Camping

It's been a rather busy week, unusually for me, where I've been out and about doing stuff instead of having any free time. Tomorrow should be the first quiet day I've had in awhile with nothing special going on either during or after work. Today work was a bit crazy, but all I did in the evening was go out to dinner. Now it's just a quiet night at home. Pyramus has taken up residence on my lap and a bit of a summer storm has just started. When I was a little girl, my father used to take us outside to sit on the porch during storms and watch the lightning. It was one of my favorite things about summer. So basically, it's the perfect summer night tonight.

Anyway, my week. Wendy and I had been planning a hiking trip for awhile now, but it presented several logistical problems. Primarily that neither of us own a tent or a car. So it took some time to plan everything out. Wendy managed to borrow a tent, I arranged to borrow my grandmother's rarely used car, and we were off to the races. The very slow races. We figured it would be a good idea to take a cab to my grandmothers because we were running late and had a lot of stuff. We probably could have carried all our stuff and still walked faster than the cab drove so this was probably a mistake. We finally got there after getting driving directions to my grandmother's from my mother and obtained the car. After that things went smoothly, thanks in large part to my mother's truly excellent directions Upstate. She is clearly a woman who has come to terms with the fact that her eldest daughter has no sense of direction whatsoever, and needs excessively clear directions.

So we got up to New Paltz, and then to Rosendale, where our campground was located, with little difficulty. I actually lived just outside Kingston, NY until I was 9, in Saugerties and then West Hurley, so I'm very vaguely familiar with the area. We stopped at a Stewart's for ice cream which was exciting because they totally make the best gas station/convenience store ice cream but there aren't any in either NYC or Buffalo.

We arrived at Creekview Campsites a little after 6. The owner promptly emerged from his camper and laughed at us, asking if we'd rented the car because, "even its wheels are clean." In the four years that my grandmother has owned the car she's put a grand total of 6000 miles on it, so this is indeed true. The owner of the campsite was jokingly condescending but very friendly, coming over to chat and give firestarting advice, and lending us a pot when we realized that in our rush to leave the apartment we'd failed to bring one. And though our first choice of campsite had to be abandoned due to a robin nesting under the picnic table (Wendy didn't want to disturb her) our campsite was still quite nice.

We "cooked" a dinner that we just had to add hot water to and had a nice fire with the free firewood provided and made s'mores and had a very nice time. Also, it has to be said, the other campsites in the area cost a lot more than the $20 we paid.

Our campsite: