The Crazy Camping Adventures of Dale and Michelle :)

So, it's tuesday. Michelle and i are sitting around ray's place, and i turn to her and say "Lets go camping." From that spawned a crazyfun camping experience between michelle and i. My god, we'll have lots of stories to tell. This here is just a general synopsis of the trip.

So, it's wednesday night, at 11 pm. I work the next day right at 9 am, so i know i won't be seeing michelle until we leave to go camping the next day. I realized we still had no tent, no cooler, no ax for chopping wood and no directions as to how to go there.... we had next to nothing. And it was 11 pm, too late to call most of our friends who worked early the next day. Luckily for us, Ray saved the day and got us a cooler, ax and tent :) He borrowed the tent and ax from his dad, and the cooler from the schieblers, and explained to me how to get to Rowan's Ravine. WOOT FOR RAY AND HIS DAD!!!! YAY! Wow. Thank you ray for making up for our extreeme lack of planning :)

So, it's time to go camping. Michelle is now packed, we have all our stuff in the car, the food is in the car, we are ready to go. We head out of town..... on the highway number 6. Yes, i said highway 6 and i meant it. Anyone who actually knows how to get to Rowan's ravine will be shaking their head at me now lol. But that comes later.

We stopped on a spur of the moment idea to drop by on chris and derick, the people who bought the farm where i used to live. Any family member of mine will be happy to know that i visited the cats, and that Chunky, Mary and Zipper are there and happy. Zipper is starting to get a little slower and less healthy, but they think it's old age. Mary (the actual oldest of the cats) is happy and is still hunting so she is obviously feeling fine. The gardens have been mostly fenced in with the horse pasture, and set seed with hay. Chris has used the garden space to really expand her horse running area. She built a very nice dirt arena taking up half of the old pasture.

Anyways, on our way to camping again. It was now about 9:30 pm when we left the farm, and it was already starting to get dark. However, we kept on going on the highway.... the number 6 highway. Ray had told us to keep going on the highway untill we hit Craven. So we kept going, waiting to see any town at all. We had lots of gas, so i was unconcerned. However, i now realize we were on the WRONG HIGHWAY. We needed the number 11 but we were on the number 6. We kept going for about an hour, and i became concerned when we still didn't hit Lumsden. Stil... we decided to keep going untill we passed a town. About an hour and a bit later, we found Southey. Southey? We weren't supposed to pass Southey....and where's Lumsden. The stupid gas station at southey was closed, so we couldn't even ask directions. I swear, it wasn't even fully dark at 10 pm at night, but southey was as empty as a ghost town. NOTHING was open. I swear, they must roll up the sidewalks at night. I'm SO glad i don't live in Southey... it sure looked boring.

Luckily we found a sign that told pointed us in a different direction to get to the town of Earl Grey. By a stroke of luck, i had been telling Shelly at work earlier about my camping plans, and she told me how she lived in Earl Grey which was very very close to the campground. YAY! So, we took this crappy crappy highway to Earl Grey. I swear, they'd have a warning sign, and then it would suddenly alternate from highway to dirt road, and then back again. It was SO crappy. It was the worst highway i've seen in my whole life.

However, we did manage to find our way to rowan's ravine from earl grey. When we finally got there, it was around 11 pm. The booth where you pay was empty, and it told us to go self-register. After a bit of random driving around, not finding non-electrical camp sites or anywhere to register for a campsite, the campground host family found and took pity on us lol. she showed us where to register, where to find the campsites and where to find the woodpile. After much searching, we managed to do all three things. We had wood, a camp site and we had registered :).

We were STARVING, so we decided to make some food. We had declared this a Hot Dog Only camping trip.... the only food we had to eat the entire trip was hot dogs. Luckily, we both LOVE hot dogs. Michelle went to set up the tent, and i decided to make a fire. Man, what a failure we both were hahaha. My fire went out as soon as the newspaper was no longer lit, and her tent setting up was not going well. ALONE, we were hilarious failures. TOGETHER, we were a competent, well-oilled tent and fire building machine! Welll.... maybe not amazing. We didn't put up the fly on the tent and one corner was off the ground and the pegs weren't in,...but it worked fine for what we needed for. The fire went out before our hot dogs were fully done, but they were half done, and we were so hungry it didn't matter.

Off to bed, where it rained on us and we froze. We had only 2 tiny fleece blankets and a single pillow between the two of us, so that really sucked. It rained while we were asleep, making such troubles as wet socks :( Wet socks are one of the worst things ever.

After laying and sitting to about 15 different types of birds at 4 am, and what i thought was a moose but was really a combination of the lawn mower and a cow, we finally got some sleep.

Mmmmm.... I swear, warm air never felt as good as it did the next morning. It was shaping up to be a PERFECT day. No clouds, and already fairly warm with a refreshing breeze at 9 am. After making an AWESOMELY SUCCESSFUL fire (with only newspaper not lighter fluid i might add) and eating more hot dogs, we went for a fabulous hike. 2 hours later, back for more hot dogs. Then came the SUNTANNING.

Suntanning with michelle is an awesome awesome thing. Some people just don't understand the value of a good lay in the sun (yes, fletcher, i mean you lol). Others are good (this is you matt) but it just isn't the same.... When michelle and i go sunbathing, it's an awesome thing. Just lay out the blankets in the sun, soak it up, and gossip. I LOVE it lol. We go on and on and on for hours. Today, we both fell asleep, and wound up sunbathing for 4 HOURS! Man, it was great.

Back for more hot dogs. We decided then to go home, instead of paying a lot of money to stay another night just to freeze and then leave early in the morning. We ate our last hot dogs of the trip, and then went home. The correct way. Taking highway number 11.

So, that was my awesome camping trip with michelle. Fletcher and i plan lots of things, but we rarely do them. Then again, fletcher and i plan some pretty amazing, out of reach things lol. Michelle and i plan to work out and actually do some things this summer.

Next thing to plan.... A stargazing night with a midnight picnic. We will leave the city, park on some old abandoned grid road (maybe one near my old farm?), and look at the stars. Unlike the camping we will bring LOTS of blankets in order to keep warm. We'll go on some night where something is happening with the sky. We'll watch it till we get bored, then eat our midnight picnic. Then home to bed. I'm thinking that we will have to definately take a nap earlier this day since the sun goes down so late in the summer, and it will be late before the stars really get started, but it's too cold to do this in the winter.

Anyways, speaking of bed, i'm off to bed. All this camping totally wore me out. All who are interested in our star night please comment. Dad, if you know of any big star events comming, a quick e-mail would be great :) Or, if anyone knows a good website to find out when meteor showers are happing? That would be great too.