Tonight is day 1 of my yearly camping trip with my family. We've gone almost every year since I was born, with the exception of 2 years when we were overseas, and last year just after dad's heart attack. We always camp at the same place, DeBretts, and have the same campsites. We've seen DeBretts through 3 change of ownerships, but it always retains it's usual vibe for the Christmas/New Year period. Every year, there are familiar faces, and some new ones too. The best thing is there's a real family vibe here, and everyone is, on the most part, very friendly and well behaved.
This time, we're here for 8 nights. It's a great amount of time because it makes sense to put up a big tent for that amount of time, but also it's not so long that you run out of things to do. We arrived today, and have put up 2 tents - a double dome for Marcus and I, then the big 3 room tent for mum, dad and Daniel (my bro). The big tent is where we live, it has the kitchen, sun room and stuff, and most importantly, is where we keep the food. We've set up the tents so we have a big outdoor area in between, and have a shelter for privacy and a great lake view. There's also a couple of big trees so we don't burn to a crisp.
Usually when we're camping, we spent the morning at the tent, then go out exploring in the afternoon. This year, the plan is to spend lots of time at the lake, and I also want to whip up to Auckland to do some shopping, and the Coromandel to the beaches up there. I haven't been surfing in ages, so I might see how I go surfing with a gammy shoulder. I also have to make an effort to go running in the morning before it gets too hot - today it was 25C, and there's no way I'd survive running in that. Tonight at 9.30pm, it was still 19C, still too hot to run really, and the path up to DeBretts isn't well lit, I don't think I'd be happy running in the dark here.
So anyway, tonight I wanted to go to the all you can eat Pizza Hut for dinner. It's stupid, I always expect to be disappointed because it's always crap, but I still want to go. Tonight, Pizza Hut followed though with consistency; I was disappointed. We arrived and there were no pizzas in the warmers, but about 5 full tables. The girl at the counter said it was going to be about a 25 minute wait for pizzas, and we decided to wait because anything else would take that long anyway. We grabbed a plate of fries from the buffet, and we noticed there was no salad bar. That really annoyed (maybe irrationally so) me because I love the thousand island dressing, and no salad bar means no thousand island dressing. Daniel and I had dessert while we were waiting for more pizzas. While we were waiting for pizzas, 3 families walked out, and 2 of them asked for refunds. I was pretty pissed off that we had paid for salad and stuff and didn't have any, even though, in fairness, I wouldn't have eaten it anyway.
Finally, pizzas started coming, and by the time we left, there were about 10 pizzas out. And no one left in the restaurant. No wonder Pizza Hut dine-in's aren't profitable; they can't keep customers in the store, and can't get their food levels right. The one waitress was totally and utterly useless, and tables hadn't been cleared. We had to specifically ask to order drinks, and they took ages to arrive. Once we had finished our drinks, she never came back and took more orders or anything, it was really annoying. Service is so easy to get right, it really pisses me off when people don't give good service. It was almost like this woman went out of her way to make our experience bad - I don't think for a second that she actually did, I just think that she's poorly trained and doesn't care about her job or customers for one second. Either way - I'm pissed off and won't be going back.
After dinner, we went down to hot water beach in search of warm feet. There were lots of ducks and swans there. I am terrified of swans. Totally, irrationally terrified. They make me cry. Luckily, there weren't any swans around hot water beach, just lots and lots of ducks. There were some baby ducks that I wanted to pat, but mother duck was not impressed with my efforts and attacked me. Luckily, they don't have teeth!
The lake level is really high at the moment, so there wasn't a hell of a lot of beach. My brother discovered that about 5 metres out, there was lots of lovely warm sand, and I ventured out. I was totally unprepared to go swimming (unlike my brother who thought ahead and put on togs!) so I stripped off to go for a swim. Just as well it was quite dark by this point, and I thought ahead enough to dring a towel. I cut my arm and foot on the sharp rocks, which sucked. Hopefully it heals up pretty quick, I think feet usually do, don't they?
Anyway, that was my first day of camping. Sorry this is so long!
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