A horrible secret in the woods

The following post is the beginning of what would impact the remainder of our full time camper travel and beyond. It took us a long time to even talk about it with family and friends. This blog was the first casualty followed by Instagram as we entered in to more of what felt like survival-mode to get through it.

Day 1 - Chillin with Mike

My buddy and former colleague, Mike, moved to Louisville to make virtual reality apps. We arrived from the northwest and set up camp across the Ohio river at Charlestown State Park in Indiana. The first couple of days Mike would show us around the office and let us experience the apps, then feed us an amazing multi-course, multi-bottle Italian dinner. There was bourbon, of course. It was fantastic. We toured around Louisville and were looking forward to a new city to experience for a week.

Days 2 to 3 - What is going on??

Charlestown State Park was ideal. Twenty minute drive or so to the city, great hikes, great views, perfect fall weather, and super quiet. Charlestown State Park has a secret. A horrible secret waiting in the woods just ten feet behind our campsite. An unimaginable amount of dime-sized, shield shaped, dark gray stink bugs lay in wait on the edge. I spotted the first one in the outside kitchen of the camper where I was set up working for the day. It took them a couple days to show up and I had no idea what it was at the time. I smushed a couple. They had a distinct odor but nothing remarkable. I saw a couple more and killed them too, thought nothing more of it and went to bed.

Had we have known what was about to happen of the course of the next forty eight hours we would have got the hell out of there that night. Instead, we spent the next two days enjoying Louisville, enjoying the abandoned amusement park, eating pork chops, skateboarding, and lazily settling in to our schedule-less lives on the road.

This was a critical mistake that would end up taking two full years to finally be free of. TWO FULL YEARS. Over those forty eight hours hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of stink bugs descended on our camper, attracted the by the smell we created by killing them, the sun, the time of the year, a perfect storm of mass invasion. They invaded every external nook, cranny, crack, seal, and void that our camper offered up as a place for them to hibernate. They were showing up inside the camper too. One moment you’re sitting there playing cards, next moment a stink bug suddenly appears behind your head on the wall. Seemingly from thin air.

Of course when we finally decided we needed to get the hell out of there it was waaay too late. We didn’t really know that, yet, so we made a final dash to get rid of every visible stink bug on the inside and outside of our camper that we could see, but they kept coming. We set up chemical traps, used internet solutions, bought lamps, sprayed many different types of spray, vacuumed them, and finally packed up and left with three days to go on our scheduled stay. In our minds we were escaping the nightmare with our only loss being less time in Louisville. We were also very wrong about that. VERY WRONG.

We were now on our way to Nashville and pulled off after a couple of highway hours to hit Wal Mart. Right away I noticed them before I even approached the camper. They were dark on the white sides. And they were many. I think this is when the panic started. My thought process was something like, “Oh they have stink bugs here too! No.. oh my god they’re hiding in the camper somewhere.” But how many were in the camper? Surely 62mph (optimal MPGs) was enough to force them out, right? Wrong. We killed the few we saw, crossed our fingers and lumbered on. I think Nolan briefly lost his phone at that Wal Mart too. We’ll get into Nashville in the next post.. for now let’s return back to those final care-free forty eight hours of Louisville. Just for fun, imagine a swarm of stinkbugs secretly stuffing themselves into hiding places in our camping while we snapped the photos below.

Hiking

Rose Island

Hiking trails from the campground led to this 100 year old abandoned amusement park. We walked along the same paths that criss-crossed the island taking visitors to the pool, the dance hall, the caged bear, and more. We were the only ones out there that day and that added to the ghostly sense of good times once had in structures now overgrown and melting back into the earth.

Louisville skate