Glamping in a Bubble

I’m a really big fan of camping – in theory. I love the idea of going to sleep listening to the cicadas, waking up with the sun, and cooking meals over a fire.

But in reality, camping and I have a difficult relationship. I get claustrophobic in tents, especially smaller ones that you can’t stand up in. Bugs love me. And I get totally freaked out at not being able to pee without going outside where I could get eaten by a bear.

So yeah, we’re not a fit. Which is how I wound up in a bubble last weekend.

There’s a bubble hotel just outside our town, about 10 minutes from our house. So we went to check it out. Each bubble pod is in its own private area, so you don’t have to worry about neighbors looking in on you while you sleep. The bubbles are laid out like a typical hotel room, except that they don’t have running water. In the little “bathroom” area they have a sink with a 5 liter jug of drinking water, and a porta-potti like the kind we used when we went camping when I was a kid.

Included in the night’s stay, though, is an hour in a special bubble that has a giant bathtub for soaking. The downside for us was that the sun was right above the bubble which, while air conditioned, was still too bright and made me feel like I was playing “The Floor is Lava”

The best part was sleeping, which was tricky with the three of us since there was just one double bed. But it was okay that I kept waking up because it gave me a chance to watch the stars journey across the sky, and catch a sliver of the dying moon in the morning.

And it really worked having a small yard area with a table and chairs, which made me feel like I was actually camping. We got pizza from in town, and sat outside watching the sky get darker. Each bubble has a telescope, so they encourage skywatching, but we’re lucky here in that our sky is actually bigger than it was there, and so we didn’t

In the morning they brought us a sweet picnic basket, dropped outside our private little pod area, filled with fresh orange juice, coffee, meats and cheeses, and various breads.

All told, it was a fun experience, and I’m glad we went. But in the end it was about as comfortable as camping (having to unzip two doors to keep the bubble fully inflated before we could go outside was a pain, and the fan keeping the bubble inflated was pretty loud) though not as claustrophobic. And it was an experience I won’t forget for a long time, but if anything it made me realize how lucky we are to already live in the countryside with a huge sky available to us, and a big bathtub on demand. So next time, basically, I’ll just stay home and buy a bunch of books with the same money I’d spend on the bubble.