park again. this time, heath's brother, luke, and his girlfriend,
rebecca met us there for the weekend. this trip started off absolutely
horribly.
1) we got a later start than anticipated, so we didn't get to the
campground until 10:30 pm, which meant setting up the tent and
everything in the dark.
2) when we got to our reserved site, we found that it was now a lake.
there were 3-5 inches of standing water on the entire site. so we had to
go get a new one from the booth, which, thankfully, was open.
3) we realized that when we left in such a hurry, we failed to bring
flashlights. yeah. whoops.
4) luke and rebecca were coming via a slightly different route than us,
and ended up getting stuck on 80/94, which was completely closed in both
directions due to flooding. they ended up being on the road for an
ungodly amount of time, and arriving at the campground at 3:30 in the
morning.
5) while at the campsite and trying to figure out luke and rebecca's
progress, heath could not have had a harder time getting a cell phone
signal, so calls kept dropping, adding to the frustration.
6) it rained overnight that night so everything we had left sitting out
was soaking wet by morning.
so that was the bad part. by late morning on saturday, things started to
turn around. poor rebecca, who had never been camping, was (rightly so)
not loving the whole wet/tired/crappy experience so far. once the sun
started to come out, things improved. we had lunch on the campfire,
managed to get some of our stuff to start drying out, and everybody's
mood improved. we hiked around a bit, and climbed the big dune near the
campground. after that, we decided to drive over to the beach and hang
out there (since we were all still sort of tired and worn out from the
challening 12 hours previous). we got to the beach and the waves were
HUGE! huge as in they would literally knock us down, great for
bodysurfing and inadvertently removing swimsuit tops and bottoms if one
failed to be diligent. it was a lot of fun, even though we got knocked
around a bit too much from time to time. after the beach, we went back
to shower and eat. unfortunately, heath had to be on his phone and
laptop for several hours dealing with a work issue. once that was over,
we sat by the fire a bit longer and hung out before going to bed. sunday
was pleasant, too, we slept in and got to picking up the site to get
ready to go home.
overall, it ended up being a really nice time. we had a lot of fun with
luke and rebecca and laughed a ton despite the horrendous beginning of
the trip. we're hoping to go camping again before winter comes, possibly
in two weeks out near where heath grew up. hopefully it won't be
immediately following torrential downpours!
