A few weeks ago, I got to enjoy something very special. Solitude.

Bridget and Maria went away for a few days to visit some friends. I had already used up too much vacation and had to stay home. Plus, I didn’t want to go.

I didn’t enjoy being away from my wife and daughter for four days. Sure, I got to eat bad food and play lots of video games, but I missed them.

I just couldn’t bring myself to go to their vacation destination.

Maria’s best friend has a cottage at a church campground up in Dillsburg. Maria has been visiting there for years and knows many of the other families there very well. They had their campmeeting during the first week of August.

I’m not into it.

I don’t have a problem with the religious aspect of the whole event. In fact, I find it refreshing that people still get together to worship and enjoy each other’s company.

I just wish they would do it with air conditioning and running water.

I have no interest in any kind of camping. The campground has cottages instead of tents, but that doesn’t change things for me.

I just have a problem with living “Little House on the Prairie” style for any period of time.

That’s an exaggeration because the cottages do have electricity. Unfortunately, most people don’t take full of advantage of that convenience because hardly anyone has a television.

One family does have a satellite dish because they live in their cottage much of the year, but they are the exception, not the rule. And the whole atmosphere of the campground kind of looks down on people who want to spend the time sitting around watching the tube all week.

That makes no sense to me. If I wanted to turn Amish, I could have done it a long time ago on one of my many trips to Lancaster County.

I’m not saying that the people who enjoy going to the cottage, getting water out of a well and passing up reruns of “South Park” and “Seinfeld” are wrong.

I just don’t get it. Kind of like how I don’t get why Hanover Borough is so obstinate when it comes to recycling or why it’s OK for a convenience store to sell lottery tickets near the battlefield, but slot machines are the devil’s work.

So I stay home when they go for a visit. This time around, I ate Buffalo wings and chicken nuggets. I didn’t make the bed and let the dishes pile up. I set the air conditioning where I wanted to and had wild parties in the basement.

OK, I made that last part up. I did make myself productive and begin to hang things on the wall in the basement where I have set up my little home away from home.

But I did come to realize one thing without my family around – I like living the bachelor lifestyle almost as much as I like roughing it.

I can handle myself for a little longer without supervision, but in the end, I need to have that normal life. After all, someone’s got to do the laundry eventually. And I’m not hauling a bucket of water from the well to fill the machine.