Monday, July 23, 2007

Let the camping begin

Happy 4th Lil' Rocky


























Let the camping begin

I was up around 730am to begin our busy day and our family camp trip. I quickly knocked out my exercises, a walk with Ykraps, and my morning run. But even before setting out on my run I got the sprinkler running as part of my ongoing effort to keep the lawn lush. I was back home to get things underway before 9am. Before doing anything else, I spent a good 20 minutes thoroughly manually watering the flower beds, pots, and baskets.

With the watering complete, I got busy loading Mindy’s van with the coolers and bedding. We had both vehicles packed high and tight. I took a quick shower before setting out on our four day adventure in the woods. To accommodate the gear and the kids, Jacob rode with me and Bella with her mother. We had talked of departing around 10am but didn’t leave the house until nearly 11am. But that was fine. We were in good shape and had no real deadline. It wasn’t as sunny as I thought it would be. The sun continued ducking in and out of clouds all morning.

We stopped at the Hilliard Cemetery Rd Kroger to ice up the coolers. We had five of them! I bought four 22lb bags as well as a bottle of raspberry vodka. I noticed that one of my trailer’s taillights was hanging form the trailer frame covering the license plate. I told Mindy that I was going to stop at Paul’s Marine on our way up to buy the new light fixture.

Meanwhile, we were all getting really hungry. In our haste to get on the road we skipped breakfast. We agreed to make a pit stop at Wendy’s before getting back on the freeway. We arrived at Paul’s Marine only to discover that they were closed on Monday’s. Mindy seemed to remember that being the case from a trip I made up last year (good memory).

We went on to Alum Creek and arrived just after noon. The young woman at the park office let us know that we might not be able to set up camp for sometime yet. She said check-in wasn’t supposed to be until 1pm. She let us head in just the same. Our site – G29 was still occupied but we could tell that they were loading up. We parked in a nearby site and took a walk giving them plenty of time to clear the site. By the time we returned from our walk the site was clear and we began setting up.

Mindy and I worked well together setting up camp. It wasn’t too long before we had our three tents and screen house all set up along with all the other miscellaneous gear. We began preparing for an afternoon on the boat around 230pm. And just as we were ready to head over to the camp dock Bob Imber arrived. We all drove to the dock. Bob took his own vehicle to make his departure that much easier as he couldn’t stay too long.

Bob & Mindy tubed and skied. The kids got a big kick watching Bob tube. He did really well and took quite a pounding. Unfortunately, he wasn’t quite as impressive on the skis. J And not to be shown up, Mindy got a rectal cleansing during an impressive water skiing tumble. She laid there floating in agony for several minutes all the while we looked hopelessly on unable to provide tangible help. She eventually recovered and then Jacob tried skiing. He had no luck, but we applauded his effort, anyhow. We cruised back to the dock to drop Bob around 5pm. He wanted to be home in time to greet Mary Ann. We wished him well on his coming trip to Ocracoke.

We boated & played well past 6pm when we finally called it a day and returned to our cove & camp. We could easily see our boat from our site. That made it really convenient. We prepared our dinner – chili dogs - and put the kids to bed in their own tent around 9pm. We went to bed ourselves just after 10pm.

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