Adventures in (Shopping for) Camping

May 18, 2012
First Landing State Park (see more about this on my other blog "You Went Where?")
Planned departure time 3:00 p.m.; actual departure time 5:45!  Here's why:

I left the shopping for Friday so that everything would be fresh.  I've had too many camping trips where I've purchased the fruits and veggies a couple of days ahead, only to have to throw away part (or all) of something because it has gone bad in the meantime.  Since I worked closing shifts on Wednesday and Thursday nights, I couldn't load the car until Friday anyway.  It should have been easy - I had a list and a plan.  Fresh to Frozen first to pick up whatever they had that was on my list, Costco to get those specific items and fill up the tank, Martin's to get the cupcakes I ordered, then WalMart to finish it all off.  It really shouldn't have taken more than a couple of hours.

Well, F2F and Costco went as planned, then the trouble started.  On Tuesday, I had placed an order for two dozen mini cupcakes at Martin's Harbor Pointe location.  I wanted half of them yellow cake and half devils food.  I wanted half iced with yellow frosting and half with green.  And I wanted to pick them up at another location.  This is not a difficult order.  The woman helping me was the Assistant Bakery Manager, so I had every confidence that this would be handled correctly.  Plus, I watched her write the whole thing down on a production order form - everything was right, including the store where I wanted to pick them up.  Great!  But apparently, once I walked away, instead of placing that order form in the appropriate slot to go to the production facility, she called the order in to the store where I planned to pick up the order, so they could write the order and sent it to production.  And she got it wrong!  She ordered 1 package of mini yellow cupcakes (12) and 1 package of devils food cupcakes (6).  They got the icing right, at least.

So . . . I went to one Martin's to pick up my order, went to the Martin's where I placed the order to complain, then to WalMart.  At WalMart, I didn't find the Baby Cuties that we wanted and they were out of steak rolls.  So then, back to Martin's to pick up the remaining mini cupcakes that they were able to wrangle up for me, stop at the next WalMart to get my rolls, then finally back home.  My two-hour shopping trip took four hours.  I got home around 2:30 - nothing packed, nothing ready, and a two-hour drive ahead of me.  As a result, I forgot extra batteries, towels, something to sleep in, and a jacket.  Oh well, every camping trip is an adventure, one way or another!