More About Camping- Now, With Pictures

Hi hi.

So, as promised, here are some pictures from our "camping" trip to Big Bear last weekend.

I drove up on Friday night with Devin, my sister Katie, and Seamus the dog. Devin drove, while I spent the whole time trying to find one acceptable station on Sirius Radio and Katie fought for space in the back seat with Seamus. Also, she and I were car sick. I think this blurry picture helps convey the car sickness. We had to wind our way all the way to the tippy top of a mountain, where the air was cool and thin.



We'd left work early to hit the road at about 4:45. Our friend Ryan, who spearheaded this whole adventure, was supposed to have gone up to the cabin early in the day to get the keys out of the lockbox and get everything ready for everyone else.

When we arrived at the cabin, we were alarmed to discover that it was very dark. It appeared no one was home. Immediately, I called Ryan.

"Hi..."
"Hey Bri"
"Where are you?"
"I'm almost there...I got, er, delayed."

And so we set about finding the lockbox and attempting to open up the cabin. This doesn't sound hard...but there was no light anywhere, except for one porch light around the corner.

Once inside, we were surprised to find that it was quite homey. We settled in, unpacked the bottles of wine, and made a cheese plate. Over the next hour, everyone else showed up in groups of 2 or 3. We were all very cozy, and pretty tipsy.



Note Devin in the back, left, with whiskey bottled resting on his chest.

I got in a cooking mood and whipped up some linguini with clam sauce. Here I am with the pasta, and Julie with her vodka & cranberry.



Don't be concerned about that strange man on the other side of the glass door. We weren't being stalked. That's just our friend Tomas.

Later that night, we all crammed into the hot tub. We managed to displace about half the water in the tub, sending it cascading over the edge and soaking the deck.



Note Devin still holding whiskey bottle.

The next day, after spending about 3 hours making a giant breakfast for everyone, and then 2 minutes eating said breakfast, we drove down to the lake to rent a pontoon boat.

Because it was Ryan's birthday, and because no one else had driven a boat before, he was the captain.



It looks like it's all fun and games in this picture, but he was very bossy and drove us into choppy waters. We'd all severely underestimated how cold it would be on the lake. And with Ryan speeding around like a mad man, we were all chilled to the bone by the strong winds.

Eventually, we found an arbitrary place to stop the boat and attempt to fish.

Seamus, while nervous at the start of the trip, eventually grew to enjoy boating.



My sister and I are not into fishing, so we enjoyed coronas and used our new Big Bear beer cozies. (I'm on the left, btw.)



In fact, there wasn't much for the ladies to do while the men exchanged horrible ideas about how to improve their odds of getting a big fish. So, we had more beers.




Later on, we found our way into a nice cove, where we dropped anchor and decided to fish some more. This is where everything went wrong. The rope of the anchor got tangled up with the rope of a buoy. It seems like this combo would have made us doubly secure, but in fact the boat drifted into shore, dragging the buoy with it. While everyone at the anchor end of the boat was busy figuring out how to untangle everything, those of us on the opposite end of the boat couldn't help but notice we were rapidly drifting into shore. And, more importantly, toward a private dock with a very nice and expensive looking wooden boat.

"Hey guys... guys...we need to do something about this."

We drifted closer, and closer. Meanwhile, Mike had jumped into the lake to untangle the anchor.

"Guys...seriously. We're going to hit that boat."

As we neared the dock, Julie (the smallest person on the whole boat), jumped onto the dock, held onto a post, and used all of her strength to keep the boat from going any further.

It was simultaneously hilarious and scary. Also, I'm pretty sure we were damaging some property...and that's never a good thing.

Eventually, we freed the anchor, pulled Julie back into the boat and sped off.

That night, everyone was pretty pooped after a day of adventure at sea. But before we all passed out, we celebrated Ryan's birthday with some really brightly frosted cupcakes.