Camp Tales 14: Ouch, What Was That?

Man, I've been on the road so much this summer, that I've been  remiss to my readers.  I've got Camp Tales coming, children.  Buckle in and hold tight.

So this year, Doooder and I did Montana up right, hanging in the Gallitan Mountains and the Crazies.  BUT, before that, we thought we'd hang in Bozeman for a bit.  Check out the cool stuff.  I spotted a '36 Knuckle outside of a joint called The Crystal Saloon with some seriously cool old neon outside, so in we went for our "Celebratory  Centennial Trip Sip" as we called this in memory of our birthdays.

Three beers later, we walk back to our dumpy motel that makes last year's Bates Motel look rather charming.

Three Red Flags:
1. don't ever stay at a motel that rents rooms by the month.  It's a free ticket for pedaphiles, alcoholics and drug dealers.  We saw all three.
2. Copious amounts of duct tape to fix things all over the room, including the floor of the shower.
3. Unidentifable insects in bathroom.

"Dang, Dude, the bathroom lights don't work," Dooooder notes.

"The lamp above my bed doesn't work either," I add.  Suddenly, I notice an arresting stain the shape of Texas on the carpeting near my bed.  "I'm leaving my 'socks on, precautionary measure, Doooder,'" I say envisioning scabies, ringworm. 

I pull off the covers to do a bed-bug check.  No plastic covers, I think, "Well, maybe it'll be OK."

"Well, I don't see anything," I say hopefully.  Dooooder pulls back hers and the sheets are dirty from the last visitor.  Moreover there's frightning amounts of pubic hairs all over.

"I'm throwing up in my mouth right now," Doooder says,  "And going to get new sheets.  Stay right here."  She told me stay right there because management didn't have a key for our room, so we would have to call the manager everytime we needed back in.  Five minutes later Doooder comes back with new sheets.  She unfolds them, but they're so badly stained, she throws them on the floor.  "I think we should go out and get our sleeping bags and each sleep on top of the bed in the sleeping bags."

"Dooooder, you're being paranoid," I object.  So I wash up and crawl into bed.  No biggie, right?

The next day.

"Dude, what got at you?  You have a million bites all over your arms," Doooder says in a alarmed voice.  I look down and count.  I have 27 bites on my arm and side.  What's worse is that they were swelling up. 

Up we jumped and ran to her car, headed for the Bozeman Public Library to look up bed bug bites which look rather identical to flea bites.

"Let's get the hell out of here," we both say in unison, grabbing our toiletries out of Motel Shithole, and headed for the mountains where we camped the next two nights.

Four days later, we went to the laundrymat where, just to be safe, we nuked our clothes on high, effectively shrinking all my favorite saloon t-shirts to sizes that would fit a sixth grader.

What have I learned?  You're better off camping in the forest, or short of that, a dumpster.

More later.