"the worst night ever"

This last weekend, G and I went camping, proving yet again that we're not really meant for physical labor, er, I mean exercise. It was kind of a last minute thing. We'd both been a bit stressed and thought it'd be nice to get out of town and be active. But I had really wanted to get some info during the week before heading out so that we didn't just show up somewhere with no idea of what we were doing. And I wanted to backpack, which always takes a bit more planning, and well, packing. I didn't get a chance to do either during the week. So Thurs night, I suggested that maybe we shouldn't go, and just hang out at home over the weekend. G, ever the optimist, wondered what the big deal with planning was and thought we could just get up early Fri, pack up our stuff, and head out. Pick up some trail maps at the ranger station on the way in, and we'd be set.

So that's what we did. We went to Jennie Lakes Wilderness in Sequoia National Forest. And it all sounded good until we actually started heading out. For one thing, it took us most of the day to dig up our camping gear from the garage and get going. Plus we needed a few essentials along the way (like water), so that slowed us down too . So what thing leading to another, by the time we got to the area, not only was the ranger station closed - so no maps - but it was pitch black. I complained for most of the last hour about how terrible it was going to be to set up our tent in the dark. And we couldn't even pick the best campsite, dammit! I'm kind of like a broken record when it comes to whining too, so I'm sure it made for a fun car ride for G.

We get there and of course everything takes forever in the dark, pitching the tent, feeding the dogs, everything. But we finally get it together and G starts to build a fire. Except that the fire won't get going. No matter what we did, we just couldn't get it to take off. I think they had some rain a while back and that probably didn't help. We only had a little lighter too, and that at some point seemed like it was in danger of dying pretty soon, which would have been awesome. Anyway, G thought maybe it'd help to get the stove going, and use that to try to light the twigs and paper.

So we pulled that out of our backpack, and stumbled onto our next problem. The stove. So I should say that the stove is mine, but I haven't used it in like 5 years. So how was I to remember that it takes some special type of gas canister? Apparently it does, cuz we couldn't attach the canister for the life of us, and when we looked at the directions (also hard in the dark), we realized we might have a problem. So this is where we're at. It's almost 9 o'clock at night by this point. We have no fire, no stove, it's already pretty darn cold. I was in full bitch mood, complaining constantly about how it was the "worst night ever" and this is what we get for trying to do something without planning it properly. And isn't it just like G to assume everything would just work out on its own. On and on and on. Again, good times for G. And for any campers nearby who got to hear my little tirade.

We finally decided to just go to bed (and guess what, just as we were about to turn in, the fire started randomly, go figure). Anyway, you figure things can't get much worse when you're just sleeping, right? But no, within a couple of hours, we realize that its WAY TOO COLD for us to sleep. Even the dogs (who were all practically laying on top of us) were freezing. We tossed and turned for a while and finally, G thought it may be better to just go sleep in the car and turn on the heat for a while until we warmed up. So we did that, and it was a lot better in terms of heat but I don’t know how many of you have seen my car. The seats lay down in the back, but I definitely wouldn't call it roomy. Definitely not enough for 2 people and 3 dogs. The rest of my night consisted of me being twisted up in some position with a dog laying between me and G, and another at our heads, randomly stepping on my hair. The back of my car kind of slopes down too, so the whole night, we got to enjoy the comfortable feeling of sliding off a cliff. I'd say the only one comfortable that night was Bandit, who had the best seat in the house. We threw her a thrown the front seat, laid it back a little, and she seemed pretty darn content, lucky dog. What was awesome about that was that the front seat inclined back right into my legs, so guess who got to pay the price for her comfort?

Sat morning, we had breakfast. Got the fire going thank god - now that we realized that the trick was to start getting it going, and then do everything else we needed to do like take down our tent and pack up before it suddenly bursts into life, it was easy. We loaded up the car, did a day hike, and decided to drive home that day. And in retrospect, that was probably best for all of us, seeing as how we're all out of shape and probably couldn't have managed carrying two big packs around and hiking for 2 days straight. As it is, the dogs could barely move when we got home, and we weren't exactly in tip top shape either. So what do you know, I guess G is right after all. Things always do just work out. Yup, definitely the best camping trip I've ever been on.