Camping

Last weekend, I went actual camping. I know everyone else here is saying "What? Big deal, I camp in my sleep!" But this was my very first *real* camping adventure - no car nearby, no futon in my giant tent, and no $5.00/transaction ATM. I was just like Luke entering the Cave on Dagobah - there was only what I took with me. Well, what Kim and I took with us. Mostly Kim. She had a giant backpack with one zillion tons of stuff in it. I had a small backpack with a sleeping bag that didn't fit.

It turns out I don't like hiking much. I'd much rather drive or helicopter or teleport to my destination. Walking is really, really slow and tedious. Camping, however, turned out to be a lot of fun. We went to a place called The Crack south of Sedona along Wet Beaver Creek. Being a weekend, we had to contend with a Boy Scout troop and drunken frat boys. But we still managed to get a camping spot on some sandstone near the river.

It was very pretty, as Nature tends to be. We had a fire (made possible in part by wood that Kim hiked in) that exploded, melting holes in both our Therm-a-Rests and Kim's shorts, a bottle of wine, and a painfully beautiful sky. Then came the longest night ever. When one's sleeping pad thingy doesn't inflate because it got all melty and one is lying down on rock, one really start to appreciate the futon mattress one usually drives to one's campsite. I "slept" on a crack at The Crack.

The next morning was spent packing up and hiking back out to the car. Hiking takes frackin' forever. The trip would have been better if we could have driven in.

Also, Michael Dell hates you.