A Night in Ashuelitz

If you're planning on doing any camping anytime soon, be sure to avoid the Ashuelot River "Campground," L.L.C. (for reasons soon to become obvious) in New Hampshire. Raegan and I were taken in by the mellifluous name (pronounced Ashweelot) and by the website. It's an impressive website. I don't remember seeing a covered bridge anywhere, though I do recall seeing a considerable number of broken-down automobiles in the surrounding neighborhood. The website reads: "The campground offers a new bathhouse, with laundry facilities and FREE hot showers." The washer & drier were out of order, and I can only assume that by FREE hot showers, they meant FREE cold showers, which is what they were.

If you take a look at the actual shower stall, you'll see why we called the place "Ashuelitz." Suffice it to say, it was worse than the one in Crespo's apartment. That spigot knob in the middle is the kind you have above your garden hose. It had two settings: on and off. The showerhead itself was of the deadly watersaving variety that hurls tiny needles of aerated water at you at somewhere around the speed of light. At least I assumed it was the speed of light, because, in accordance with Einstein's theory, time slowed to a near-stop. When I finally rinsed off, I noticed I was turning blue. Convinced I had contracted either a rare skin condition from accidentally making contact with the walls, or had simply become hypothermic from being jabbed with microscopic icicles for what felt like the last millennia, I tried to turn off the water, only to find the metal knob impossible to move with even marginally soapy hands. Desperate for an alternative escape method, I panicked and ran screaming from the stall to the warmth and comfort of my wife and Westy.

Here's a map of the campground from the website. As you can see, it looks very nice. But what they fail to show you is the massive highway just on the other side of the river. Here's an updated map I made.

Granted, it's an artist's rendering, but I'm confident this is the map the campground would be legally required to distribute, were they not an L.L.C. The traffic noise was constant. I had no idea they even had that many cars in New Hampshire. It was way louder than our own neighborhood. It was louder, even, than our neighborhood in L.A., where we had a fire station at the end of the street and a homicide about every twenty minutes.

In the early morning, we got Madge going, high-tailed it on out of there, and headed over to Mt. Monadnock State Park, which is were he should have gone in the first place.