What's better than camping?! Camping without Draco! Last year, Tim and I vowed that our next camping trip would not include Draco. Draco, you're a great dog but a really terrible camper! Our friend and Tim's fellow 4th-year intern, Sol was nice enough to take care of him while we spent some time outdoors this weekend. Saturday morning we packed the car, left Draco, and headed south of Nashville to Henry Horton State Park.
Last year we discovered this great campground and this year we decided to return and do a little more. This campground has 75 camp sites, but you don't know it while your there because they are so spread out. It is very clean, quiet, and has some nice walking trails along the Duck River. Beautiful!
We spent all day Saturday playing around, enjoying views of the river, and discovering the outdoors. Check it out, did you know that tree bark starts out looking like this?
Totally forgot our camera on our walk, so we had to borrow this pic from Google images - we're still camping / semi-hiking newbies! Anyways, we had no idea that bark started out this way on some trees. I thought the trees I kept seeing had cancer growths on them. But turns out, they're healthy young trees growing bark. Nature is so awesome!
Let me take that back, nature is awesome until it falls from the sky and hits you in the chest. Yes,there I was... sitting, reading, minding my our business when this hard-as-a-rock nut falls from the really tall tree above me and hits me in the chest/neck! Ouch! Scared me more than anything - definitely got my fill of "nature"!
Tim built an excellent fire with no trouble at all! I remember the first time we went camping in Bellingham. We had purchased some wood from a neighbor. As it turned out, the wood he sold us had not been sitting for very long. You couldn't really tell by feeling it, but we knew as soon as we tried to build a fire! The wood not dry inside. In case you're wondering, wood that isn't completely dry hisses, bubbles, and generally doesn't burn. So yeah, that fire was really hard to light and ever since our confidence in fire building has been a little low. But not this trip! Tim had the fire going in no time! "Man make fire"!
We roasted hot dogs for dinner over our excellent fire and relaxed as the sun went down. We ended the evening with some s'mores and listened to some tunes on the ipod.
Sunday morning we packed the site up in a jiffy and headed out. What did we do for breakfast you ask?! We ate out! That's right the campground has a restaurant / breakfast buffet! I know what your going to say, "That's not camping"! Well, that's our kind of camping. If I'm going to sweat all day in the Tennessee summer heat and sleep on a far-too-rapidly deflating air mattress in a tent, I deserve to have a really yummy breakfast waiting for me!
This weekend was really a great time for us to spend together, relaxing and enjoying each others company. We do these things so well! And we're getting better at camping each time! Maybe next time we'll try winter camping!
No comments:
Post a Comment