Camping

Josh and I went camping yesterday.  Just one night...we tried to bring as little as possible.  I feel we could have done a better job, but we did play both games we brought.  Mostly we brought a lot of extra food...

We didn't buy any food though for our lunch today.  I am pretty proud of that...we were going to buy Ritz crackers and fruit, but we ran out of time.  What I did instead of just gather all the little bits of snack food and half empty chip things we have and brought those.  Then we didn't even eat lunch!  What we forgot was eggs and coffee for breakfast.  I brought two potatoes though because they are so delicious (Yukon Gold Potatoes) and I just wanted to eat them at some point.  This turned out perfect because we had them for breakfast!  I sliced them, added some beef jerky, butter, salt and pepper, and left over red pepper and onion we had cooked up the night before as hotdog topping.  I wrapped all the food up in tinfoil and Josh made a little fire to cook it over.  It was amazing!!  Josh and I have decided that any food cooked over fire is the best.

We stayed at a campground that's about 10 min from where we live, half way to my work.  It was built by they Army Corp. of Engineers, and it is by far one of the best campgrounds I've ever been in.  It only has 36 sites, and each one is fully surrounded by trees and brush, so you are about as isolated from your neighbors as you can be for a campground.  Several sites are right on the lake.  I would call it the beach, but it's a man-made lake and there is no sand.  We did not get any of those sites, but next time we will.  You can make reservations online.  The only down part was the bathroom...there were way too many daddy long legs on the ceiling for my comfort.

This morning we went to the swim area/beach part, that costs 4$ to get in or free if you are camping.  Except on the day you plan to leave, then you have to argue with a mean old old woman with a blow horn and gold cart, and she says that we have to pay unless we leave before 2:00 when check-out is for the campground.  And then she highly disapproves of you going in for free promising that you will leave before 2:00.  We left before 1:00!!

The beach/sand part was very narrow (3ft) and the sand was separated from the grass by a sidewalk.  It was all silica sand and must have been shipped in and placed there.  You could only swim out about 30 feet, and if you swam past the floating orange tube, the mean old lady would drive by in her golf cart and yell at you with your blow horn.  We also suspect she highly disapproves of making sand castles and digging too much into the sand as well.

Besides all of this, it was wonderful to be finally swimming in a lake again.  I wish we had been going all summer.  It wasn't even cold like Lake Michigan or Superior, but perfectly cool.  It's a very large, long lake because it is formed from the back up of a river by a dam. 

Finally, another interesting part, is that I think Josh and I were the only white people there, everyone else were hispanic.  There were large families all hanging out together and having picnics and hanging in hammocks they brought.  I wish a little, that my family was like that...but then we would all have to live near together, and my parents should have had a few more kids, and Nate and I should have had kids as well already.  Family oriented, etc.  But we are not...I would feel trapped.

I missed Ackbar a lot and all the butterflies I saw reminded me of him...because they are so beautiful like him.