PART ONE of: Gomorrah, Wisconsin - The Apple River Hideaway

So. I had ignorantly thought the Apple River Hideaway was in Minnesota. I’m not sure if it’s cheating or not to write about a place in Wisconsin here on my Hating Minnesota blog…

I’ve just decided: it’s not. And this is my reasoning:

1) A majority of the Apple River adventurists are Minnesotans.

B) Tubing is a huge Minnesota past time, no matter where it is.

III) The Apple River Hideaway is right across the border of the two states, so who the hell cares.

AND) This is my creation, and I get to make and break rules as I go and if you don’t like it, too bad.

I’m not exactly sure what I expected. I don’t think any of us did. We knew about the Apple River reputation, but it turned out far more ridiculous than anticipated. Maybe this was a sign of my age. Maybe this was a test of my inner uptightness. Maybe it was an illustration, an evidence of sort, of my lack of tolerance. Whatever it was, it was definitely an insight to who I truly am.

I went with a crowd of friends who, in short, do not drink. This was apparently a foreign concept to the people who go tubing on the Apple River: it was the equivalency of a group of people going to a rave and not doing ecstasy. We knew we’d be outcasts. But to the degree of it, I don’t think we were quite prepared for. We were not prepared for several things…

My friend had found these amazing deals online, which began the adventure in the first place. It was $20 for two people to tube for two days and do one night of camping. Considering that it’s $15 just for one person to go tubing and $30 for a campsite, it was an amazing deal. In my life (I’m about to get real pessimistic here…), I sort of live by the code: it’s always too good to be true. Really, it’s a hit or miss code when you think about it. That’s the true nature of pessimism and optimism. It’s a fifty/fifty either way.

Arriving we discover that we have to pay a $20 fee per vehicle. I was near flat broke, and very embarrassingly had to depend on my friend to cover my asinine vehicle charge. Explain this to me, logically: what the hell are they charging it for? We park it on their grass by the river in the campsite we already paid for. It sits there all night long. Are we paying for someone’s lawn mowing job? Seriously? On top of that, there was a $30 garbage deposit which you would see only $20 returned if your site was cleaned up. They charge a $10 recycling fee, which, allow me to say is a complete joke considering that all of the garbage is bound up in one bag that you yourself have to drive to the dumpster that is NOT divided into TRASH or RECYCLING. This is a mild complaint compared to many more. The middle-of-the-night incident was what made me flip my lid, and I have plenty of good reasons why. But I’ll get to that climactic happening later on in the story…

Annoyed and feeling somewhat scammed for the $20 per vehicle charge (not to mention the garbage charge, though that made slightly more sense), I was already feeling bitter as I was writing down all my personal identification information on my car sticker. The girl checking us in was a bit of a wonder to behold. She was a cartoon in human disguise, to sum it up simply. She clearly had veneers which made her speak with this hard-not-to-laugh-at lisp, and despite her pretty blonde hair and perfectly round features, she had the remarkable resemblance to Karee from the Pixar film, The Incredibles. This is the evidence of my mean side, Reader, of my lack of tolerance. I was at the campground for not but ten minutes and I was already having it in for the chipmunk checking us in. She would’ve been nice had there not been that one way she screwed us over, to which all chipmunk jokes will be made without apology. There was nothing wrong with her other than her impossible-not-to-talk-about cartoonishness up until the point of reaching our campsite. We had asked for a campsite away from people. We specifically requested it…

Well, so, there I was, filling out my address and phone number on a sticker that was going to be visible to anybody who walked past my car. Call me paranoid, but I wasn’t comfortable with this. Despite this however, I noted that I liked the fluidity of the pen I was using. “This is a good pen,” I thought to myself. Good pens are hard to come by. As a writer, I’m a wee particular about my pens. They have to write black, and they have to write smooth and dark. This one did. I thought, “They’re not going to miss their pen...” So I took it. No? I stole it. I totally broke the law. This was vindictive and childish. Passive aggressive and pathetic. But after the night was over, this minute act of rebellion brought a smug bit of joy to me.

We headed to our, um, campsite. We shouldn’t have expected much, but I expected at least a little bit more. It was lawn by the river with a post and a picnic table, and our neighbors’ picnic table was directly right next to ours. No fire pit. (I mean, okay, there was a circle of bald lawn on the ground that was made from people before who made fires regardless of there not being a pit…but, come on…) No grill. No electricity post. Now, these things aren’t vital, no doubt, but when someone charges $30 for a campsite these are the normal things to expect. So, that was a little bit of a disappointment. But what was worse was the fact that Karee the Chipmunk did not put us away from other campers as my friend’s husband had politely requested. She put us right next to the volleyball court. Are you kidding, Karee? And, next to about five already existing campers. Now. See? We weren’t trying to be snobs asking for a campsite away from everyone. We knew we were going to be the only ones not drinking, and it just seemed proper to have our own little space away from the hullabaloo. (I just used the word “hullabaloo”….this is definitely a mark of my age…). It was a simple request. It should’ve been granted.

The bomb inside of me was tick-tick ticking away…

We had our campsite claimed with the rising and pitching of a tent. It was near eighty something degrees, and the sun was blazing steadily with no shade. It was time to go tubing. We took our tubing tickets up to the garage where the tubes were and were then directed back to the place the tickets came from. To get your tubes you have to give them a pair of car keys and have them swipe somebody’s credit card (in case you loose your tubes). Now. The guy taking care of all of this for us was not my favorite. He was a thirty year old pretty boy smart ass who clearly just had his pecks tuned on his adolescent ego. I didn’t like him. And I’m sure he’s used to being loved by the brainless, blondie Karee chipmunks out there, but personally I was repulsed. And I'll explain why.

He had asked us if we wanted to rent a cooler tube (to carry booze or other beverages with us down the river). My friend responded with a kind, “No thank you.” His straight toothed white grin cracked with a rude intention. He was clearly putting on his “I need to sucker them into renting one” look. So he got pushy. An’ I don’ like pushy. In fact, pushy people trigger a very ugly and nasty gear on me. My reflex is to make it perfectly clear to them that I am not one to push. When his pushiness failed, my friend told him, “We don’t drink, so we don’t need one.” He gave a startled, judgmental jerk in that stupid grin of his and said very rudely, “Well that’s boring”. Had I been in different company, my language would’ve gotten a little colorful at this point, but I was gritting my teeth and behaving myself. I realized that most of my emotions were drawn up from a maternal place, the need to protect people I care about. He had just insulted my friends, and I wasn’t very happy about it. This feeling stuck with me throughout the trip. My friend, however, handled the situation with grace. She laughed at his rudeness and said, “Yeup! We’re boring!” I was ready to tear him limb from limb, especially when he continued to push the renting-the- cooler-tube-thing on us with, “You can use it to put your water in, too, you know.” I briskly and huskily gave a flat, nasty “We don’t need one”. He looked at me like he was two seconds away from smirking with a “Settle down, bitch” to add. Oh. I wanted him to say it. I was ready to bring out my emasculating whip of wit and tear him down. Violent and ridiculous, you say? Well, sure. But like I said, pushy people trigger a nasty gear inside of me. And when I’m angry? If you’ve offended me and my adrenaline is pumping red hot signals to my brain? I’ve got the articulation of a Harvard graduate’s movie script, and there’s no stopping me once I get going. (Hmm… If only I could summon this wit at will, like, when I’m not pissed off…I think I’d have more luck with the men… Actually, no. I wouldn’t. My wit does me very little when I’m a short stack of thick thighs and crooked teeth…).

Anyway.

A hundred million minutes later, we finally get to retrieve our tubes. Some nineteen year old kid is framed before us by a giant poll barn door which sports a Styrofoam tip cup in the corner of it. There’s a tip jar. What? The tip jar is a joke, right? They don’t actually expect us to tip for someone handing us water tubes… right? We laughed about that one. It was a good joke. What was even better was when the nineteen year old kid told us it would cost a quarter for the twine we needed to tie our tubes together. (Our water tubes, not our inner tubes...heh...). Really? A quarter? You mean, after you scam all these drunk people to pay you $15 dollars to float down a river, an extra $5 per cooler tube, and after you charge your campers $20 to park their car at their campsite that they’ve already paid for, and after you charge a $10 recycling fee for each campsite (there’s over fifty) when you don’t even have a recycling bin, and after you continue to scam the drunk people with your ridiculous beer prices, food prices and tobacco prices, you really can’t throw in some free twine for people to tie their water tubes together? Come on, man. I mean it. Come on. A quarter?

In all fairness, I have to give the joint a little credit for their brilliance. I mean it. ‘Build a reputation for being a place where you can enjoy yourself both legally and illegally, throw in the whole Mardi Gras slash Spring Break theme, and you’ve got yourself an easy ticket to make some dough, to take advantage of a bunch of drunkards and stoners, under-aged rich frat brats, and the partiers with bottomless wallets. Create an environment where raunchy girls with no self esteem feel the need to show their breasts when they’re howled at like animals, and you’ll do some pretty good business. Create an environment where the masses can come from miles abroad to break every moral rule in any given moral book and not be punished, and you’ve got yourself your own Pleasure Island. If only the Lampwick next to us had turned into a donkey, I would’ve left the place a little bit happier. Now don’t get me wrong, Reader. I believe in breaking rules sometimes. I believe it’s okay to eat, drink and be merry from time to time, in a respectable manner. But chaos and barbarity breeds nothing but fools and idiots. The Apple River Valley Hideaway crowd (at least the crowd around us on that particular day) was like being amidst hundreds of baboons who were all in desperate need of bibs and souls.

Stayed tuned for the colorful illustration of the baboons who camped next door to us… If I had taken a picture (kicking myself for not!) you would’ve actually seen, literally, baboons wearing Abercrombie & Fitch.