So, Girlio & I went to Harper's Ferry for what was supposed to be a two day, one night thing.

Pros: KOA Kampgrounds are much, much less crowded during the week in early June, set up our tent in maybe 10 minutes we white water rafted with an awesome guide, saw a bald eagle, like 20 great blue herons, roasted weenies & marshmellows and stayed dry in our tent. New sleeping bag & air mattress are awesome sauce. I also drove most of the way home, including on 495 & in the city, without incident. I even got us parked fairly well.

Cons: It was OMG SO HOT, we had to pull the raft off the water while a lightning storm ran through, which promptly chilled us to the bone (actually, it was kind of cool to watch once I was certain we wouldn't die), some teenagers 20 CAMPSITES AWAY were ridiculously loud until 10pm and then started up again at 7am, the rain meant that the ground was damp & I couldn't get a fire started without copious amounts of lighter fluid, some ground water in the tent (kmusser, is that par for course with this thing? First time we've used it when there's rain - I wasn't sure if there was just seepage from a crappy tarp that was slightly too small for the tent or what), stentorinsista broke her eye, resulting in us ditching the tubing and me driving most of the way back.

She's asleep and has been since we got home about 3 hours ago. I feel like I should go wake her up, but whenever her eyes bother her, she's always exhausted anyway.

One of these days, I'll remember how to make a fire. I was on the waterboiling team for skills camporee for pete's sake!

I got back from West Virginia two days ago and I already want to go camping again. I want to roast more weenies over an open fire, cook an ear of corn in the coals, sit outside in beautiful weather with nothing to do buy enjoy it, look at the stars, go for a hike, go for a bike ride. I'm looking at recipes for what to make next time and seeing what I did wrong building fires (here's a hint - kindling is important!). I kinda want to buy a camp stove so I can make pancakes in the morning easily and without a lot of heat, despite my irrational fear of blowing up anything that uses propane.

Yes, it's nice to sleep in my own bed and take a shower without needing shower shoes and travel shampoo, but... camping! Fun! Wanna go back!

In other news, I made (severely underspiced, alas) chili last night and that was the absolute last of any and all food in my house except for pasta and wine. Note to self: go grocery shopping next week or prepare to be drunk and malnourished.

I'm wearing pants I wore on Friday. They smell of woodsmoke. This pleases me.

So, Friday, stentoriansista and I got in her car and drove out to Harper's Ferry for a weekend of being crunchy hippy granola types. We get to the Harper's Ferry KOA with rising amounts of OMGWTF because of the sheer volume of people and smallness of campgrounds. It's luau weekend. Our list of activities for the weekend include a hula competition and a pig roast. We decline said activities. We check in, I buy firewood, firestarters & a camp chair and drive out to our site. Which is right next to a family with four small children and no firepit. We drive back to the store and get a new campground, across the way from the original site. We pitch the tent, I start the fire and stentoriansista goes to inflate the airmattress, only to discover that the pump I bought from Target a few weeks ago... has no back. We go back to the camp store and I pay $5 more than I paid for the first one for a pump that has to go into your car adapter. Inflate the thing, I attempt to rekindle the refusing to burn fire with firestarter #2, we realize that we'll be sleeping on the mother of all downhill angles and stentoriansista moves the batteries from the backless pump to the flashlight... which doesn't turn on. stentoriansista goes to get her campchair only to discover it decided to stay home and canoodle with the kiddies. Moving to a hotel is discussed and rejected because my will is stronger than wood. stentoriansista has a bucket to sit on. Firestarter number three actually gets a fire going. Wine is swigged from the bottle. We go to bed, only to be woken up an hour later by the people across the way from us swearing loudly (probably drunk).

We get up at the crack of 7:45 to get some breakfast and then go to River Riders to get checked in and everything. There's an informative bike safety video, a nice gentleman from Austin with a large beard and even larger ear spacers loads the bikes and some other folks' canoes into a van and we head out. stentoriansista and I, being nice people, strike up a conversation with him and he invites us to hang out with him & his wife in Shepherdstown that night. Canoers get dropped off and we get dropped off at Lock 38? of the C&O trail and start biking.

The C&O trail is absa-frigging-lutely beautiful and runs along the Potomac at a 1% downhill grade, so the biking time is easy and fun. We bike 12-ish miles in an hour and a half and then head into Harper's Ferry, eat some food looking out over the water and then wander around the old church & cemetary. We make it to our pickup point right as our picker-upper shows up and then wait around for 20 minutes as he tries to figure out how to ratchet the bikes into the trailer. We drive very, very slowly back to River Riders and get back to the campground, where I change into a bathing suit and we drive into the mouth of hell itself Wal-Mart, where we get a camp chair, flashlight, more firestarters (we used all the old ones!), a lantern and a faux-bathing suit for stentoriansista and drive back to the river, where we climb out onto some rocks and proceed to just hang out and enjoy the sun and water. There's a bunch of folks around, including some people with a few German shepherds that are swimming. One, named Ruckus, pulls himself out of the water, shakes himself off on OUR TOWEL, relieves himself and then shakes himself off on OUR TOWEL AGAIN and runs away. At this point, we realize we're going to make the car smell like river. We head back to camp and I leave stentoriansista to make fire while I take a much needed shower.

We continue to fail at fire until I remember that you need kindling before the big logs and we burn up a bunch of deadwood & leaves and then the big logs finally catch. We roast weenies and marshmellows and drink more wine and generally have a lovely time until the people next door show up at 9pm and proceed to set up their tents by headlight, ask us really dumb questions and then be loudly annoying and drunk for the next three hours. We go get more beer (we would have gotten more wine, but they were selling Little Penguin for $9 a bottle, which is pretty outrageous). We drink a little more and proceed to go to bed, after I ask the twelve drunk people to please keep it down. They proceed to laugh at me.

We get up at 9:45 and attempt to be as loud as possible as we break down camp, because we know Drinky McDrunksaLot next door are still passed out. After a leisurely breakfast, watching the drunkards next door pee in the woods (the bathrooms are almost as far away as you wandered to go hide behind trees! What's wrong with you!!!) and checkout, we go peruse the flea market next door, where everything that is crappy in the world has come to die. Seriously, it's the worst flea market ever. We get to River Riders at 12:30 for our 1 o'clock check in, eat some snacks and check in promptly at one... when we are told to be back at 1:45. So, we sit on top of the car and knit and watch the sky, which is pretty, but also gray and threatening rain. I'd gotten a phone call saying that we couldn't raft on the Shenandoah because the water level was too low, but that we could go on the Potomac, which was supposed to be "near constant rapids." It was disappointing. Our guide was awesome (I think he enjoyed hanging out with girls near his age and not families or teenagers), but the route was almost exactly what we'd biked along the day before and there was a lot of shiny nature (herons, osprey & egrets), but not a lot of action. We did jump out and swim the final rapid, which was pretty awesome. I forgot to take my watch off, but it took a licking and kept on ticking. We finally got back to the base, changed, and made it home by 6:30ish, where we proceeded to be dead on the couch and watch What Not to Wear until we passed out.

The SUPERLOUD THUNDER woke us up at 1am. It was crazy raining. And then I finally shipped my spinning wheel back to Wisconsin. The damn thing cost $50 to ship. Apparently, it cost extra because they were shipping it to a "rural area." WTFever. If I get a hundred dollars refunded for the thing, that's $50 more than I had before I shipped it and I don't have to have it in my house anymore.

So, to sum up, River Riders = win, Harpers Ferry KOA & UPS = suck. Also, for future camping trips, we're only going to by firewood while camping. Also also, I won't forget pillows. Or dishes.

The aftermath from dying the exercise class from hell yesterday is that everything's sore. The good news is that everything's sore. The bad news is that EVERYTHING IS SORE. One of these days, doing 10 minutes of ab work won't leave my neck hurting. And the weight training stuff he did with my arms left my mid-back really cranky.

I just checked Harpers Ferry's weather forecast for the weekend and it's supposed to be 80* both days. The 40% chance of rain on Sunday has gone down to 10%. I AM SO FREAKING EXCITED. If this weekend ends up sucking, I may have to choke a bitch. Holy crap, our campground has wireless... again, completely missing the point of CAMPING. We're going to buy some firestarters and wood onsite... here's hoping it's not ridiculously expensive.

Work is mostly good, second job is mostly good. I forgot to blog about it, but stentoriansista and I went down to Virginia Beach for a bridal shower last weekend and had a lovely time hanging out. Saw Stardust and was rather disappointed. The book was lovely, the movie had to tie everything up in a neat little bow... that was painful. After Virginia Beach last week, camping this week and dogsitting next week, I'm going to have slept in my bed at my house for either 3 or 4 nights from the 9th through the 27th. It's wacky.

I suppose I should go get some work done. Especially since I had a talk with Boss about how I'm bored and she's actually given me more work.

I'm going away to Harper's Ferry with the Gal for two nights. We're camping, biking & rafting.

I have packed the following:
2 pairs shorts
1 pair jeans
1 pair army green man pats
2 tank tops
2 short sleeve shirts
short sleeve hoodie
pj tank & bottoms
swimsuit
sarong
hat
bandana
old but not dead sneakers
2 pairs ankle socks
underwears
bottom sheet for air mattress
towel

And, as always, I feel like I'm forgetting something. stentoriansista has the tent, mattress, pump, tarp, food, cooking gear, etc... I'm picking up a water proof camera and maybe a camp chair (if it's cheap) tomorrow. Whatever, it's two days. You know me, I always bring more than I need and nothing I actually use. But I might!

It has occurred to me that the sleeping bag (not mine) that I said I'd bring to the Becoming retreat this weekend is MIA. It also occurs to me that I might want a sleeping bag for future camping endeavors. It also also occurs to me that I just got my catsitting payment. Yes. I may buy a $30 sleeping bag in the near future. I figure I don't need one for subzero temperature ratings since I don't plan on going camping in the freezing, freezing cold.

It has also occurred to me that if I got a freaking driver's license already (srsly ppl), I wouldn't have to be dependent on others for camping-ness. Going this weekend reminded me how much I enjoyed it and that it would be nice to go by myself or with others, but I can't really go by myself these days. I mean, I could, but it would require taking a tent, sleeping bag, food, equipment, etc... on the metro and then walking to that Greenbelt park. Hah. If I got better at or even practiced parking, I'd feel confident at going out and getting a license tomorrow, though less confident about actually using it. But I could still join the Dark Side get a ZipCar membership in a year. Blah blah blah pretty pretty over-privileged princess.

In other news, pork chops + Newman's Own Mango Salsa = love. Even if I overcooked them.

So, I went camping this weekend. I'd been having a sore throat / wonky sinuses since Thursday, but something about three days of campfire have made it awful. I've slept crazy amounts the past two days and I'm still kinda woogly and crappy feeling. But I'm doing some much needed laundry and later I'll make some bread and cook dinner.

Camping was a lot of fun, but now I'm just full of congested and cranky.

You know when you have a problem and you're about to inconvenience someone and ask them to do you a favor and then you figure out a way to do it on your own? I did that this morning. It makes me feel squishy inside. And clever. And proud of myself. Of course, now I get to take a freaking heavy rolly suitcase camping, but it beats carrying a mop bucket, gym bag, backpack, and air mattress in a shopping bag on the metro tomorrow. Maybe I should just get a shopping cart to wheel around. I mean, I already talk to myself.

Yesterday, I got a tent from kmusser. (Well, I was sleeping when it showed up, but it's there! Whee!) Friday, I go camping. Holla!

I finally sucked it up, asked for and am getting a refund for the spinning wheel, though there may be a 20-40% restocking charge. I'm deciding if I want to argue against the restocking charge or not. Frankly 60-80% of the original price is probably better than what I could get on the internets for it. I'll probably get my parents to finance the rest of a new wheel as they still haven't gotten me a birthday present yet.

stentoriansista and I went berrypicking on Saturday and picked 9 pounds of blueberries in 20 minutes. 9 pounds. 20 minutes. And it cost us $20. I think we spent more on the gas to get there. Anyway, it was superfun and we've made two blueberry pies and I got my dad's blueberry lavender ice cream recipe. And I got beads for the mystery stole, though they weren't really what I wanted. But they were cheap. We'll see how they look on the yarn. If I ever start working on that.

I haven't had my allergy meds for the past couple of days and I'm now queen of grossness in my sinuses. This displeases me.

I should probably work now.

I think I've caught the camping bug. Let's ignore, for a moment, the fact that I have not been camping since I was about 16, that I don't actually own any camping equipment (not even a sleeping bag) and that I don't actually remember how to cook on a grill. Let's forget that. Let's forget that the bugs will eat me alive, that I don't have any good camping clothes, that I never sleep well in a tent because there's usually a rock under my neck, that camping is a synonym for "being bored in the wilderness instead of watching TV." I'm especially forgetting that I'm not in the California Bay Area anymore, where 95* days are the rarity instead of the norm, where humidity doesn't exist and it only rains in the winter. Totally ignoring all of those facts. I want to go camping.