This past Friday found my crew hooking up our travel trailer to our big beast of a truck Rufus and heading north. Six weeks ago we stayed at our friend's little chunk of heaven on the Pack River and we all had so much fun that we planned another weekend campout, a glorious event that took place this previous weekend.
Let me start out by saying, I just love, love, love our friend's chunk of the woods. It is a huge swath of land that sits nestled up against the mountains. What makes it so special, aside from the fact that there are no signs of people anywhere, is that it is bordered by Stimson Paper and US Forest Service land. There's plenty of space everywhere for wandering!
Which of course was one of the first things we did after we got camp all set up. My friends have a travel trailer that lives on the property, we brought ours, and our other friends brought theirs. We each just park our homes away from home in whatever mowed section of the meadow that suits our fancy and watch the kids bound away to the yurt. Yep, there is a 60' yurt there too, and what's super awesome is all of the kids camp in the yurt, which means we grownups have our campers to OURSELVES!!!
Sometimes you can hear roars from the yurt as someone gets smacked in a most vigorous way during a game of Throw Throw Burrito, but most of the time our tenure in Camp is serene and silent.
One of the first things my friends and I did was take off for a stroll on Rabbit Road as they call it, an old logging road that was carved into the ridge. The views speak for themselves:
Another feature of camp is the legendary dinners that manifest. I am talking fajitas, enchiladas, cheesecakes, pico de gallo, guacamole, and more. That was just the first night. I ate some much this weekend that I am glad I hiked multiple miles, lest my food baby would have entered its second trimester.
Anyway, the second day we all wandered down to the river and languished in beach chairs while the children (and a few grownups) frolicked in the river. This is where the miracle happened.
Six weeks ago when we were last at Camp, my son placed his very expensive eye glasses into his hat for safekeeping while he was swimming. When he returned, his hat and towel were there, but alas, his glasses were missing. After an exhaustive search we figured an animal, probably a raven, had requisitioned his spendy eye wear. C'est la vie.
Well, six weeks later found us sitting on the edge of the river yet again, a body of water that has dropped about twenty feet level-wise from where it was when we were last there. The missing glasses had become a bit of a joke among us all, we were always ribbing my son about whether or not Sasquatch was enjoying them. My friend Cam was wading around the edge of the river with my friend's mini schnauzer in his arms when he stopped, bent over, and as he was reaching in the water said,
"Here's Bobo's glasses."
And there they were indeed, without a scratch on them, right in the middle of the river!
I wish I had a picture of my son's face when he reached us a few minutes later. He got out of his tube and walked up to us all. Everyone had that ants in their pants squirm that all surprise holding people get, and finally I blurted, Notice anything? for on top of my John Deere hat sat the miraculous glasses shining in the sun with their rediscovered glory.
That night around a campfire we stuffed ourselves full of grilled chicken, burgers, wurst, corn, homemade bread with garlic butter, and huge slices of my ice cream sandwich cake. We are always an amiable group, but the discovery of the missing eye wear made us a bit more effervescent. I mean, our volleyball games are always intense, but Saturday's was a tournament for the ages, I still am sporting blisters of glory.
Sadly, the next day as we packed up and left, we realized it was the last Camp of the season, but our sadness soon evaporated, for we already planned next year's campouts and there are going to be a lot more of them!!
And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's going to be replaced after six years of faithful service iPhone.
