Camping Hijinks
Aug. 15th, 2005 10:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhienellethWe are never, never, never going back to Detroit Lake for camping. OMG, what a waste of a perfectly good camping trip.
Ok, so it's an hour and a half closer than driving to Diamond Lake, our usual spot, and it has bathrooms and running water unlike Green Peter, the place we went last year. But dear God, so not worth it. We were lucky - our usual trip has 12-15 people on it. This year not everyone could go (people on their honeymoon, other people moving to California, etc, etc), and thankfully we only had five people. Because the campsite? The approximate size of a postage stamp. And that was the one they bumped us up to after Chrissy, the first camper to arrive on Friday, went and complained about our original, even smaller campsite. Did they not understand when she reserved the site and told them we'd have approximately 10 people?
Seriously, we had room to put up two regular sized four man tents, and Bryan couldn't even put up his little tiny two man tent. He had to sleep in Chrissy's. I won't get into the parking fiasco, expect to say that we ended up paying $10 for our vehicle, which was supposed to be included in the reservation fee.
The park rangers drove by every hour, on the hour. And then stopped their little rent-a-cop carts and walked through campsites wielding their flashlights like badges. At approximayely 11 o'clock on our first evening, they walked into our camp and looked at our fire, which was down to coals with two little flickering flames, but the coals filled the grated area, and the following conversation ensued:
Ranger Bob: "You folks need to keep your voices down." (We'd been talking in normal voices, grouped around our campfire. We weren't yet drunk, nor were we excessively loud.) "It's after 10 o'clock. Quiet time."
Ranger Rick: "Wow. That's a mighty big fire there." (We all look at our fire, perplexed.)
Ranger Bob: "Yep. I wouldn't put any more wood on that fire. You know, all those coals have to be out before you go to bed."
Um. Ok. I don't honestly remember the answer someone else gave them, but they ended up leaving, apparently satisfied. It was 11 o'clock! We don't normally turn in on camping trips until two in the morning or so. This, of course, led to a weekend full of jokes around the phrases "mighty big fire there" and "quiet time". Realize that there was no brush whatsoever for sparks from the fire to jump to. The ground was dirt. The trees were two hundred feet tall with all the branches lower than fifty feet amputated from them.
And around one in the morning, when Mark and Bryan were still up talking, the Rangers went around and walked through ever camp with their flashlights, dumping great buckets of water on any wayward coals that might have been radiating the most modest heat. Yeah. Never. Going. Back.
Ok, so it's an hour and a half closer than driving to Diamond Lake, our usual spot, and it has bathrooms and running water unlike Green Peter, the place we went last year. But dear God, so not worth it. We were lucky - our usual trip has 12-15 people on it. This year not everyone could go (people on their honeymoon, other people moving to California, etc, etc), and thankfully we only had five people. Because the campsite? The approximate size of a postage stamp. And that was the one they bumped us up to after Chrissy, the first camper to arrive on Friday, went and complained about our original, even smaller campsite. Did they not understand when she reserved the site and told them we'd have approximately 10 people?
Seriously, we had room to put up two regular sized four man tents, and Bryan couldn't even put up his little tiny two man tent. He had to sleep in Chrissy's. I won't get into the parking fiasco, expect to say that we ended up paying $10 for our vehicle, which was supposed to be included in the reservation fee.
The park rangers drove by every hour, on the hour. And then stopped their little rent-a-cop carts and walked through campsites wielding their flashlights like badges. At approximayely 11 o'clock on our first evening, they walked into our camp and looked at our fire, which was down to coals with two little flickering flames, but the coals filled the grated area, and the following conversation ensued:
Ranger Bob: "You folks need to keep your voices down." (We'd been talking in normal voices, grouped around our campfire. We weren't yet drunk, nor were we excessively loud.) "It's after 10 o'clock. Quiet time."
Ranger Rick: "Wow. That's a mighty big fire there." (We all look at our fire, perplexed.)
Ranger Bob: "Yep. I wouldn't put any more wood on that fire. You know, all those coals have to be out before you go to bed."
Um. Ok. I don't honestly remember the answer someone else gave them, but they ended up leaving, apparently satisfied. It was 11 o'clock! We don't normally turn in on camping trips until two in the morning or so. This, of course, led to a weekend full of jokes around the phrases "mighty big fire there" and "quiet time". Realize that there was no brush whatsoever for sparks from the fire to jump to. The ground was dirt. The trees were two hundred feet tall with all the branches lower than fifty feet amputated from them.
And around one in the morning, when Mark and Bryan were still up talking, the Rangers went around and walked through ever camp with their flashlights, dumping great buckets of water on any wayward coals that might have been radiating the most modest heat. Yeah. Never. Going. Back.
