The fall camping adventure starts as usual.... shopping the night before the event. Picked up all the food and got the coolers ready with the dry goods. Made a list of things not to forget.... this is where things went wrong!
Friday: 6:00 PM - Loaded trailer: Food, Tents, Personal Gear, Directions to Camp Ground, Dutch Oven, Tables, Water Containers.... good to go... so off we go....
Friday: 9:30 PM - Discussion about directions - Follow US 29 N / US 11 N/S (yes it goes both directions for a stretch). Then the next direction is turn on to right onto 29 / S Mill Street and go 10 miles. Ok this is where it gets tricky... after clocking just about 10 miles, we started to doubt if the direction was 29 S or S Mill Street... in the dark looks like 29 S, so we turn around. after about 15 min traveling south, we decided that we were correct and turned around again. We stopped at a gas station to confirm our correctness (we should get applauds here for asking)... aside from the biker fight inside the gas station, Mr. Tom was able to gather that we were correct in our initial course of action. No traveling another 15 min north we should be in camp, right... nope.
The mountain is dark, the signs are brown and not light.... as we go over the mountain and descend the other side (another 15 min) we decide that we must have passed the campground. After some interesting trailer backing on the side of a hill in the dark, we were able to get everything turned around again to back up the mountain... were we found the campground on top. The small sign said ("CAMP OFFICE").
Arriving at camp around 11:30, all we had to do now is set up camp! As we begin to get things out of the trailer, two things struck me... we did not have the box of tent begs for the wall tents and we had no Axe Bag (which also contained tent pegs). After some quick improvisations, We had a wall tent up, and our crew gear stowed, and regular tents set up. We had most everything set up by 2 am... man I'm tired.
After a good nights sleep, all you want to do is find some coffee and have some chow. Having that sinking feeling twice in 24 hrs is not a good thing. The dry goods box, was not in the trailer. This was going to be a mess kit weekend. While the Adults all had packed mess kits, none of the scouts had theirs. To top it off, the crew box did not have a coffee pot, only a coco pot. This was getting bad. Mr. Tom made "Cowboy Coffee" in the coco pot... cinnamon and salt were used with the coffee grounds directly in the bottom of the pot. Mr. Dennis had a clean handkerchief to "filter" the coffee. Ok life was getting better now.
The forecast was for rain... and it started around 10:30 am as a drizzle and fog. Mr. Dennis and I were making adjustments to the "tarp masterpiece" that we had constructed in front of the cook tent. We worked it around the fire so that we could keep the tables dry and close enough to the fire to keep them warm without burning down the tarps. Overall it worked out pretty good.
The crew elected not to go on the hike of the falls and instead played football and game around the campsite during breaks in the sprinkles. The hard rain came down between 5 PM and 8:30 PM. We also had a great time listening to the troop next to us.... their leaders were barking out orders all weekend. By the end of camp, we felt we knew half the troop next to us by name because of all the commotion over getting things done.
After we turned in for the night, we had some raccoon visitors to camp... there is nothing like listening to the sound of your cooler lid go, thump, thump. then hearing the wrappers being opened. They were getting into our crackers from the coolers and trash. When I got out of the tent to chase them away... I got this look like, yea.. you want a piece of this... all I could figure out is they must have been city raccoons. After some "convincing" they left for the night.
The next morning was great, the sun was out and we broke camp and headed off for home... well after enjoying listening to the troop next to us break camp. The trip home was uneventful.