Just One Night

So again I see some number of months have passed since I last posted on here. Honestly I think I need someone to prod me with a stick, saying, "write...write...write". Or something. But I don't want to dwell too much on the past and neglect the accomplishment of the last week. We finally went and did something I've been threatening to do for a number of years: we went camping.

Not like the camping we used to do as a kid, when we'd take off for a whole week and subject ourselves to pit toilets and washing up by using water from a bucket that was heated over the fire in a big black kettle. No, no, nothing like that. Well, the pit toilets were the same.  But this was just one night, and we didn't bother to wash up. A quick little getaway to satisfy the guilt of not having done it the last few years, although every year Connor has stated that he wanted to go camping.

So this was just a quick getaway to the Indian Springs campground, a little place up off of I-80, about 10 miles east of Blue Canyon. One of those random places I've never been to and never heard of, save by seeing the little signs on the freeway that indicate that there's camping at the next exit. I always wondered what camping was like at those places when I was younger, whenever I saw those little pictures of tents along the road. And, well, now I know. And it was pretty there! Sure, you could constantly hear the dull roar of traffic from the freeway not 200 yards away. But it was full of trees and, in short order, became full of memories.

A more pictorial account can be found here.

Oddly enough, the first critter we saw was a fairly long snake, slithering up along the driver's side of my car in our campsite. I don't believe I'd ever seen a snake whilst camping, not that I can recall anyway. On the bike trails along the American River, sure. But never camping. Usually it's mostly birds and squirrels. And we saw those, too. No bears or deer or anything like that.

And we did all of the camping things - cooking dinner on the old propane camp stove from the 1980s (burgers and Mac & cheese), roasting marshmallows on the fire for s'mores after it got dark. Well, as it was starting to get darker, anyway. It gets dark too late. Who can wait up that long?? It's past my bedtime. And we pitched a tent and played card games and read and slept in sleeping bags and urinated on trees. You know, all the normal 'guy' stuff. I'm happy to report that I wasn't particularly sore after sleeping on the ground again. That was a concern I had had in advance. Granted, my sleeping bag was on top of another sleeping bag which was on top of a blanket which was on top of another blanket, but I'm calling it a victory still. And yes, I brought pillows from home.

The next morning we made pancakes and packed up and left early to do a little hike before heading home. In the end, it was probably good that it was just one night, because frankly if we stayed another night, Connor would have been bored out of his mind. Though I suspect he would have loved another night of doing s'mores. 

In the end, I'm glad we finally fitted this into our lives. Every summer, time just seems to fly by and get filled up with all manner of other distractions. As if our lives were a Pac Man and time was nothing more than those little white pellets getting gobbled up. Blip blip blip. What with only having Connor every other week, and my work and his soccer and the musical I conduct each year...well the summers are just too short and end too quickly.

They're also too hot, but that's another story for another time.