I finally got to take a vacation and do some exploring and I didn’t disappear or get hacked up by some crazy person! I’m a huge fan of camping – we used to go as a family when I was in grade school. There is this awesome park, Elijah Clark State Park that we used to go to every year for spring break. It was a long way from where I used to live and even farther now that I am on the opposite side of the state, but two years ago when I decided that I’d attempt to go camping by myself Elijah Clark was where I headed for.
We always camped in a camper. Now that I’m on my own I have a tent. A nice, big tent, but a tent that doesn’t have the luxury of a porta potty or air conditioning. The area of the park that I like the most is at the very end – where the new bathhouses haven’t been built yet. The old ones are TINY – which for a fat person spells trouble. You barely have room to move, turn around, towel off…all of the important things you need to be able to do. The newer bathhouses, however, are nice and spacious and very friendly to people of size, and handicapped people.
This year I decided to be different and checked out a few places in Alabama. I visited two parks, Cheaha Resort State Park and Monte Sano State Park, and decided to rent cabins at both as it was my first time camping by myself in the mountains of Alabama. Both cabins were built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the early 1900s – stone, stone fireplaces, awesome things like that. I was especially fond of the little sign in the Cheaha cabin that said to not worry in the case of bad weather as the cabins had been there since the early 1900s and they weren’t going anywhere. 
Anyway, the Cheaha cabins had been newly renovated and were EXTREMELY nice. The Monte Sano cabin was nice too, but I fell in love with the Cheaha cabin.
In BOTH cabins I encountered issues. Going in I didn’t really think of it – I never imagined my size would be an issue. But those CCC people must have all been extremely tiny because the bathrooms in both cabins were so small it was unbelievable. The Cheaha cabin had a full bath – toilet, sink, shower and tub. Add a person standing in the middle of all that and you have NO MORE ROOM. I even kinda had to sit crooked on the toilet [I'm sure you all wanted to know that ] because the toilet paper holder jutted out and got in the way. In the Monte Sano cabin? The bathroom held a small shower and a toilet. Its a good thing I’m not claustrophobic because if I turned in the shower I hit a wall (I am kinda germophobic though, so that was unsettling). Both bathroom experiences were uncomfortable and disheartening because it threw me down into the fat hatred mode. I was already kind of discouraged because I wasn’t in the shape to go hiking around the mountains as much as I wanted, so this just added to it. I want to say that even thinner people would have had a hard time in the bathrooms, but who knows? Maybe its just a state park conspiracy.
I compensated by taking up yoga using the Megan Garcia dvd. I really liked this DVD. I have no idea how the postures in it translate into mainstream yoga, but I thoroughly enjoyed doing it. I even looked forward to doing it everyday. I didn’t really have much trouble at all (aside from the fact that stone floors are INCREDIBLY hard) and at the end of the 20 minute workout I felt GREAT! I felt as flushed, stretched, and energized as I do after walking or lifting weights. Hopefully this means I was doing it right. It definitely made the trip more enjoyable and was a great way to start the day. The great end to the day was sitting out looking over the mountains and the twinkling lights of Huntsville drinking a cold one.
So what did I learn on vacation? Old grist mills and covered bridges are amazing (even if exploring them almost gets you killed by falling through the floor or having two rednecks circle around you staring you down 3 times as you were taking pictures), mountain roads are CREEPY, small bathrooms are bad, and yoga is good. All in all it was a good trip!
