Camping, Day 5.
Jul. 31st, 2009 09:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfs
Our primitive shower
Deer Creek Falls
Deer Creek
Omaha and Kouryou-chan
Ominous Rock
Rickety Bridge across Deer Creek
Sign on wrong side of rickety bridge
Dinner time
Mouse
After breakfast, we also had leftover dishes from the night before. We'd left them in the car so as not to attract animals, but it was no fun cleaning and cleaning. We got it all done, and we managed to clean our bodies in what has to be one of the most makeshift shower stalls in history. There was no room for me in there at all. Kouryou-chan insists that next year we actually buy a proper camping shower stall. I know you can buy them from the usual reputable camping supply companies.
Still, it's amazing how good it is to feel clean!
We have a thief in our camp. There's some small animal that's obviously learned that plastic bags have food in them, because he's nibbled his way through several, only to be disappointed because we don't leave food out. But he did eat his way into the bag with the card games, although he didn't destroy any of the games, thankfully. And he tore into the box of Kleenex, making nesting material.
We drove out to the Deer Creek trailhead. It promised a nice, easy hike and it delivered. We hiked down just over a mile to the campsite, and hung out on the bridge over the water and played in the stream. Generally, we had a quiet day without incident. Kouryou-chan had a bit of startle when she saw this rock down below in the water and thought it was the head of a giant fish. Later, she just fell into the river, and Omaha had her strip right there, wring her clothes out, and put them back on. It was so hot, though, that she didn't complain at all.
When we got back to camp, we learned that we had neighbors. Now, I'm going to sneer at my neighbors because they were (a) clueless and (b) rude. They had a ginormous brand new tent that they put up wrong, and after they put it up they actually put in a rug they'd dragged with them. They were a couple in their mid-thirties, and they'd brought a baby with them, and an older man who was the father to one of them. Never learned who. The tent had three rooms, and a crib. Later, they put up an even larger unfolding tarpaulin, and a four-grill range, and a pair of towering dual-mantle propane lanterns.
We got some reading done, and Kouryou-chan and I played with squirt guns, and Omaha napped. Afterward, she awoke and made a fire and I prepared the beer and whole chicken for our annual feast of campfire beercan bird. "Captain Potatohead," as he became named because of the potato shoved down his neck to keep the steam in, sweated oil on the campfire, smelled absolutely delicious, and took about 75 minutes to cook.
After all that, while Omaha and I were putting stuff away, Omaha suddenly screeched. "Something ran over my foot! Like a chipmunk or something!" We whipped out the flashlights and found the little miscreant: a little brown mouse. That was the bugger who had torn up our tissues, chewed into our plastic bags, and left pellets on the picnic table. He ran back and forth between bushy brambles, obviously panicked at having been caught. I tried to get a photo of him but it was full night by now and it was late for me to master nighttime photographing.
The neighbors cranked up their lanterns. Between them and the overburdened campsite to the north of us, which had two more, the entire campsite was lit up like a football stadium. These people didn't want to go camping-- they wanted a hotel with green, leafy walls.
I went to them and asked when they were going to turn off the lamps. "We'll be up for a while," said the man. "And you people put your tent pretty close to ours." No, you moron, we were here first, and you're being rude. I sighed. We tried to sleep even with the light blaring through our tent, and mostly managed.
