A few weeks ago, I got a text from Anne that said, "Hill Cumorah Pageant this year. Let's go." I agreed. (In case someone doesn't know, the Hill Cumorah Pageant is an outdoor theatrical performance put on each summer by the Church with hundreds of member volunteers. It tells the story of the Book of Mormon.)
We started planning this trip about two weeks ago, at which point Anne and I decided we could just camp for the two nights in her little two-man tent. But then we recruited the company of another girl in our ward who, coincidentally, knew someone in Rochester with whom we could stay during our trip. So, no more camping. Now, Rochester is an hour away on the other side of Palmyra, but we figured it was worth having a place to stay, so we weren't worried. Our plans were to leave on Friday around 2, drive the whole way, hang out on Saturday, go to the pageant Saturday night, and drive back Sunday.
Last week, Anne and I were hanging out on Wednesday night when we got a call from the girl who was supposed to join us. She said she wouldn't be able to make it because she had a lot of school work to do.
This was fine, except that it now meant Anne and I had nowhere to stay. So we stayed up on Thursday night trying to click through to find camp sites that were available. Of course, because it's the pageant and thousands of Mormons are attending (plus, it's just a summer weekend), there were no camp sites to be had.
We found a campsite at a state park and lake about two hours away from the Hill and decided it would be nice not to have to drive the whole way there on Friday. We could camp for a night, hang out at the lake the next day, and head out to Palmyra on Saturday afternoon. So we booked it for $20/night. Except that NY charges all these stupid fees for being out-of-state and blah blah blah so it ended up being $35/night.
So... with a reservation for Friday night and no reservations for Saturday night, we set off on Friday afternoon and promptly got stuck in traffic. It took us 6 hours (instead of 4) to get to our Friday night camp site. The road out to it was creepily dark. All we could see were the flashes of lightning bugs in the darkness on either side of the car, and all we could hear were these little pings of bugs getting smashed on our windshield as we drove. Finally we came upon a traffic light, which we assumed was where we were supposed to turn. The light was swarmed with bugs. I mean, swarmed. All you could see in the green light was a solid cloud of bugs. It was gross and Anne and I both commented that it looked disgusting. We pulled into the state park and it was almost 10 pm, so the check-in office was closed. So we just drove in and found our site and hoped no one would bother us.
We got out and had to go to the bathroom. This wasn't expected to be a problem because the bathhouse was only three campsites away. We walked over there, and we started noticing those masses and masses of bugs frantically swarming around every light bulb near the bathhouse. There were screens on the windows that were just covered in these tiny mosquito-ee bugs; you couldn't see in. Unfortunately there was a little entryway with a light right above the bathroom door so it was also covered in bugs.
It was the grossest thing I've ever seen. We pulled our shirts up over our faces so we could run through without getting the bugs in our mouths/noses. We braced ourselves and made a break for it, but got too freaked out when they were buzzing in our eyes and ears too much for us to see the door handle. So we ran away to muster our courage.
Finally, we went back, and (with some muffled screams) ran inside. Inside was no better. The bugs were everywhere. Before you pulled up your pants (what? too much info?) you had to brush them off your legs as fast as you could to keep them from getting trapped in your pants. The rolls of toilet paper were covered in them.
It was GROSS! Anne likes to make fun of me for being afraid of bugs, but she admitted that it was disgusting.
So after our traumatizing trip to the bathroom, we ran back to the car and got in and just looked at each other like, "What did we do?! We're paying $33 to stay at this place?! Ugh." We decided we were too tired and it was too gross out to try to put up the tent, so we just decided we'd sleep in her car.
[This is where I make a small aside to Subaru. Dear Subaru. Your 2012 impreza is surprisingly roomy. Kudos.]
We put the seats down and put our sleeping bags out and we could actually lay flat from head to foot.
We tried to leave the windows open an inch or two to let some air circulate, but the car quickly became filled with those little bugs! So we rolled up our windows in defeat and spent a few minutes trying to kill as many as possible before falling asleep. I didn't sleep that well that night because every time I was almost asleep, I'd hear a bug buzzzinnggggggg in my ear which, of course, drove me out of my mind all night long.
We woke up in the morning to a much more pleasant camp. We went to the bathroom and there was a woman cleaning it. All of those bugs had fallen dead on the floor (and the sinks, and the toilet seats), for some reason, and she was sweeping them up in big fluffy piles. It was bizarre. But I was very, very grateful for the custodian, so I politely thanked her for cleaning up all the bugs.
We had a short conversation about her job, and it pays to be nice to the custodians because she cleaned a shower for me to use. It was connected to a private bathroom (also awesome) so you didn't have to try to get undressed and redressed in a shower stall without getting anything wet. But, there were two annoying things about the bathroom. 1) You had to keep pushing a button for water and 2) the bathroom had a window that was about chest height on me. There was a middle-aged man stalking the bathroom (apparently he had been waiting for the bathroom to be cleaned, but the custodian likes me better). He stood out there awkwardly so that I had to sneak out of the shower when I thought he wasn't looking, and then bend at the waist to dry off and get dressed without him seeing me.
I felt much, much better after showering. (I am a little obsessed with showering every day, ok?) Anne and I ate our breakfast of fruit and Oatmeal Squares and then checked out of our campsite and drove over to the lake front. We sat out there for a while and it was really nice out. We ventured into the water right before we left for lunch, but it was really shallow (and they had 6 life guards out there! For water that only went up to my chest!) and filled with little algae or something floating in water. So we didn't do much swimming.
Since we didn't get to have our campfire the night before, we went and found a grill and made a fire and roasted our hotdogs and made s'mores for lunch. It was delicious, and we were feeling pretty proud of ourselves for making a successful fire.
Then we changed our clothes and drove out to Palmyra. It only ended up taking a little over an hour, and before we could decide what we wanted to do, we had gotten shuffled into the Hill Cumorah parking lot. We parked and realized there was no sense in trying to leave and return later, so we just decided to take our chairs and money (to buy dinner) and games and make the best of it.
We got there at about 6, ate dinner from the Lion's Club at 6:30, played some Monopoly Deal, and then sat around talking to people we ran into that we knew. (We saw the Bells from my home ward, and my home stake YSA, and a couple people I knew at BYU, and a couple people Anne knew at BYU).
Finally, they started playing the "prelude" music and we were ready for it to start. They don't give you programs though; you have to speak to the cast members to get a program. I guess that's fine, but we waited patiently for almost an hour for cast members to ask us if we had one. Meanwhile, in true (unintentionally tactless Mormon style) we watched 5 different groups of cast members approach the Black family that was sitting a few rows away from us.
Finallyyyyyyyyy, it was 9:15 and time for the pageant to start. It was good, especially since I don't remember anything about going when I was younger except standing in line with Megan and mom at the port-o-potty. (I was relieved to see there were no port-o-potties this time).
It got over and we went to leave, but didn't quite know where we were going. We had looked up the address of the church (near Palmyra, but not in Palmyra since we knew that would be mobbed) and the nearest Walmart (strangely, there were three 24-hr Walmart stores within 10 miles of the Hill Cumorah). We drove out to Canadaigua's Walmart, went in to buy muffins for the next morning, and parked our car in a dark corner of the parking lot, in front of a Verizon store that didn't open until 1 pm on Sunday, where no one could see us from the main road. It was much nicer that night since there weren't any bugs, but the air was not moving at all and there was also a lot of light from all the neon storefronts. So, I didn't sleep awesomely well that night either.
The next morning, I woke up at 7 am having to go to the bathroom, so I trudged over to the Walmart. I also purchased Hydrocortisone cream because I was covered in mosquito bites. As I got back across the parking lot to the car, it started to rain. And then it started to pour. We quickly rolled up the windows and then opened the trunk and sat there watching it rain. There was thunder and lightning and it was seriously downpouring at this point. We changed our clothes and headed to the local ward. We went to sacrament meeting, and then got back on the road to drive home.
It took us longer to get home too; about 9 hours. We stopped to eat along the way. Anne had an Arby's craving, so I used the GPS to look up one close to the road. We followed the directions and ended up at a mall parking lot. Not fair! But we were hungry, so we walked in, only to find that the Arby's had recently been removed from the foodcourt. Ugh. So we had to drive another 20 minutes or so to find another one.
And then on to home. I slept a little on the way back, and I was supposed to drive a little, but it continued to pour and it made me nervous to drive someone else's car when I couldn't see the road. So poor Anne drove the whole way and we were both exhausted by the time we got home.
I picked up my car from Anne's house and came home and slept. And it was seriously one of the best night's sleep of my whole life! In a bed! In the dark! Without someone right next to me! With multiple pillows! Without bugs buzzing in my ears! With a bathroom just across the hall! It was awesome.
So... in summary, I went to Palmyra. It was an adventure in homelessness. The pageant was good. The Subaru Impreza makes a nice bed if you have no other options. But let's just hope, despite having trouble finding a job, I never have to actually live out of my car. I wouldn't survive.
The end.
(I had plans to make this a much more witty entry, but I am tired, so that didn't happen. But now you know how my weekend went, at least. Anne has some pictures of our escapades, but I don't have them. So oh well.)
