Sunday, 21 April 2002 | Dot matrix

Foregoing the last run-through of the house, to make sure I didn't forget anything. Remembering to tell the driver to turn left in time, so that we would've taken the shorter path. Not stopping at two different gas stations to try to get the ATM card to work. Any of those things would've given us the five minutes we needed to get that last campsite. But we didn't get it; after over an hour of driving, we watched the people in front of us get it instead.

The ranger directed us to the second-best campground in the area, located at an old water treatment plant a few miles down the road. The park consisted of a modest patch of woods and a reservoir that harbored a cluster of dirty paddle boats. Inside the park office was a "museum" of local wildlife: snakes, an opossum, red-tailed hawks, squirrels, and owls in crudely made cages of fencing, boards, nails, and glass. Dot-matrix printer paper covered the floor of the opossum's 4 ft x 3 ft cell, and the birds were confined to spaces in which they couldn't fly. I left the city to enjoy nature only to find it in captivity.

There was only one other group of campers at there, yet the parking lot was full of cars, presumably there for the wedding in progress on the grass just next to it. We surveyed the area on foot to a soundtrack of the wedding march. No Cape Fear river, no Robert DeNiro, no getting lost in the wilderness.

It was fun anyway. And we had running water.