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Camping Trip and a New Camera

August 16th, 2006

It started Thursday. I frantically called a number of camp
sites to find out if they had any sites open for the weekend and was met with a
resounding "No." We were expecting things to be busy, but not quite
that busy. We were even looking into renting a boat or paying someone to ferry
us to the islands but that was an almost impossible idea. Finally, we decided
screw the back up plan and just drove out to where we do our camping.

This place is state run but most of the land is owned by a
wealthy family. Sadly, a couple of years ago, they had to destroy their large
sites because college age kids were going up there to party. People were
getting hurt, fireworks were going off in the trees, people were ripping trees
down… so they decided it was time for the group camping to stop and set up 12
small sites on a first come, first serve basis.

We left early Friday afternoon because it's over an hour's
drive to where we wanted to camp. When we got there, we were worried. The only
site that appeared to be open was site 8, which was at the beginning of the
road that took you to the lake. Lame! So we drove on. Stopped at site 11
because there were no cars, but there was a fire going. On to site 12, and boy
was it nice. A rather large site at least a quarter of a mile from the closest
camp site and on top of a hill down to a rather beautiful part of the stream.
And we set up.

Over the course of the weekend we had a number of people
stop in hoping to grab the site. One guy pulled up and attempted to guilt trip
us into giving him the site. "I've been trying to get this site for two
weeks. I bought all this food and there's no sites left. I don't know what I'm
gonna do with all this food now." Uh… put it in your fridge and eat it
at home?

Friday night was spent setting up the camp site and then
just spending time together. We ended up running in to town to pick up a few
things that we originally decided against and then went back to camp, started a
fire, and made dinner. Then it got cold. Even wrapped up in three blankets, I
froze all night, finally curling into a ball to keep myself warm.

In the morning we were woken up by a group of teenagers
walking through our camp site to get to the stream and then sitting by the
stream and talking… loudly. So I got dressed, got out of the tent, and
started making noise so they might notice we were there and leave. They did
eventually.

We ate breakfast and ran down the road to get more camp wood
and then hiked up Shelving Rock mountain. From the main road (which is a dirt
road) to the top of the mountain is 1.7 miles in a straight line. The trail,
however, doesn't go in a straight line (obviously) so it's more like 2, 2.5
miles to the top. When we got back to the camp site, I thought my legs were
going to come apart at the knees. We'll wait to climb the mountain again until
we're back in shape, I think.

When we finally went to bed, it took me a little while to
fall asleep. I couldn't get my legs in a position in which they weren't in
excruciation pain. Once Master woke me up to let me know He was going to the
bathroom (so I didn't wake up and freak out because He was gone) and I just
started crying. Stupid legs. Mostly my knees. It felt like there was glass in
them.

Originally we had decided to stay till Monday morning and
get Master to work by 1pm but it was so cold Saturday night that we couldn't
sleep much. So we decided that we'd go home and come out again when we had
warmer clothes and a bigger tent so we can put an air mattress big enough for
both of us in it. I honestly think that's part of the reason we were so cold.
We didn't have each other's body heat to help keep us warm.

We spent Sunday slowly getting stuff together and packing up
the truck to go home. We ended up leaving a little bit of firewood for the next
campers. And even tired and in pain, we came home happy and relaxed. We're
planning another trip in September. We'll be buying a bigger tent, a bigger air
mattress, and a couple new sleeping bags first. I can't wait.

 

Finally… the camera:

Last night we bought a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT.

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