True, camping outside in North Georgia is not equivalent to my previous coldest outdoor moment, which took place in the frozen tundra of my second original homestate, and included the Vikings and a large amount of Leinenkugals, brats, and layers of pants. But it was still dang cold. The temperature in Chatsworth, Georgia was a toasty 45 degrees for a high, and about 23 for a low. It was basically just cold enough to make it miserable unless you found a lot of random things to laugh about and had Dave McNay's pants.
You see, Angie, Courtney, and Laura Rod are EXPERT campers. I mean, REI toting, cook your own food over an open flame, sort of campers. I think they hadn't been camping in a while or something because somehow there became an urgent need to go camping one
more time before the year was out. I've always wanted to go camping and I don't mind a certain level of what some might call "craziness" in my life, so I agreed, somewhat reluctantly to go. I was mainly just worried I wouldn't come back with all my fingers and toes. Fortunately I have a lot of friends with camping gear, so I was fairly well prepared.
All in all, it was pretty fun. Especially Saturday, when we went for a nine mile hike in the Georgia mountains. It took about 4.5 hours. I was pretty sure the trail would never end because it was one big loop of doom, but amazingly enough, it did. It was really beautiful and it turns out that hiking is a good solution for feeling cold. Laura Rod bailed on us for the hike, but she did get to see the strange rock formation that is legendary to Fort Mountain State Park. No one has any idea where the rocks came from but they have some good guesses, which include civil war soldiers, Indians, and honeymooners. On the way back from the hike, we went into town to get some more firewood (we weren't that hard core) and came upon the Chatsworth Christmas parade, which blocked every road back up the mountain. The lady at Bi-Lo said that we should just watch the parade, after all, they hand out free camping. I don't think she had a clue of what we had been through that day. Luckily, we came upon a Murray County policeman and we secretly followed him through some back roads and made it "home".
Especially after you see the pictures, you can tell why we ended up packing in 30 min and leaving at 8:30am on Sunday morning, heading straight for the comforts of Cracker Barrel. Camping is probably awesome when you don't have to give yourself a pep talk to get out of the tent to use the bathroom. Although the bathrooms were AWESOME, and heated! We all seriously considered moving our sleeping bags in there. I have never been so grateful for a shower and my bed.
Courtney's amazing flame. What's cool is that she let me light her portable gas grill the next day. But I wasn't doing as good enough job getting the match to the gas so she stuck my hand in there, nearly creating an opportunity for me to have my hand in a similar flame. Neat.
Snug as a bug in a rug! With Angie's cup besides me. Thanks for the surprise cup Angie and to Stephen for the headlamp! I was reading a really good mystery book in this picture about teenagers who got murdered in the woods. Probably not a good choice.
Our "home".
Will this hike ever end?
Happy before the hike and before L-Rod had to leave us!
2 comments:
ohmystars, there was no chance of you ever losing any fingers in that stove!
i'm glad you've admitted you had fun. :) wanna go in january?
this makes me laugh so much and reminds me of all the fun times. Many fun times. with a little bit of bitterness because it was cold. jessica equals most blindly trusting best trooper friend ever.
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