Sunday, June 2, 2013

My First Camping Trip - Part 1

About a month ago, for reasons I no longer remember, I was seized with the sudden urge to go camping.  It's something I think about doing every so often, but never seriously enough to get my shit together and actually go do it.  But this time I texted my best friend A (incidentally, the only person I know who goes camping...and therefore has the gear with which to do so...heh) and said "we need to go camping."  And thus, my very first camping trip was born.

A lives near Detroit, and I'm in Cincinnati, so we decided that somewhere roughly halfway between would be good.  We had issues finding a campground that was both available (apparently I waited a bit too long to have my camping urge, since we chose Memorial Day weekend) and had showers (a must for A), but we ended up settling on Grand Lake St Marys State Park, which is just a few miles outside of Wapakoneta (where Neil Armstrong grew up, for the uneducated among you).

Wapakoneta's about 2 hours up 75 from here, and it's an easy enough drive (I even got to see Hug Me Jesus - sadly, I remain unsaved).  The park isn't far off the interstate, but when you start seeing signs for tractor pulls, you know you're in the boonies.  The park entrance was easy to find, and I checked in at the office, turned the corner, and was immediately blown away by just how many PEOPLE were there.  Seriously!  People everywhere!  I'm not exactly sure what I expected, but this was most certainly not it.  The campsites were very close together (to me, although I'm a camping virgin, so what do I know), and virtually every single one was already occupied.  I found our site and parked, but A wasn't due for another three hours yet.  I didn't want to just sit there like a moron with no tent to pitch and have everyone around me staring at me wondering why the new dumbass was sitting around not pitching her tent yet even though it was 7pm and the sun would be setting soonish (b/c the world really is all about me, you see), so I decided to go for a walk.  I discovered later that the park itself is in disconnected little sections surrounding Grand Lake (which is huge, by the way), but the camping section is fairly small.  Just the campgrounds, a "trail" that doesn't really even deserve the name, a tiny camp store, a playground area, a nature center that wasn't much more than a shed (I never did go inside).  They did have an outdoor movie screen set up and a little bitty concession stand.  I checked the schedule, and Saturday night was For the Love of Benji, and Sunday was Benji: Off the Leash! - hardly riveting stuff, so we opted not to take part.  The place wasn't big, so my walk didn't last too terribly long, so ultimately I just bit the bullet, pulled out my camp chair and my Kindle, and settled in to wait.

Our campsite was largely in the shade, which would have been fabulous had it been about 20 degrees warmer.  As it was, it was in the 60s and low 70s all weekend, so after the sun set, it got pretty chilly.  A got there close to ten, at which point I was bundled up with only a tiny part of my face showing!  Setting up a tent at 10 o'clock at night in the dark with tiny lanterns was interesting, to say the least, especially for my first tent experience!  A couldn't find her stake mallet, so we borrowed our neighbor's - and then they were nice and brought over their nice big bright lantern for us to use while we finished pitching the tent.  Sadly, we never did ask their names.

I had gotten a sleeping bag just that day, and vacillated b/t the 10-30 degree big and tall option, and the 30-50 degree tall option.  I ended up with the warmer weather one, b/c 1) I didn't think I'd do much camping in below freezing weather, 2) it was $12 cheaper, and 3) it was a prettier color (I have my priorities, after all).  When I woke up shivering at 3:30 that first night, I was thinking perhaps I should have invested in the roomier, warmer option.  :/  First, I put my fleece jacket on over my hooded sweatshirt.  That didn't help.  So I dug out my knitted (by me) wool scarf, which I'd almost left at home, and wrapped it around my head like a turban.  That helped, but not much.  Then I put two more pairs of socks on, and that finally stopped the shivering.  I checked the weather on my phone - 45 degrees.  Cold, but not enough that I would have expected to be quite so uncomfortable.  When I woke up the next morning, I couldn't feel either of my big toes, and my nose was an ice cube - that, combined with the dire need to pee, got me up and going at 7:30 on my vacation!

We lazed around most of the day.  Being so cold the night before, I just could not warm up.  It didn't help that our campsite turned out to be in the shade most of the day.  I kept looking at everyone walking around in T-shirts and shorts and thinking how crazy they were - I was still wearing my fleece on top of my sweats!  Close to lunch time, we decided to walk up to the camp store to see if they had any coffee or hot chocolate (we were cold!).  As soon as we got out into the sun, it warmed up by several degrees - no wonder everyone else was wearing less clothing than us!  The store did not have hot drinks (alas), but we did score some ice for the coolers and a couple bundles of firewood.  And as we were leaving, a very pleasant older woman driving a golf cart drove by and offered to drive our stuff to our site for us.  Score!  We saw a lot of volunteers - we assumed - driving around in golf carts over the weekend checking on people and helping out, which was pretty cool.

Lunch was our first attempt at a campfire.  We attempted to warm a pot of refried beans on the built in grill over the fire - a semi-successful endeavor.  Lukewarm counts, right?  The fire didn't really stay lit for very long, but we learned some helpful tips and did much better at dinner.  (Our afternoon hunt for medium sized wood helped - for lunch all we had were tiny sticks and big logs).  After eating, we took our chairs and a game to the beach and hung out there for awhile.  A group of guys passed by us and commented on our game - if I'd been the outgoing type, we may have hunted them down later on to see if they wanted to join us in some games, but I'm not the approaching strangers type.  Ah, well.  Evening brought a more successful campfire, and hot dogs (of the vegetarian variety) and roasted veggies made over the fire.  Wilderness skills!  The veggie dogs weren't bad...especially with mustard and cheese, hehe.  We sat around the fire for awhile, and turned in earlyish.  This time, I bundled up - including wearing both pairs of sweat pants I brought - from the beginning.  That, combined with a warmer nighttime temperature (51 degrees) kept me warmer that night, although I still had to wake up my big toes the next morning.

This has turned out to be a long post, so part 2 to follow...

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