I really should have taken along my big camera instead of just my cell phone this weekend, but I didn’t. I thought about it because it is fall and the leaves are so pretty right now, but I knew that where we were going was notorious for wind and the weather was calling for cold and rain. We missed out on the rain, but man was it cold! The little pop-up did good, though! It has a furnace, but instead of using our propane, we run a small electric heater and it stayed nice and toasty the whole time.
Most of the weekend was spent sitting as close to the campfire as I could get without getting a lung full of smoke. Some of the guys we were camping with decided to throw up some tarps between the trees for a windbreak, and that did help with the cold, but we needed a smoke stack to divert the smoke from our eyes. Or an oxygen tank. Just sayin’.
All in all it was a great weekend with some great people! And the campground wasn’t bad. There were some negatives, like no showers and a flushing toilet for those of us who were not in a big camper with a bathroom. The trek to the bathroom was short, but filled with sticker bushes. I spent 30 minutes after using the restroom just picking stickers off my pant legs. After the first trip I just decided to drive the Jeep around the long way to avoid the headache.
It was a beautiful campground, though. Crabtree Cove on Stockton Lake is a peninsula with a view of the Stockton Dam on one side and a quiet cove on the other. The campsites were big and spread out to give ample room. We camped with three other campers and our group was 13 people. We had plenty of room to sit around the campfire and “chill”.
Of course, no camping trip would be complete without cooking over an open fire, right? Most of the time the cooking was done in electric skillets outside. No one really wants to cook in the fancy camper kitchens. This pot of green beans and bacon made it to the fire, though. It was a special request of my brother for his birthday dinner at the campground.
Tomorrow is a Monday and I will head back to work, but I did have a great weekend after a long, stressful week in the classroom. There is just nothing better than spending time with those you love, making memories and enjoying the fresh air. The camping season for us is over, and that makes me sad, but there are lots of things to do around the farm before the snow starts flying. Next weekend we are cutting wood. I’m already tired just thinking about it.
Tornadoes & Rainbows 