Camping Extravaganza

I know I said I wasn’t going to write until Tuesday, but I couldn’t resist telling you about last night’s camping trip.
Friday afternoon, I texted one of my good friends from the college.:
“Hey, wanna do something this weekend”
“Sure. What do you want to do?”
This then progressed from a sleepover, to going to a dance, to camping. Camping sounded like one of the best ideas ever. We got two other people to agree to go with us. After awhile, we decided that it might be a good idea to find someone who’d let us borrow their tent. After 4 hours of trying to locate a tent, we had a “Mega Man” tent (4 people) and a “2 or 3 person tent”. At 7pm, we thought we were ready to go, but then a bunch of people decided that they were going to go swimming first. While they went swimming, one of my friends and I were sent to locate a campsite. We figured this would be easy because no one in their right mind goes camping in the middle of October. The first two campsites we tried had people at them, and the next 5 had gates across them. Finally, we found a campsite, except by then, we were so lost ourselves, that there was no way we’d be able to give other people directions, so we ended up going back to the pool and having them follow us. At 10pm, we got back to the campsite and had the great fortune of watching a car have no clue where they were going.
“Woah! There’s another car. I wonder who that is?”
“Are they going to drive into the lake?”
“Of course they aren’t going to drive into the lake”
“Well, where are they going then?”
“I don’t know”
“GUYS! THEY TOTALLY JUST DROVE INTO THE LAKE!!”
“No they did…. Ok, they did”
We then sat there and watched them sitting there with their front bumper in the water.
“You suppose they realize that they’re in the water?”
“I definitely think they realize that something isn’t right.”
The car then backed up and drove away and we all got out of our cars and burst out laughing. We just couldn’t help it. Water generally does not look like the road and usually, when a sign says “Boat Ramp” you don’t continue driving.

The 8 of us then hauled our stuff from our cars to the campsite. Me and another girl set up the two tents by the light of one large flashlight, while 2 guys gathered wood, 2 other people built a fire pit, one girl took a nap, and the last guy just kind of stood there and watched us. We set up the “Mega Man” tent (which I think looked like a mini circus tent) with the guidance of a couple kids who were ORL students and actually knew how to set the tent up. After setting up the 2-person tent, we realized we’d put it on a bed of rocks, so we decided we would just use it to store all of our stuff. The 8 of us then proceeded to stand around the fire and make s’mores. As I looked around that campfire, I realized “This is what friends are. They put up with your crazy idea to go camping when it’s already pitch black out and freezing cold. They convince you that you can manage to get a tent pitched in the dark. They make endless trips to get more sticks to burn. They laugh with you while dancing around the campfire to rap music. And the craziest thing is that they willingly agreed to come camping with you.” Around midnight, 3 people decided to go back to campus for the night. Of the 5 of us that remained, 4 of us (myself included) were wimps that slept in the “Mega Man” tent with our sleeping bags that were probably rated for about 40 degrees. The 5th kid was an ORL student who had a sleeping bag rated for -50 so he was nice and toasty while sleeping under the stars. At 7AM, we finally decided that we would give up on sleeping in the supposedly 28 degree weather, put out the fire, pack up, and go back to campus.
Even though I was exhausted by the time we finally set up our tents, I had the most fun that I’d had in a long time. Some of us even decided that we’re going again next weekend… but we’re going to plan ahead, find someone with a big tent we can use with the sides actually attached to the floor (no offense to the “Mega Man”), bring LOTS and LOTS of blankets, and we are going to pitch our tent and find firewood in the daylight (a novel idea, I know).

The mountains looked even sweeter at about midnight, but I don't think my camera would have taken a very good picture of them then.