Camping

It had been disgustingly hot all day and we’d been standing in line in the sun or standing on ship decks in the sun.  The only shade was what was created by other people standing near us or the brief darkness as we slipped below decks on the HMS Bounty.



But very cool, all that rigging and the sails and the guy dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow.



Upon returning to our campground I bicycled up to the bathroom, eager to shower off the sweat and grime of the day.  The showers require quarters.  8 of them, for three minutes of water.  I soak my washcloth in the sink and scrub the important parts.  Then I stick my head under the faucet and shampoo my hair in the sink.  Take that, stupid campground.

***

We head north to Gooseberry, set up our tent, crack a couple of beers, and char some hamburgers over the fire.  Ahhh, perfect. 

Thunderbolt and lightning, very very frightening! 

We sprint with our deck of cards and our annual camping Rummy 500 Tournament to the campground shelter where I proceed to beat the mister rather soundly.  This never happens. 

We later discover that our tent is waterproof to a point.  That point is 3 hours in to an all-night thunderstorm.  The tent springs a leak right over the mister’s head. I find this hilarious.  The mister does not.

***


We’ve spent a day hiking and walking and dipping our toes in the Gooseberry River.  We’ve had our beers and our charred hot dogs and played our nightly game of rummy, where I lost.  I knit on the sweater I brought, the only knitting I packed to make sure I would FINISH IT, as it was supposed to be a 30th birthday gift for the mister.  His 31st birthday is in a month.

We’re in bed in our tent and the mister is sound asleep.  So soundly that he doesn’t hear the clankity-bang of critters getting into our trash because we forgot to tie it up and put it in the pick-up.  I get up and scare away a pack of raccoons.

He sleeps with noise canceling ear plugs when we camp.  I’m not that brave.  I’m afraid that I won’t hear the creepy serial killer sneaking up on us.  Because serial killers totally hang out in state parks on the North Shore. 

***


It’s a foggy morning and we’re strolling along the shore, watching the fog eddy and flow over the rocky outcroppings.  The mister spots something in the distance.  One of the tall ships we’d toured earlier in the week, sliding out of the fog on the lake.  Eerie and awesome.  We sit for the better part of an hour, watching the ship.



***

We’re touring Split Rock Lighthouse and suddenly I look at the mister. 
“Hey,” I say.  “It’s our anniversary.”
“Happy anniversary,” he replies.
We forget again ten minutes later.




***

He goes mountain biking.  I do not.  I hate mountain biking and, frankly, am eager for a little respite from the run-go-do-see-hike-busy-busy-busy approach the mister has to vacations.  He’s not much for relaxing, that one, and I am.  So I stick my knitting and a granola bar in my pack and hike up the river for a mile or two until I find the perfect ledge over-looking the river, with a flat spot for sitting and a rock perfect for resting my back.  I settle in, pull my knitting out of the bag, and have a glorious hour of peace and calm. 




***

We sit in traffic on 35 southbound, sunburned and tired, our gear packed and stuffed in the bed of the pickup. 

He rolls his head towards me, “Good vacation?”
I grin and slip my fingers into his. “Great vacation.”

Camping

The mister and I spent the weekend camping on the shores of Lake Belle Taine in northern Minnesota.

It rained.

I mean, it was sunny for enough of the weekend that we didn't pack up the tent and head for home, but it rained. We're talking deluges of biblical proportions. It rained so hard that you couldn't hear the individual drops tap-tappitying on the tent. It sounded instead like someone was flinging five-gallon buckets of water at us.

The mister and I can end droughts when we camp. Desert hasn't seen precipitation in 6 months? Oh, well, we'll plan a trip and pitch a tent and fix that drought for you. Northern Minnesota facing drought? We'll roll out our sleeping bags and produce 3 inches of rain in an hour. No worries.

Despite the dampness of the weekend, we had a good time, getting in some fishing (the mister), some book reading (me) and a shameful amount of bacon consumption (both of us).




"Papa, I'll help roll up the tent!"

Mille Lacs

The mister and I spent last weekend camping on the shores of Mille Lacs Lake with his sister and her husband.

And our three dogs.



It was bitterly cold and the wind howled pretty much the entire weekend. It was too windy to take a boat out onto the lake, go bike riding, or do anything more exciting than take a walk and huddle near the campfire. But we still had a good time. I found a yarn store in Isle and scored two balls of wool sheared off the yarn store owner's own sheep. I then wondered how quickly I could knit it up into something warm; could I make a hat before bedtime?

It was Charlie's first ever camping trip (we've dropped him off at someone else's house every time we've gone out of town), and he did really well. The only bad part came when he got cold and wanted in my sleeping bag. With me. That got crowded and I ended up booting him out and using my jacket to cover him up instead.


He begged shamelessly for food all weekend long.


My sister in law and her husband with their two dogs. You can see that my sister in law is wearing a lot of clothing. In fact, in this photo, I think she's rocking long johns, wool socks, jeans, 4 shirts, a jacket, a wool hat, and mittens. In May. Welcome to Minnesota.

Vacation

The mister and I took a trip to Moab, Utah.

Our first night led us to a cheap hotel in Omaha, Nebraska. It was pouring rain and about 9:00 at night, so we decided against camping and instead stayed someplace warm and dry.

The next day, after getting through Denver, we pitched our tent in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, which is about the cutest town ever. It was beautiful. It snowed.





From Glenwood Springs we made the short drive to Fruita, Colorado, a little place in the middle of nowhere with great mountain biking. The mister mountain biked. I tooled around the campground and found nice spots to read a book. I went on a three-mile “beginner” mountain bike with the mister and nearly died. Their definition of “beginner” is not the same as mine, because the beginner trail had obstacles even the mister was a little scared of. I walked for about 2 miles of the 3 mile trail.



The state park we stayed in charged for showers. As in, if you want to be clean and smell nice, you must drop quarters into the shower like you would a vending machine. The sign on the wall stated that this was to encourage water conservation. I have two issues with this. (1) I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a campground shower, but they are not places one is inclined to linger. Much like the showers in a freshman dorm, campground showers are the kinds of places you wear flip flops and are very careful to keep any of your naked bits from coming in to contact with any surface other than your own towel. (2) This place ran the sprinklers for over an hour at night; how serious about water conservation can they be?

After Fruita we headed into Moab. I love Moab. Arches National Park is just outside the town and Canyonlands isn’t very far (though we never did make it there). It’s all red rock and sage bushes and spectacular scenery. It’s dusty, and very hot and dry there, but so beautiful.

We ended up camping up on BLM land because the state park campgrounds in the area were full. The campground was significantly more primitive, mostly just a 4-wheel drive trail hacked into the side of a plateau with a couple of clearings where you could pitch tents and the occassional picnic table. And the most disgusting pit toilet I’ve ever encountered. Seriously foul. Of course, when your campsite looks like this, the icky pit toilet gets balanced out.



It also lacked showers, something I came to want desperately on our second day there, when the blowing sand had worked its way inside all of my clothing, and I was sweaty and dirty from hiking around in 90 degree heat. Luckily, we packed a portable camp shower. While not as good as the real deal, it works in a pinch. Unluckily, there was no tree high enough to hang it from, which meant I had the option of resting it on top of the truck and showering in my swimsuit in plain view of everyone else in the campground (oh, hell no) or taking it behind a bush and sort-of half-assing a shower using a Dixie cup.

We spent three nights in Moab, with the mister mountain biking in the mornings while I hiked and shot pictures, and then we’d spend the afternoons walking around Arches National Park.











We chowed at the Moab Brewery, which I strongly recommend, and I spent a couple hours on our last day poking around the little shops in town while the mister did some really serious riding, which resulted in a sprained ankle. The good thing is that this happened on our last day and he was able to rest while I drove the very long 19 hours home.



More pics here.

The Incident in the Bike Store Bathroom

***I'm waiting for the mister to finish up at a bike store in Moab, Utah, and I found a free wireless connection, so I'm posting this. Pictures and other tales from our vacation will be posted upon our return to the great white north.***

I have issues with my digestive tract. I used to be able to eat anything, anywhere, and be just fine. See Semester in Guadalajara, Mexico, eating strange things from street vendors with only minor consequences. But in more recent years, my stomach and intestines have asserted that they will no longer be cooperative. Despite increased water and fiber intakes, I waffle between crippling constipation, nausea, and a sudden, urgent need to poop. The kind of sudden, urgent need that results in a clenched-cheek speed-walk to the nearest facility, accompanied by ominous rumblings and gurglings and muttered prayers that I not embarrass myself in public.

The mister and I were in a bicycle shop in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, a couple of hours west of Denver. He was chatting with the store employee, looking at a topographical map of the area and discussing the best places to go for a mountain bike ride. I was perusing the sale racks, contemplating whether or not I needed a $15 fleece zip-up jacket when suddenly, the NEED struck.

Oh, God, I thought, looking around for a bathroom. Oh, God. I hurried up to the desk and jumped right into the middle of the conversation. “Excuse me,” I said, doing my best to look calm and appear like I wasn’t about to crap in my pants, “do you have a ladies room?”

The clerk nodded and sent me towards a door covered in mountain biking posters. I did my business and zipped and buttoned up. Then I hit the handle to flush.

Jiggle clank. No flushing. I hit the handle harder. Jiggle clank. No flushing. I panicked and shook the handle up and down like a mad woman. Jiggle clank jiggle jiggle clank. NO FLUSHING.

Panic.

Since, courtesy of owning a home, I know a little bit about toilets and their inner workings, I slipped the top off the toilet tank, hoping the problem would make itself clear.

It did.

There was no water in the tank. No water in the tank equals a failure to flush.

Of course, knowing a problem and being able to remedy a problem are two very different things.

Okay, I thought to myself. If there’s no water in the tank, the toilet can’t flush. So, in order to flush, which I desperately need to do because yuck, I need to get water in the tank. The sink’s on the other side of the room, so I need a bucket to carry water in to fill the tank.

I looked around the room, wild-eyed in panic. No buckets. But there was a tiny blue plastic garbage can!

I pulled the bag out of the can and filled the can with water. I poured the water into the tank and was crestfallen when it only amounted to an inch in the bottom of the tank. Not enough to flush. I hurriedly filled and emptied my little makeshift bucket a couple of more times, getting a grand total of six inches of water in the tank, not even half full.

It’ll have to do, I thought, and I pressed the handle again. The toilet only sort of flushed. It made the right kind of noises, but didn’t really do much of the whole down the drain part.

I debated going through the whole rigmarole again, filling the tank with the little garbage can, but by this point in time I’d been the bathroom for an unreasonable length of time, even by my standards, and I had to get out of there.

I hurriedly reassembled the tank, tucked the garbage bag back into the can, and bolted out of there.

I snagged the black fleece jacket off the sale rack and tossed it on the counter, figuring the poor employee was going to find what I left in that bathroom and the least I could do was bump up his commission a little bit. While paying, I gave the mister the look that says wrap it up now, buddy, or I’ll make you very sorry. He obeys this look, as I have perfected it and the consequences for ignoring it over the course of our seven year relationship and he knows I only bust it out when I mean it.

He quickly thanked the clerk, purchased the topographical map, and we were out of there.

“What the hell were you doing in the bathroom for so long?” he asked.

Gone Fishin'

The mister and I are headed out of town.

See you in a week!

St. Croix Pictures

The mister and I went on vacation. It was awesome. I finally got the pictures off my camera. Here are some of them. Bad shots of me in my swimsuit, scuba gear, or clutching a rum drink will not be posted.

Our hotel:

The beach where we did our scuba diving:

The mister, taking a swim:

Me, rock climbing (our four wheel drive jeep guide is standing there to make sure I didn't break my face):

The jeep from the jeep tour:

Beach:

St. Croix sunset:

Back to the Paperwork Mines

Vacation. It was nice. The Caribbean is warm. Scuba-diving is amazing, once you get past the freaky feeling of breathing under water and the tendency to hold your breath. We saw a shark, a sea turtle, a little baby sea horse, and lots of beautiful fish and coral.

We took a four-wheel drive jeep tour of the island. I got pretty scrambled in the back seat, but it was pretty fun. The jeep tour ended at some tide pools where we got to rock climb our way into the pools. It was beautiful.

I’m the worst vacationer ever in that I never take pictures. I’m either too busy or too lazy to dig out the camera. The mister took a couple though, so eventually I’ll get them off the camera and post them.

Our flights home were all screwed up and we ended up getting home far later than originally planned, and my poor younger brother ended up picking us up at the airport after his bedtime, but we brought him some cigars (not Cubans), so he was okay with it.

When we left Minnesota it was summer’s last gasp: warm, sunny, and green, but heading for fall. When we came home it was chilly, damp, and leaves had turned shades of crimson and gold. Officially fall.

And now I’m back and headed to work.

I had a full week of no digestive issues (other than my usual traveler’s issues, which were actually pretty mild). No unexplained nausea. No heartburn, despite copious amounts of spicy food and rum. No vomiting. Nothing. I slept hard at night and slept all night, from the moment we stretched out on the crummy hotel bed until the sun heated our room to unbearable temperatures in the morning. No anxiety-ridden dreams, no knots of tension in my belly, no insomnia, stress or worry.

And then Sunday, 12 hours before I had to go back to work, I found myself with an upset stomach and shaky hands. I only slept a couple of hours and woke up at 3 a.m., unable to get back to sleep.

Interesting, no?

Coming to you live, kind of crispy and a little drunk, from the Caribbean

The mister and I are currently lounging in St. Croix, sipping icy drinks made of local rum, and watching the world go by.

I am now a certified PADI scuba diver, as is the mister.

We made the horrible mistake of going snorkeling over a hurricane-damaged coral reef in high waves and ended up getting dragged over some very sharp coral. Ouch. At least the coral was dead, which means the risk of nasty infection goes down a good deal.

I have the strangest collection of tan/burn lines from my swimsuit, various t-shirts and tank tops, the buoyancy vest I wore while scuba-diving, my dive mask, and two different kinds of flip flops. My entire body is various shades of red and tan, I smell like Hawaiian Tropic SPF 70, and I mostly feel like a chicken nugget: crispy, fried, and a little greasy.

It is incredibly hot here, particularly if the ocean breeze is blocked. I have yet to find a ladylike way of sitting that does not require one part of my skin to touch any other part, which basically means I don't sit like a lady. I don't much care.

I also have developed a new and rather refreshing comfort with my body flaws. I have a woman's awareness of my shape and the shape of my shapes, a trait that means I don't often walk around in just my swimsuit - there's usually a cover-up, wrap, sarong, or long t-shirt involved. Down here, though, it is just too stinking hot for that kind of neurosis, which means I walk around in my bikini, bulges and body image be damned.

We have sampled much of the local rum. The mister has discovered a drink called a Bushwacker. We have no idea what's in it, but whatever it is, it will get you tipsy in a hurry.

All in all, being on vacation is awesome.

Vacation

So, hey, enough doom and gloom for a little while.

Exciting news: the mister and I are headed to St. Croix in the Virgin Islands for a week. We leave Saturday morning.

I am super excited. We’re hoping to do some scuba-ing, some snorkeling, some fishing, some hiking, some lolling around in the sunshine, and plenty of relaxing.

My parents, world travelers that they are, have a time share. My senior year of college they gave me a week in Mazatlan and two of my roommates and I spent that week boogie boarding, swimming, and goofing off. We didn’t actually do the go-out-and-get-hammered route much because (1) Mazatlan spring break traffic sucks, and; (2) we were so tired from days playing in the ocean that we just wanted to hang out at the hotel.

My parents repeated their gift for my brother during his senior (well, senior-ish) year of college – he and his buddies went to Acapulco for a week. I think the boys partied much harder than my girls and I did.

My parents gave the mister and I this week in the Virgin Islands because the mister and I didn’t really have a honeymoon.

We were dead broke after paying for the wedding and my barely working for 3 months while I studied for the bar, so we just packed up our new tent and headed for the North Shore.

We ended up having to come home early because a wicked storm blew one of our maple trees onto our roof.

So, out of pity (and probably because this was a use-it-or-lose-it week) my folks gave us a week in the Virgin Islands.

If ever there was a time I needed a vacation, this is it. So, yay!

All About the Weekend

So, my pal B and I made our annual pilgrimage to the North Shore this past weekend. We always head out of town on a Friday, set up a tent somewhere north of Duluth, and goof off.

We’ve had some adventures over the past few years. Pouring rain. Freezing cold. Unlightable fire wood. Random encounters with boys old enough to buy us liquor (this was with pal Little Shrub and was before the mister, when none of us could legally have booze).

Last year it got down to 29 or 30 degrees at night. That, ladies and gentlemen, is cold when one is sleeping in a tent. We wore hats to bed. And hoods. That were tied tight under our chins. And several pairs of pants. And socks.

It was COLD.

This year, the weather cooperated. Other than a 10 minutes rain shower early Saturday morning, we had lovely weather.

We were able to light fires both nights, using only one match the first night and two matches the second. This is a record for us, folks.

Our campsite, while not as dramatically lovely as the one last year, was just a few yards from the lake shore and a good distance from traffic (both the vehicle kind and the kind that heads for the campground bathroom at 6 a.m.).

We rode the alpine slide for nearly 6 hours. There was only one major mishap where an old lady was going too slow, causing the boy behind her to have to go too slow. B came whizzing around a corner and, as it was too late and she was going too fast to stop, she bashed into the boy. She managed to flag me down so I slowed down without the crashing, but the guy behind me smashed into me pretty darned hard. Whiplash for everyone!

We did some walking along the lakeshore and some hiking in Gooseberry State Park.

It was a lovely weekend.

Now for the mishaps:

While wading in the Gooseberry River a leech attached itself to B’s foot, right between her toes. When she discovered said blood-sucking parasite, she bellowed, in the crispest, most precise pronunciation I’ve ever heard, “Fucking leech!”

I backed the mister’s truck into a picnic table. It’s a big truck and we had a relatively small campsite and just as I was congratulating myself on how good I’ve gotten at driving the beast…THUNK. There’s a small dent and some red paint transfer from the table.

I wasn’t too worried about his reaction since (1) he loves me, (2) it’s not a Ferrari nor a vehicle he has spent hours restoring, and (3) he put the first scratch on my motorcycle, but I was a little nervous.

His response was priceless. I brought him over to the truck, he looked at the boo-boo, shrugged his shoulders and said, “do you need any help unpacking?”

That was it.

When I pressed him, he goes, “Honey, it’s a truck. Most of it will buff out and for the rest of it, trucks get scratches. It’s what they’re for. Who cares?”

The mister had his own mishaps while I was out of town. He scored some freebie tickets to a musical thinking I’d want to go. When he figured out that I’d be gone, he took his mom. That’s right, my nearly-30 year old husband took his mom on a date on Friday night. And he managed to run into one of my bosses at the restaurant they had dinner at. I think he was debating flinging himself in front of traffic when he ran into my boss, so I guess that part is good.

Then, after dropping his mom off at home, he managed to forget his house keys down there, so, upon arriving back at our house, he tried to break in. If you come over and think the window in my kitchen is all fucked up, you’d be right.

The mister, after realizing his juvenile delinquent days are too far gone, couldn’t break in without breaking a window, so he called my brother, who has a spare key. Brother was drinking, however, and was in no shape to drive, so the mister headed up there to pick up the spare key and ended up staying for a drink or ten.

So, an interesting weekend all around.

Pictures from South Dakota

The mister rock climbing. I was huffing and puffing after him, sweating my ass off.

The car we drove. It made those flat, straight stretches go by nice and fast.

I bought this hat to keep the sun of my delicate, skin-cancer prone skin, but it was too hot to wear it, so I made the mister wear it (didn't want to carry it, either), and as he walked in front of the sunset, I caught this shot.

Hi, I'm back

Hi. I’ve been gone for a while.

The mister and I took a week and went camping in the Badlands and Black Hills (pictures forthcoming). He had some extra PTO and I…well, I wanted to get out of town, so we went. Other than one incident where I threatened to push him off the very high hill he’d made me climb (a four mile VERTICAL hike) without (1) telling me that’s where we were going so I could plan and wear better shoes and shorts long enough to prevent EVIL WICKED CHAFING, and;(2) feeding me, we had a really nice time. It was ungodly hot in the Badlands, which is what led to our deciding the Black Hills were a better choice for camping. The presence of trees and running water helped make things tolerable.

We got back Friday and debated going up to Duluth for the air-show (not my idea, but I do love Duluth) but the forecasted severe weather and pouring rain made us decide against pitching a tent up north. Instead we lazed about, swam, biked, saw the new Batman movie and did not do a single thing with any redeemable value. Seriously. If we weren’t goofing off, we were crashed on the couch with delivery pizza, watching bad, bad TV. We even rented the second National Treasure movie, despite knowing it was total crap, because it featured Mount Rushmore and, hey, we’d just been there!

It was lovely.

He and I have both been so incredibly busy this summer that it was nice to have some “just the two of us” time where we weren’t thinking or worrying about work, dealing with home improvement nightmares, prying family members out of all sorts of interesting problems, or doing anything stressful.

And now we’re back.

And now I’m in a funk. It’s the typical vacation-is-over-I’m-so-sad funk, combined with a little of the same work-related malaise I was feeling before heading out of town. I’ll get over it. Particularly since the mister and I will be heading out of town at the end of September for some scuba diving in the Caribbean.

It’s good to have things to look forward to.

Side note:

To friend M.S., formerly known as “Little Shrub”: Happy belated one year anniversary.