Camping

Well, camping was interesting, to say the least.

D and I left around 2pm or so and got to the campsite around 3:30. It only took us about 30 minutes to set everything up and then we went driving down the road to look for some more wood. We'd brought some with, but knew we'd need more. D was able to bring his dad's small chainsaw so that made it tons better than the other times we've gone.

We got back with around 7 big logs and a bunch of smaller stuff to fuel the fire. Basically the rest of the day was just sitting around drinking beers and playing with the fire. We weren't really motivated to do anything major for dinner so we just put together a cold sandwich and had cheetos with them. A little bit later D decided that we should go driving so he tossed me the keys. I was a bit nervous, but it was pretty late by then so it was almost guaranteed there'd be no other cars on the road. I drove us around for close to an hour and then headed back to the campsite for bed.

The next morning we got up and stoked the fire again. We'd brought some breakfast-type food (even though neither of us really eat breakfast). While D toasted bread and Cajun roast beef on the griddle, I mixed up bacon in scrambled eggs (with some of the camping spice he made). We made sandwiches out of everything using the toast and put some cheese on it...and again had cheetos with it. :-)

Probably around 10am or so we decided to take a short nap, but ended up not waking up until close to 4pm. We sat around for a couple more hours and decided that we'd need some more smaller stuff to keep the fire going. It was getting close to dark so we put together hobo dinners and stuck them in the cooler while we headed out. I drove again and it was quite different in the daylight. Still didn't meet any other vehicles so that was good.

We cooked up hobo dinners close to 9pm or so and they were oh so delish.

I don't know if I've mentioned what hobo dinners are, but they're really easy to make. It's ground it's around 1/3 lb. ground beef, one apple, 1-1/2 small potatoes, about 1/2 of a large onion, like 1-2 handfulls of sliced carrots, and a very small amount of butter. You wrap all that in aluminum foil and cook over the embers (or coals) for around 25 minutes each side. So that was our dinner that night.

I wanna say we crashed close to 11pm, but I just couldn't fall asleep. It was really stuffy in the tent and I just couldn't get comfortable. I think I'd just fallen asleep for maybe a half hour or so when I was woken up by some idiots driving by our camp and honking their horn. We'd left the puppy off her lead for the night so D worried she was in the road and not moving. When he went to check on her, she was laying by the back of our truck so it turned out they were just being stupid (probably drunk). They drove by like 2 more times and the last time actually started pulling into the campsite. D grabbed his pistol and got dressed, but by the time he got out there they were gone. He thinks they were some locals that decided to camp last minute on a Saturday night and were pissed to find someone in "their" usual camp spot. Needless to say neither of us felt much like trying to go back to sleep. When D checked the time it was 3am.

We again stoked up the fire, made some coffee, and sat around trying to wake up. We'd decided that once it got light out we'd made burgers, but probably close to 5:45-6:00 we noticed flashing in the sky. We watched it for a bit, thinking it might be just heat lightning, but when the thunder started we figured that at the very least we could pack up the tent (since we were leaving later that day anyways) and be ready in case it did start raining. It was a good thing because pretty much just as we got the tent loaded it started lightly sprinkling and the thunder was getting louder.

Everything was packed up and we were on the road by 6:30...and got to laugh at all the other poor saps who hadn't been up for 3 hours already and had to pack up in the rain.

We got back home close to 7:30, took showers, stayed up for a couple more hours and ate, then crashed until about 4pm.

Overall it was a fun experience. I didn't get to operate the chainsaw (which was fine by me), but I got pretty damn adept at using the axe and machetes. It was good cuz it gave D more of a chance to relax and not have to get up every few minutes to tend the fire.

I'm definitely looking forward to the next trip, but I'll be fine if it doesn't happen for a little while at least. :-)