Mixed Up At West French Baden Lick

We were looking for a luxury camping experience. Glamping even. But when we took the RV to French Lick things got a bit mixed up.

  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Glamping is a seductively misleading term. It promises an expensive luxury experience, but then you find out you’re sleeping in the wild without air conditioning. Or running water. In fact, the words “Glamor” and “Camping” are diametrically opposed.  It’s true. I looked it up.

Because the French Lick and West Baden hotels are deliciously decadent, they’re our favorite spot to relish the glamor of bygone days.

But what happens when you pair a Luxury Historic Hotel with a Diesel Engine Shoebox?  Like all bad mixers, it wasn’t quite right.

We had reservations for the “French Lick RV Park” – a term generously applied to a remote parking lot carefully placed near a swampy breeding ground for tsetse flies. There are power and water hook ups for six – count ’em – only SIX campers. Reservations required.

A week before, the gal on the phone (who happily explained it was her first day on the job) reserved us a pricey but non-existent RV spot. There was no such site number. Like having a key to Room 701 in a four-story hotel. How does that even happen?

The hotel discovered the mix-up upon our arrival. They breezily suggested we dry camp in the bare parking lot since all the RV sites were full. That meant a weekend with no power and no water. I learned long ago not to swear at hotel managers. Instead I explained gently, with a slight quiver of the lip, this wasn’t the resort experience we hoped for.

The hotel manager, bless her heart, made it right by offering a resort voucher for $150.

We tried to use the resort credit for a fancy dinner at West Baden. Naturally the voucher was invalid because it was assigned to an imaginary RV slip on the seventh floor. My lower lip quivered again. Two hotel managers spent the next 20 minutes punching buttons to straightening things out.

For that mix-up we were given a free hotel room at French Lick. A nice gesture, but it didn’t help. Couldn’t use it. We had no luggage in the RV to shlep our belongings and we were traveling with the dog.

We spent the remainder of the weekend seeking refuge in the West Baden atrium where there was air conditioning, cocktails, and an absence of tsetse flies.

At night we stayed in the damp, dark parking lot with the RV windows open, and tried to sleep next to a lusty chorus of swamp frogs.

Mix-up or not, we made the best of our luxury excursion.

Next time I’ll pull the kill switch on Glamping.