Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Again with the Camping


A and E on the boat

We're back from camping, and all I can say is thank God! We went camping with our friend A and her kids E and little A. I just love those guys. The kids had fun, and didn't seem to notice that it was 1000 degrees. The campground was on a lake near Grass Valley, and it was the perfect place to go if you have a boat of some kind, preferably of the speed variety, and you have a Ford F250 with which to tow it. Our little station wagon looked puny, and I have no boat. I don't even have a boat neck shirt. I really want a canoe, but I think that may be taking the camping gear a little far.

The people were very nice, even though none of them took pity on us and invited us on their boats and let us use their tubes or wake boards. We spent a lot of time floating around in the murky swim area. I found a discarded pack of cigarettes in the water, and the motor boats were going in and out of the adjacent boat launch, but we had no choice. It was so damn hot, that I would have floated around in a lake full of cold pee just to find relief from that sun.

The kids sat on the sandy shore of the swim area (sandy being a little euphemistic; it was more like sandy/gravelly/sludgy) and made sand castles. They would pop into the water from time to time, and then go right back to making sand castles. On Saturday we rented a boat. Not a fast, fun motor boat from which we could jump in the lake, but a metal fishing boat with a little outboard motor. If you are particularly agile, you could jump out of it, but I defy you to get back in. The limit was five people and we were six, so we had to rent two. We got into the boats and motored off down the lake to another swimming area with a lot of moored boats and kids and people with shade structures and stuff. And you know what? I floated around on a bright blue inner-tube and the kids sat in the gravelly sand and made sand castles. Then the rope came out of the motor on one of the boats when we tried to start it (I swear it was in neutral, I double checked) and A had to tow our boat back to the marina. Money well spent, wouldn't you say?

Really, if it had been 85 or even 90 degrees it would have been more fun, but I'm a wuss about temperatures, I guess. Remember the first camping trip of the season? I froze my ass off? And this time I thought I'd die of heat exhaustion. Good friends make it all worth while though. We had some laughs.

On the way home we stopped at Ikea and I bought Leila a little canopy thing for her bed. She is still thanking me for it. Also, she is in cake decorating camp this week and is having a blast. Look what she made yesterday!!



Little camping cakes!!

and, seriously, how cute is this dog?

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