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I came, I saw, I camped.
Apr. 25th, 2007 01:34 pmThe weekend went off as planned. Jeff picked me and my gear up at Jim's house Saturday morning and we joined eight others in the George Washington National Forest for a hike up Big Schloss. Like last year, the weather was just about perfect and the view from the peak was spectacular. I had forgotten how tiring the first part of the trail is because of the initial steepness, but once we hit the ridge line and things leveled out, it was very pleasant.
After the group hiked back down the mountain to the lower parking lot and everybody else left for home, Jeff and I set about making camp. For the first time, I built my own campfire and it caught on the first light and burned very well.
Jeff is a clever boy. He has a small solar shower -- a plastic bag with a tube and a small shower head that you hang up in camp for showering. It's made of black plastic, so you can leave it in the sun and the water inside will heat up. However, before leaving home that morning, Jeff had filled it up with hot water and put it in an insulating cooler, so he and I had showers after the hike. The pleasure of feeling clean was all out of proportion to the actual amount of water used!
We grilled steaks for dinner and accompanied them with baked potatoes and sugar snap peas. The peas were my contribution, and I didn't manage to get them completely cooked, but they were still edible, even raw.
Sunday morning, Jeff attempted an omelet over the campfire, but necessity forced it into a mixture of scrambled eggs, cheese and veggies. It was delicious.
We struck camp, then took a look at another possible camp site further along the trail before heading home. We took a longer way back, which afforded some truly beautiful views of the countryside. We stopped in Front Royal to browse through a flea market and visit the ice cream stand that we usually hit after the canoe trip each year.
Jeff dropped me off at Jim's house in DC, where I tidied things up and gathered the rest of my stuff. Confronted with the idea of lugging all of my things to the metro and from there to Dakota's house on foot, I instead decided to give a cab $30 to drop me right in front of Dakota's place. I was too exhausted to manage that trip and I consider it money well spent.
After the group hiked back down the mountain to the lower parking lot and everybody else left for home, Jeff and I set about making camp. For the first time, I built my own campfire and it caught on the first light and burned very well.
Jeff is a clever boy. He has a small solar shower -- a plastic bag with a tube and a small shower head that you hang up in camp for showering. It's made of black plastic, so you can leave it in the sun and the water inside will heat up. However, before leaving home that morning, Jeff had filled it up with hot water and put it in an insulating cooler, so he and I had showers after the hike. The pleasure of feeling clean was all out of proportion to the actual amount of water used!
We grilled steaks for dinner and accompanied them with baked potatoes and sugar snap peas. The peas were my contribution, and I didn't manage to get them completely cooked, but they were still edible, even raw.
Sunday morning, Jeff attempted an omelet over the campfire, but necessity forced it into a mixture of scrambled eggs, cheese and veggies. It was delicious.
We struck camp, then took a look at another possible camp site further along the trail before heading home. We took a longer way back, which afforded some truly beautiful views of the countryside. We stopped in Front Royal to browse through a flea market and visit the ice cream stand that we usually hit after the canoe trip each year.
Jeff dropped me off at Jim's house in DC, where I tidied things up and gathered the rest of my stuff. Confronted with the idea of lugging all of my things to the metro and from there to Dakota's house on foot, I instead decided to give a cab $30 to drop me right in front of Dakota's place. I was too exhausted to manage that trip and I consider it money well spent.
