Sunday, September 02, 2007

Camping Trip 2007

Short and sweet was the yearly camping trip. However, we only scheduled a short trip so we could enjoy some time at home with the kids.

Our first full day there our good friend/family member Boz came for a visit to do some fishing with us. It was really nice to have company there, he fits right in with our family. Of course, I talked to him about as much as I normally do-sorry Boz, I was just too into my crosswords to pay much attention to you. You know, focusing on the vacation and all....hehe.

So anyway, we were told by the park ranger to go by some rapids and to fish in the little pools all over. Beautiful, beautiful scenery on the Kettle River....mmmmmm, mmmmm. Rocks everywhere, ones that we could walk on to get nearly across the river. And it's a pretty wide river.

But we had to watch our step because some of them were sludged with really slippery mud/muck. Which, unfortunately, I discovered.

Freshly showered for our fishing trip, traipsing over the rocks, enjoying the music of the river it was like the needle on a record album scraped it's sound into my beautiful moment. Figures the fishing spots there were sparse so we were all going to move down a bit. I was trying to make my way back to shore, found a nice flat rock but I hesitated a moment...hmmm, was that just dried up or what.

Well, I went to test for stability and suddenly found my knee slamming into the muck and onto a very solid surface, that was underneath that dry looking moss on top. Many of the dry rocks looked much the same as this and were not slippery at all. I didn't have a chance at saving myself from that fall...I was doomed from the moment my foot touched it.

When I say my knee slammed into this rock, I mean slammed. I feared that perhaps I had cracked it or something. And Pat told me later in the trip that he heard me smack that rock and he was about 75 feet down that river with quite a lot of racket coming off the rapids. That alone shocked me...I was really hoping no one had seen my acrobats. No one saw me fall but it was heard.

I got up and my freshly showered legs were COVERED in mud, my knee was throbbing like crazy and there was blood seeping through the mud. My clothes were also full of mud, from the splash created by my fall, on this rock that was about as big as a large family size pizza. Ugh. Not a good way to start our vacation but oh well. What can I do.

Aside from being a gimp for a few days and having a contusion the size of an egg on my knee, things went pretty well. I also got stung by a bee in my armpit, slammed my other knee on the corner of the picnic table and had a midnight shower from a rainstorm but overall...the trip was nice.

We did catch some really nice small mouth bass in that river and I also caught a walleye. Soldier girl caught a northern just as we were going to move to a new spot. Unfortunately, Boz missed out on the secret fishing spot! We found it the next day and were reeling in all kinds of fish...those that I just mentioned above.

It was quite funny really. Boz was in denial, refused to believe that there may be fish in that river. So, he didn't fish, he just watched. Our son was the first to latch on to something and there after was all she wrote! Boz was no longer in denial and finally decided to pick up his pole and throw in a line....but he was too late. By the time he had done that, all the fish in that little pool had been caught. So he went home fishless.

We didn't have any serious animal antics...a few garter snakes for our son to oooh and awww over...OH there was some animals. Chipmunks! I have never seen so many in one place. There must have been about 20-30 of them gathering acorns and packing them away for the winter. I squatted on the sidewalk for nearly an hour just watching them. My toes were nearly run over too many times to count as they got just inches from us.

I watched in awe as these tiny little things went about their business. I was actually counting how many acorns they would pack in their cheeks before they scuttled off into the woods...10 acorns, it was like they knew how many they were counting out.

Some would run up the oak tree and all the sudden acorns would be falling to the ground. They were knocking them down, would quick run down the tree to the place they knocked them and quickly collect. It was so intriguing to watch this.

We had a horrible night of rain which I mentioned briefly above..my midnight shower. It poured most of the night, thunder, lightening, wind. Storms in tents. But I must say, all that seam sealing we did a couple years ago and scotch guarding paid off!!! Our tent was nearly dry the next morning! Pat and I were pretty excited about that. To some that might sound somewhat ridiculous but until you wake up in puddles of water, you won't understand our excitement. Oh, we didn't seal the rain shield, we have so many seams on that 8 man tent the we figured all our work on the main structure would be more than enough. Wrong......but a little water doesn't hurt, it's just a little cold when you're in a dead sleep and suddenly feel it on your face or in your ear.

We had a great trip. We're home now, our daughter is home, and life is back to chaos. I started school this week...man, am I overwhelmed right now. But that will change once I get into the routine, I know.

So, on that note, time for me to find something to gripe about......whatever will it be?

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