Our freshman year, our friend Jesse had ended up living in a double room by himself because his roommate dropped out after 3 days or so. As much as Jesse loved that, he couldn't fight with the school when another student was having roommate issues and needed to switch rooms. So it was that Dave became Jesse's roommate and came into our circle of friends.
We all thought Dave was a bit off (ok, we thought he was crazy). Here's this guy who is super into the outdoors, an Eagle scout with his mountain bike hanging off the wall of his dorm room, caving and camping gear strewn around the room and the constant question if he could successfully repel out the 3rd floor window of the building. (The answer is yes, he could. His friends, however, would get caught.) Standard college attire of jeans, t-shirts, flannels and a baseball cap, in addition to the desire to be doing something outside All. The. Time. earned Dave the nickname Mountain Man. And after the first snow in January that year, perfect for sledding down Flagpole Hill, we were convinced that this crazy guy leading us on a hike through the woods in the middle of the night to go sledding was going to kill us. Walking a bit in front of us, he slowly reached into his pocket and turned around at the rest of us, pulling out...a flashlight. Lost in the dark and totally convinced Dave wanted to hurt us than have fun with us, our friend Chris yelled, "Oh my God, he's got a gun."
So yeah, for some reason Dave has always had this reputation of being a crazy guy, but in all honesty, if you were trapped on a deserted island with only a pocket knife, string and a banana, he's the guy you'd want to be with. He's a cross between a Boy Scout and McGuyver--he's always prepared, but if he's not, he can make it work.
As we drove through western Massachusetts on Friday afternoon, Jeep loaded down with camping gear, we enjoyed the beautiful weather and pretty scenery, eventually landing at Shady Pines Campground, which would be our base for the weekend. I was working very hard on having an open mind about this experience and really wanted to have a good time this weekend.
The campground was pretty nice. They have an awful lot of seasonal campers and people who have dumped their trailers and RVs on a lot and stay there the whole summer, so they have a few extra amenities that other campsites often don't. They have a pool, playground, ball field, rec center (with adults only lounge and pool table), and two comfort stations (read: showers). I was pretty pleased. We arrived at our campsite and I helped Dave get things set up.
I probably could have helped more if I hadn't been taking so many pictures, but blogs are better with pictures!
Dave actually did tell me what kind of knot he was making here, but I forget. Besides, it's not like a) I will ever know how to make it; or b) I will even need to make it. That's why I have him.
The spacious interior of our tent. Yes, that's an air mattress. And yes it has a slight leak and was flat by morning, but the majority of the evening was comfortable. And Dave reinflated it in the wee hours of the second morning.
Dave picked up this screenhouse last week. It was great--since he bought it, there were no bugs all weekend! And it made packing up on Sunday morning much easier since we had light rain all morning.
Dave has essentially one role to keep me happy: he must keep me warm. I am a cold chica. I'm always cold. You know why I could crochet a baby blanket in 100 degree July heat? Because I wasn't actually that warm. So after getting the tent set up, priority number one was making a fire.
He's not a pyro, he just plays one in the woods.The regulars at the campground were pretty friendly. We were across from a seasonal couple with a trailer. They were pretty quiet. In fact the only thing we saw them do was sit by the fire. From pretty early in the morning, until the fires went out at 11:30 pm, they were sitting there, feeding the fire log after log, making themselves a pretty big bonfire at times.
Around the corner from us was another seasonal family. They had two young kids--a girl of about 6 and a little boy of 3 or 4. She had her bike and spent the day riding up and down the road. He had a tricycle, but what he really liked was the John Deer Power Wheels. It was adorable and he went all the way up and down the road over and over again. Mom had to walk behind him and at one point I couldn't seem to get out of his way (no matter which way I went, he was coming right for me!), but it was cute and they were really well behaved.
Because the campground has so many seasonal people and families, they do a lot of theme weekend. This weekend was Easter in August, and they opened up the kitchen at the rec center (burgers, fries, hot dogs and such) on Friday and Saturday nights, showed a movie for the kids on Friday night and organized games on Saturday afternoon, and had a DJ at the rec center on Saturday night. That was actually nice, because it drowned out the crappy music from the three campsites surrounding us.
Overall, we had a pretty good time camping. I was pleased that our campsite was less than 100 yards from the rec center, so I never had to go far to find a bathroom, which was really nice. I can honestly say, I had a better time than expected. We ate really well, and had full days of activities on Saturday and Sunday. I'll update you on the Jeeping and since you know I love to talk about food when I'm away, I'll have a full post on that. I promise you'll be impressed.
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