2010 Goodman front before updates
Picture this – it’s midnight and we pull into the driveway of our “home away from home” for the weekend. Ahead in the headlights we see a small building – “Huth’s Bull Camp.” This must be the place. When I asked Ed about it before we got here, he told me that it was a cabin with an “open floor plan.” Prepare for the reality.
When we walked in, the first thing I noticed were the antlers on the wall. I have serious reservations about anyone who used antlers as their primary focus of decorating. The second thing I noticed was the concrete floor. That’s right – no tile, no carpeting, just concrete with a few throw rugs scattered over it. Good thing I packed my flip flops! The kids forgot theirs, so they had to keep their shoes on from the moment they woke up until they went to bed. Or hop from rug to rug (that floor was COLD!).
The third thing I noticed was the smell. Not unpleasant, just as if someone had spilled a bottle of Pine Sol. I’m guessing that Pine Sol is the cleaning product of choice – gives the cabin that “North woods” smell. Unfortunately for me, one of the few things that we’re reasonably sure I’m allergic to is … wait for it… pine! After a few minutes, the smell made me sick to my stomach, literally. Fortunately, the Claritin fixed me up just fine.
The cabin was arranged in three major divisions. The center division, about 12 ft. by 40 ft., was the entrance, the dining area and the kitchen. The kitchen had not one, but two refrigerators. One of the refrigerators had been modified with the addition of a tap smack dab in the middle of the door. Darn it – and here I am without a keg!
The section to the right contained the living room area and three twin beds. It too was about 12 ft. by 40 ft. It was also 2 inches lower than the rest of the cabin. I tripped twice in the first 8 hours we were there. Fortunately for the kids, there was satellite TV with the Disney channel.
To the left of the center section was another 12 ft. by 40 ft. room. At the head and foot of this room were two full size beds – one of which also had an upper bunk. Ed and I slept in the one that didn’t. Since we usually share a king sized bed at home, you can only imagine the contortions we went through each night. The room was bisected by a third full size bed, again a bunk style, but the upper bunk was surrounded by orange “Caution” style tape and had mattresses stacked to the ceiling. Extras for sleeping on the floor, replacements for the remaining beds, who knows?
Now you may be asking yourself, what very important room has she left out? Or, why hasn’t she mentioned the bathroom yet? Well, when Ed was telling me about the place, he mentioned that the bathroom was in the garage. Now I pictured an attached garage with a bathroom tucked into a corner somewhere. A little odd but okay. What I did not picture was an industrial type garage (you know, the kind with 20 foot ceilings that you could park a fire truck in), 50 feet away from the door of our cabin!
Now obviously, one has to make sure, with a setup like this, that one makes a stop at the bathroom before one gets into one’s pajamas, and after one has finished one’s beverage of choice for the evening. How the gentlemen (I’m assuming here) with the kegger happening managed, I don’t know (or I do know and I’m trying not to picture it – there were a couple of trees closer, I’m just saying).
And what did one find after one grabbed the flashlight and made the trek across the grass? Upon opening the door into the garage, I found myself in a three foot wide hallway formed by unadorned plywood walls. The hallway was about 6 or 7 feet long and had two doors at the end, one on the left and one on the right. The door on the left had a very prominent “Beware of dog” sign. Given the way things were going, I pictured a very large Doberman or Rottweiler on the other side, jaws slavering and drooling. That door scared me.
The door on the right led to the bathroom. As bathrooms go, it wasn’t too bad. It had a large size shower enclosure, a vanity sink, the requisite toilet, and a very large utility sink (for cleaning one’s catch from the lake, I presume). The one incongruous note was the dish drainer set on the counter next to this very large utility sink. Did I mention that this was the largest utility sink I have ever seen? The fish in the lake must be huge!
The mystery of the dish drainer was solved the next morning when we attempted to clean up after breakfast. Above the kitchen sink was a little sign that explained that we could either heat water on the stove or carry the dishes to the bathroom to wash them. That’s right; there was no hot water in our cabin. The only hot water was 50 feet away in the garage.
Now I know that so far this sounds like the world’s worst vacation ever. But it wasn’t all bad. There was a huge lake just down the hill from our cabin, and the cabin even had a boat. Of course it had rained (poured really) off and on all the way on our journey from the Chicago area and the boat was full of water, and we didn’t have a bucket to bail it out with, but it was a boat and it was sort of floating. And, when Ed and I compared the actuality to the pictures he had shown me on the Internet, well, we haven’t laughed that long and hard in a long time. I think it took us an hour of chuckling before we were able to drift off to sleep in our tiny little bed. Oh, and that “Beware of dog” sign that scared me so badly the first night? Turned out the dog in question was a little, yappy, terrier type. I never did see it, but I heard it barking often enough that weekend.