Back from camping

I'm pleased to report that i survived camping in the pacific northwest this weekend. By that i mean...it started raining Saturday at about 5pm and didn't stop....ever.

Jon on Friday before we got the tarps up and
during one of the few brief moments of sunlight

Between the crows pillaging our campsite twice, the showers eating the tokens without giving hot water, the absurd prices of firewood (3 bundles for 17$), and the tarp AND TENT leaking.....we should have had a miserable time. Yet, i can't think of any single point that i was unhappy. Even picking up after the crows...wasn't a big deal. We learned a couple lessons but for the most part, our advance planning saved a lot of frustration. There's just a bit more planning needed. There was bound to be some trial and error period.

The first problem we noticed was the grill that i had brought was HORRIBLE for cooking on. The eggs we made took forever to cook, and water took at least a half hour to get to coffee temperature. It's a great grill, i'm sure, but it's a horrible camp stove. But it was free so i didn't worry too much. The Boyscout in Boyfriend Jon came out and he started talking about all the gear he wanted to buy for himself. Perhaps for this entry i should refer to him as Boyscout Jon. He decided that now was a good time to purchase a Coleman camp stove and we were saved. After that, we had no more meal related problems.

But the rain wasn't going to let us off the hook. We got our tarps up Saturday Morning after some creative roping and using a few of the telescoping poles i had borrowed from my dad. I even managed to remember a few of the knots i had learned several years ago, when i taught a knot tying class. But when it came to a spot were we had different sized ropes, my brain went blank. I could see the image in my head, but how to do it or what it was called was completely eluding me. Boyscout Jon came to the rescue with a sheet bend.

Sometimes it got a little too cold to sit next to the campfire with our e-readers. So we retreated into the tent. There, we quickly bundled up into our sleeping bags and kept reading with just our eyes and a couple fingers poking out of the bags. Every now and then we would look over at each other and start laughing over some line in the story we were reading or the fact that we were bundled up like Eskimos. But the important thing was that we were throughly enjoying ourselves. I'm sure our neighbors got a little tired of us starting to laugh hysterically for no apparent reason to anyone outside our little world.

We probably should have noticed the warning signs earlier...spots of water at the bottom of our sleeping bags, or the small puddle forming at the tent opening. But it wasn't until the middle of the night that we started realizing we were slowly being soaked. The pads we were sleeping on were foam and quickly absorbed the water and it started creeping toward us. Our clothes and gear in the tent, had to be moved to higher ground and we had to pull our pillows away from the walls.

My only real gripe was the mats we decided to try for sleeping on were very uncomfortable. I'm still an air mattress girl. But given that Jon had trouble waking me up one night, i still slept soundly. Oh yeah, and i managed to not be a controlling, freaked out, nut job. Go me!

Things we'll do differently:

1. waterproof the tent BEFORE leaving. 
2. buy a new tarp and new ropes
3. buy camp cups...the one thing we both totally forgot. 
4. figure out new sleeping pads/cots/air mattresses. 

But in the end, every problem that arose we had a solution for. Every issue got dealt with. And we left the camp soaking wet, freezing cold, tired as hell, and holding hands.