This trip was a series of events that went from bad to worse. After the first few hours we should have taken the hint and left, but nope, we're troopers and when we commit, we really commit.

Our first mistake was going to Niagara Falls to camp on the Labour Day weekend.

The manager, owner, whoever made decisions for the place figured that since it was such a busy weekend they could make a lot more money by doubling up on every camp site. Rather than have room for our tent, a picnic table and a bit of room for chairs, we had half of that which equaled not much.

Our new neighbors that we were now sharing the site with seemed nice enough, but they were a large group with a bunch of young kids.

We had just the two of us and our two dogs. Our kids were coming later in the day for a BBQ, but they are all grown.

By the time we got all set up and took a walk around the park, it looked like the images you see on television of homeless encampments. Hundreds of tents, clothes and blankets hanging everywhere, kids screaming, parents screaming, but the weather was nice so there was that.

We walked back to our campsite to start dinner before our kids came, and this is when the fun really got rolling. We had a radio that was plugged in with an extension cord and sitting on the picnic table. The new neighbors kids kept running through our site and catching the cord and sending the radio flying.

The first time was not a big deal, they are kids who are having fun running around chasing each other. By the third time I asked them to run on the other side of their tent so they didn't catch the cord. After the fourth time I packed up the radio and just enjoyed.. well not much of anything at that point, but we were committed or should have been committed, I'm not sure which one.

One of the neighbor kids decided it would be fun to turn on the tap where you would connect a hose, except there was no hose. The water ran long enough that it turned into a pool directly under our tent, and since it all ran in from the back side of the tent, we didn't know there was a problem until we were stepping into wet mud to walk in the tent.

Our kids showed up and we enjoyed a nice dinner. The neighbor kids had settled down to eat so it was actually relaxing, for a bit.

As the sun set our kids headed home, we tidied up and settled in for the evening. The neighbor kids were all in for the night, that's when the parents of those kids decided it was go time. They dragged a few picnic tables together and because the space was so limited they were only a few feet from our tent.

Now, I'm not much of a drinker or a gambler, but I do know that these two things rarely mix well when consumed in large amounts. Can you see where this is going? About 2 a.m. someone in their group was no longer having fun playing poker and the yelling started. Someone fell onto the side of our tent, it didn't knock it down but we definitely knew they were there. The battle lasted for a bit until security came and settled things down. That was it for the first night.

The next morning we got up and were sitting outside having a coffee, enjoying the quiet before the other campers woke up. As we're chatting my husband asks me what's all over my legs. I looked like I had the measles from just above my knees all the way to my feet. It wasn't itchy or hurting so I figured I had walked in some grass or weeds that had rubbed on my legs. We went into town and picked up a few things we wanted, did a bit of visiting with friends and headed back to the campground later that afternoon. Our kids came out for dinner again and left just as it was starting to get dark. As we were cleaning up I went in the tent to put things away and happened to move the corner of the blankets on our air mattress. Something was moving, actually a lot of things were moving. A LOT of tiny red spiders. Our tent was full of them. There must have been a nest of them under our tent and when the kids had the water running for so long it flushed them out, and right into our tent. That's what all the marks on my legs were, spider bites.

By this time it's around 10 p.m., and I'm losing my mind. I gave my husband the choice of going home right then, if not I was headed to a hotel. I wasn't spending another night there. We didn't even really pack anything, just kind of rolled everything into a big ball, threw it in the back of our truck and made the four hour trip home. I wanted to leave everything there, but he won that part of the argument.

We arrived home around 3 a.m. and straight into the shower. We left everything in the back of the truck because we didn't want to bring spiders in the house. The next morning as he was taking the camping stuff out of the truck he was tossing them into the trash. Sleeping bags, pillows and everything else that seemed to be infested with these red spiders.

I called the campground and explained what had happed and that we had left the night before (we had paid for four days), all they had to say was I had no way of proving those were spider bites and if we wanted to come back they would give us a discounted rate. Not f'ing likely.

So that was my last tent camping experience.

We bought a travel trailer a few years after that, and I love it. Normal bed, bathroom, maybe the odd spider but I can deal with that.

Camping in a tent is like paying a lot of money to live like a homeless person, not something most people aspire to.