Camping

I've done a lot of camping this summer. Yup, sleeping in a tent, bugspray, the whole nine yards. And It was awesome.

First we went sort of warm up camping... we stayed in a cabin by Cayuga Lake and cooked hot dogs and s'mores. In fact, that's all we ate for 3 days. How's that for healthy nutrition?

Next we decided that while "cabining" was fun, we needed to go big or go home. So we planned a trip to the Adirondacks. Off we went... five recent graduates; quite a cast of characters. Myself - the clown, and inexperienced camper - my mom thinks camping is primative and disgusting- Nicole - the Seinfeld-esqe storyteller and experienced camper, Meredith- the uber-nice bookworm, Haley - the outgoing and slightly crazy one who is very into her music, and Meg- the crazy smart but absolutely insane future neuroscientist.

So when we finally got there, after a very interesting car ride, we pull onto this dirt road which is not on any maps, and definately not recognized by our spastic GPS, and ride on down to campsite number 70, situated in our own little private piece of forrest, with an outstanding view of a lake I never actually found out the name of. A really beautiful setting.

We unload the truck and set up the tent in record time...all in beautiful weather. That was our one hour of good weather for the entire trip. It rained the rest of the time... like nonstop. dry socks were a luxury. For some of us who were really unlucky, dry clothes were a luxury. The tent was soaked, we were soaked to the bone, and while you would expect that to mean a miserable camping trip, it was actually quite fantastic.

We took two hikes, one on a deer trail down by the lake, and one on a trail called something like bare rock trail... it had a lot of bare rock. The view from the top of the bare rock trail was absolutely phenomenal. We also explored town (with umbrellas of course) and bought this sickly-sweet maple syrup candy that melted in the little bag in like 6 seconds. Later, we saw the movie UP. It was great.

The wildlife was also cool. One night we had a mother duck and her ducklings come up form the lake right to our campsite. We fed them bread - they were sooo cute.

Our other wildlife experience was a little more frightening. As we were driving back down the dirt road, we saw a bear in the distance. Yeah, an actual bear. A baby one. We called it the mini-bear, and had lots of fun trying to take pictures of it (from the safety of the truck of course). Then Meredith wisely mumbled, "yeah, but now there's a bear here." Oh yeah. Party pooper. Apparently the signs about not leaving food or garbage out at your campsite, as to not attract bears, were not for aestetic purposes.

Our last camping trip was a little less dangerous. We camped at Highmeadow campgrounds, and went to Hershey Park all day. This time I went with Jess- the mellow, conservative one, Nicole, Haley, Mary- the worldly, outgoing one (whom my grandmother loves because she's been to Italy), Joanna and Richard - the twins, and their Polish father, whom we called Tulek (that's not his actual name). The drive down took longer than we thought it would, especially with Tulek driving like a maniac. Seriously, why would you speed up around turns and slow down on straight-aways? Later, he almost jumped a curb like a ramp.

Anyway, once we got to the campground, we started to set up camp and realized that we had a problem... Nicole had brought the tent... but not the tent poles. Oops. We ended up hanging the tent from a tree with the strings from the rain tarp. It was cool, but actually, our "ghetto tent" went relatively unused as only 3 of us slept in it, and only for one of the two nights. So it ends up that forgetting the poles was not catastrophic, but rather, hysterically funny. How do you bring the tent but not the tent poles?

The theme park was awesome. my favorite coaster was farienheight (sp?), a coaster that brings you up very slowly at a 90 degree angle, so you feel like you're ready to launch in a space shuttle, and then you go down a 97 degree drop, followed by a flurry of loops, corkskrews, and barrel rolls that can make your head spin (and hurt).

The second night we all slept under the stars, and overalll, this camping trip and themepark extravaganza was a great experience. And we got chocolate!!