think those red things in the supermarket are strawberries but you're wrong--they may look the look, but they don't taste the taste. Indeed, there's not a drop of taste in 'em.

So in the event of this arrival of strawberries, we'd need a little whipped cream. and--no offense to the stuff you shoot out of a can--what's the point of wasting metal and plastic and all that packaging when it takes less than five minutes to add sugar to a carton of cream and whip it to heaven?

So come on, summertime!

When we bought the RV they'd given us a gift of a few weeks of complimentary camping at a string of resorts plus $100 to spend at them--or so we thought. All we had to do--we thought--was book a campsite, travel there, and listen to a membership sales pitch.  I'd probably have blown it off, but they kept calling--which is a bad sign, of course--and we decided to give it a try.

But it turned out, we couldn't book a site until after we listened to the pitch. I figured it would probably be a slide show, or a video, after which someone would explain the various packages, sign us up for our complimentary camping, and give us a gift card to spend while there. It was supposed to take about 90 minutes. So yesterday, in the rain, we drove over.

It was awful. Simply awful. The first thing they did was write a hundred-dollar check out, then set it on a table in front of us, enticingly. Then we were set down with a tedious salesman who kept repeating the phrase "when you become a member"...  After dragging out a few bits of information from us--what we liked and didn't like--he started drawing little pictures and circles and arrows on paper with various colored markers showing us all the benefits we could get from their package (not packages), provided we signed on today.

Plus he make up a bunch of fake numbers about how much camping in state parks was going to cost us, how trashy and crowded they were, and how they allowed the "general public" in.  If we hadn't just had two delightful experiences in Texas state parks, plus a lifetime of camping in public places, we might have been stupid enough to believe him.

My eyes glazed over after an hour and I quit asking questions--no point in dragging it out. I snuck my phone out of my purse and put it where I could glance at the clock without being obvious. After two hours, I started getting visibly restless. When he gradually wound down, another guy took us on a quick drive around the park--in the rain--and we came back to deal.  It was approaching three hours by then, and when he quoted the price--somewhere in the neighborhood of $11,000--I almost laughed out loud. And when he mentioned financing, I cut him right off. I hope I wasn't too rude about ti.

I honestly didn't imagine that that sort of sales practice still existed, and I pity the person who'd get sucked in by it. Maybe the crappy "resort" is okay for someone, somewhere. But me--

I wish I had my three hours back.