What could possibly go wrong? Thankfully, there was only one incident that earns honorable mention for this trip. And as it turns out, it's another story of Chloe and I in the bathroom. Chloe and me and bathrooms don't go together very well. Especially when one of these is involved:
Unfortunately for us, these little harmless Daddy Long Legs were all over the place. So were 35 species of snakes, 3 of which were venomous - but we won't even get into that right now. For whatever reason, these spiders really liked the women's restroom. This was the cleanest, neatest camping facility I've ever been in - minus the spiders. But thank God these were only Daddy Long legs....the last camping excursion had tarantulas in the bathroom (which Chloe couldn't see). So...there we are brushing our teeth and washing our faces before bed. Chloe is done and standing exactly in the middle of the room where nothing can get her while she waits for me to wash my face. I'm in the middle of lathering my face when all of the sudden I hear her let out a blood curling scream. I don't want to get soap in my eyes so I feel around quickly for my face cloth. The screaming and crying only intensify. Once I'm able to open my eyes and look at her she is pointing at me and looking as if dracula was behind me ready to pounce.
I ask her in the calmest voice I can muster, "What's wrong, Sweetie?" Unfortunately, she's way to freaked out to talk and just keeps pointing, screaming, crying, and backing away from me. I then gather that possibly something is on my sweatshirt. I look in the mirror, but can't see anything. The more I step towards Chloe to calm her, the louder she screams and stops with hands up to her face covering it like she can't dare watch what's about to happen to me.
Without trying to appear panicky myself, I rip off my sweatshirt in record speed and throw it to the floor (a little too close to Chloe). Now she feels that whatever was on my sweatshirt is now about to attack her and she ups the screaming decibel a few more notches. She's frozen in fear. At this point, I'm wondering why Chuck hasn't rushed in yet to save the day.
I finally muster enough courage to rub my foot all over the sweatshirt and find our little bathroom friend crawling around on the back of it. I just nudge him out of the way a bit and pull Chloe close to assure her that she and I are both safe now. She is sobbing uncontrollably. I finally am able to deduce that she saw the spider fall from the wall right beside me onto my back and then proceed to explore my hat, hair and back.
Truth be told, if it was anything other than a Daddy Long Legs I would have reacted the exact same way as Chloe. I would have been flinging my sweatshirt all around, whipping off my hat and shaking my body like a madman to get the unknown intruder off me. But under the circumstances, I wasn't allowed to act like that in front of Chloe - or she never would agree to go camping again. I had to pretend not to be freaked out - even though I had a huge case of the hebee-jebees.
Us girly-girls have to stick together. Camping is not for the faint of heart - nor is it for princesses.
