Pains, Flames and Tent-stakes

I'm sooo glad to be home.

This weekend was fun. I went down Friday to visit my fraternity brother Ken in NJ. The first fun thing is that I connected my TomTom GPS unit to my phone and got Traffic updates which allowed it to navigate me around bad NYC traffic as I went through the city at around 5pm. The whole trip down there took me about 4 hours of travel time, which is pretty good since Google says the trip is 3 hours and 36 minutes.

Friday night we got fantastic sushi. Unfortunately the really good place (very traditional Japanese) was closed for good so we had to go the other one that Ken likes and it was fantastic.

Saturday we got up fairly early, had breakfast and drove 3 hours down to the NJ State Park to go camping. We hiked up to the Mullica River campsite and stayed there overnight. It was quite the hike. Thankfully it was fairly flat so there wasn't much of an incline to traverse, but still, it was 4 miles. 4 miles with a 62 pound pack. We did the whole thing in about 2.5 hours (with several rest stops) so we got about a 30 minute mile on the way in.

We set up camp, built a fantastic fire and then had dinner. Dinner was steak tips with onions, portobello mushrooms, steamed carrots and steamed broccolli with a beef stew style gravy. Not quite what you were expeciting for a camping dinner eh? Oh and this was cooked over the coals, in nothing but tinfoil. It's amazing what Boy Scouts teaches you. With the right equipment I've seen dinners made that consist of Chicken Cordon Bleu with Peach Cobbler for dessert. Yum.

Of slight annoyance was when we set up the tent. Now my brother last had the tent and had let me know he didn't have the tent stakes for it, that he didn't know where they were. No biggie. Tent stakes are cheap. I went out and got 8 of them for the tent. That completely covered all 8 corners of the tent (it's slightly octagonal). Unfortunately since i wasn't familar with the tent I didn't realize that there are 10 spots to stake the tent (1 each on the front and back side for further stabilization. I also forgot to account for tent stakes for the rain fly. Now thankfully it was a beautiful weekend but i couldn't just leave it off. For one the entire upper portion of the tent is screen so there'd be no privacy from other campers. Second was that you never know when there might be a freak rain shower; so the fly had to go up. In the end we took 5 branches that were about 1 inch in diameter, cut them to about 8 inches, angled the cut on one end so it was pointed and put a notch for the tie rope. We then proceeded to use the mallet to hammer in our custom-made camping stakes, which actually worked far better than anticipated. Thankfully the ground was soft enough to drive them in. Now I just have to buy 7 more stakes before i return the tent.

The rest of the evening we relaxed, played cards and just enjoyed the killer view of the stars.

In the morning we woke up, packed it all up and headed back to the State Park office. We finshed back at the car in 1 hour and 45 minutes. This included a 30 minute rest at the 2 mile mark and was almost 4.5 miles. This averages out to be about 17 minute mile. Not bad for only one resting stop and a 60 lb pack.

The most amusing thing is that as we returned back to the camp we crossed the river at a large bridge that a few 20-something guys were jumping off of. As is customary we said our hello's to others on the trail and they started into a conversation with us. The were curious as to what we were doing and were we were coming from. We mentioned we were on our way back from an overnight camping trip and were on our way to the camp center. They then asked if we were soldiers. We said that, no, we weren't and then we went on our way. That question there had to be the most amusing parts of the adventure.

When we finally got back and got the car re-packed we must have just collapsed into the seats as we waited for the A/C to get on full. We were completely exhausted.

I finally got home about a short while ago and at this point a nice hot shower followed by a cooler shower at the end and clean clothes is all I want.

God I love camping, but now I hurt in places I didn't know I could hurt. Is it the definitition of insanity that I find this fun and can't wait to do it again?