Camp-a-thon

I am very, very, very excited to sleep in my bed tonight. An actual padded, above the rocky-ground sleeping apparatus to lay my tired body. Why am I so excited to sleep in a bed? Because I went camping this weekend. Not so terrible if it's just one night on the moisture-deprived ground laden with immovable rocks and other obstacles, but because it was two nights. More on that to come.

We made plans to canoe to our campsite Friday night after work. Plans were made and all the food and sleeping gear was bagged--because I knew my canoe would be the one to tip and I'd end up sleeping in a cold, soggy sleeping bag. We drove to our site and discovered the water was too low to canoe so we ended up just camping in an open field. The weather was pretty chilly, but everyone was in good spirits and we had some very lovely vegetarian tinfoil dinners. We climbed into our sleeping bags about 10:30 but ended up chit-chatting with each other until about 1.

Costco sells amazing sleeping bags. Amazing. Though we were sleeping on the rocky ground, once I fell asleep I slept through the night until the sun came up. I was super warm (almost too much so) all night and had to peel off layers as soon as I woke up because I thought I was going to die.

We cleaned up camp and took off for the lake. Here are some of the sweet pics of us canoeing.

Krista and Garrett are the first to hit the water:

Canoe Buddies and team allies:

Parked and waiting for Krista to take the plunge:

Cody with and without water:

Now I don't know where my previously conceived notions of canoeing came from, but I was under the assumption that canoeing was pretty easy. Holy freaker, that's some hard work! We were out on the water nearly four hours and canoed back and forth and around. I was pretty worthless by the time we had to haul the canoes back up the bank and to the trailer.

Here's a video of us girls manning the canoes while the boys jumped off the cliff. (WARNING: this video isn't very exciting, but I only know how to post one YouTube video at a time.)

We finished up, went home, and I managed to take a quick shower. Somehow I allowed myself to be guilt-tripped into another night of camping with a group of friends I don't spend any time with. Here's the one photo I took:

Needless to say, I'm glad to be home with a real bed, different clothes, and a real toilet. For being a non-camper, I did good.

And the pull of bed is too strong right now, so this is it. Back to work tomorrow without any "real" weekend rest...