Roughing It

Well, I wouldn't call it "roughing it" exactly.

Last week, we decided to pack up our camper and head out for an extended weekend of camping - 15 minutes from home.

Yea, sounds crazy, but it was actually a good time.

Robin Hill was our destination - they have "Halloween Weekends" all through October. Since we live too far out in East Jebip to actually get any trick-or-treaters, we thought it would be fun to take the camper out, decorate our site, and contribute to kids' overindulgence of sugar. The only weekend we could get was the first weekend in October. The entire campgrounds were booked for the entire month. Except for two sites, last weekend.

We headed out Thursday after work. Unfortunately it was cold as hell - temperatures were dipping down into the low 40s at night. Luckily our idea of "roughing it" includes TV, heat and a bed with lots of blankets. Friday was more of the same, overcast and chilly, and I was seriously beginning to doubt the brilliance of our idea to "get away" for a weekend. Friends came to stay with us on Saturday and entered their kids in a costume contest. Their youngest, a one year old cutie named Aiden, was dressed as a monkey and came away with Funniest Costume and a nice big Hershey bar as his prize.

The thing that amazed me about the weekend was how polite and mature the kids were. After the costume judging, the kids trick-or-treated around the campground. We had a huge tub full of candy - when we saw the number of kids at the costume judging we realized we'd be taking a lot of it back home with us. Either that or we'd all be in sugar comas by the end of the night. So when the kids came around, we told them to just grab handfuls. Most of them took one piece of candy, then looked at us in disbelief when we urged them on to take more. Even the little kids - they'd gaze into this big sea of candy and pull out one piece. Shoot, we even had good candy, like Milky Ways, Twix, Hershey bars, Nerds, Blow Pops, Skittles and stuff like that. When I was a kid, if I only had to actually choose one piece, it would have taken me 15 minutes to decide what I wanted. So we kept urging them all to take a good fistful or two. But we still ended up taking a buttload of candy home with us.

Saturday night we got a nice campfire going - it was quite an interesting sensation to feel like my fingers were being singed while my butt felt numb from the cold. So we did the requisite burger cooking and Smores making over the fire (and the requisite beer drinking by the fire), and headed in to sleep. It's interesting that I go to bed hours and hours earlier when I'm on vacation than I do when I'm at home. It's probably because I"m actually relaxed and not thinking about work or whether or not I have any one of a million projects to do at home.

So yea, it wasn't quite "roughing it", and it may sound a little mundane, but it was just a nice weekend of getting away from all the craziness of everyday life. And only 15 minutes from home.