Happy Campers

Growing up, I did girl scouts and my favorite activity of the entire year was always the camping trip, granted we slept in cabins with tons of bunk beds and didn't even cook our own food but it was still fun. And then I would accompany my dad on the boy scout camping trips as a chaperone. Either way, the point of this, is that I love camping. This past summer I went camping with my dad and brother for the first time in like five years over the fourth of July weekend! That got the ball rolling on planning on another camping trip during the school year with my friend group. Emily and I headed up the planning and when we returned to school in the fall, we asked around for interest. Well, let's just say that it was hard to convince people. But after lots of convincing we had a group of eleven interested souls. And even a waiting list of more people that wish they could join.


At the end of October we headed off to Trout Pond National Park in West Virginia. We had three loaded down cars and enough food to feed an army. Going grocery shopping in and of itself was an adventure. Since I am a crazy planner, I figured out a meal plan for the weekend ahead of time. And then Jeremy, Emily, and I hit up three different stores to get the best bargains on everything: Costco, Walmart, and our Front Royal favorite, Martin's. Jeremy had never been to a Costco and his reaction to everything was priceless. It was like a little kid in a candy store. After getting all stocked up we became master packers with the cars. Who know it took so much stuff to take eleven people camping for the weekend. I honestly don't think that Tyrone (my handsome Jeep Liberty) had an inch of free space with all the camping gear along with me, Jeremy, and Emily and our respective crap. But luckily the drive was just under an hour and a half, so we weren't squished for too long.

Due to people's class schedules, we arrived at the campsites at different times. Jeremy, Emily, and I arrived first with the intention of having camp entirely set up before the next car arrived. But we were delayed leaving school. (Emily didn't pack until like 10 minutes before we were leaving) Well we got everything unloaded from the car. And had two tents set up (except for the rain tarp of mine-we couldn't figure out which way it was supposed to go) But Emily's tent, the big one that was going to be for the girls, was the hardest thing to figure out! So luckily reinforcements arrived in Joe Duffy's car. So between Emily, Joe, Jeremy, Nate, John Paul, and myself we got the tent set up.

The sleeping arrangements were as followed: the five girls snuggled for warmth in the big tent. And then there were the two tents that contained all the snoring. Jeremy and Joe slept in Jeremy's pub tent. And Nate, John Paul, and Luke cuddled together in the third tent. Sully had opted for the hammock when we first arrived on site. Which went fine on night one until the wind picked up around 5am. And then there was an unfortunate incident with the hammock and it ripped on Saturday. So on Saturday night he chose to sleep in his minivan instead of squeezing in with Jeremy and Joe. All and all everything worked out fine and we all stayed warm throughout the night.


Saturday was a day full of adventure as we hit the lake when we woke up. We had bought bait on our way in and the boys were so excited to catch something to fry up for lunch. But it was a flop. We didn't catch a single thing. I don't think we even had a nibble all day long. But we had fun trying and then we all climbed up on the big rock formation at the other end of the lake and sang songs to two old men fishing across the lake.

We had to make the reservations for this weekend over a month in advance, we had no clue what the weather would be like. We all just kept praying that there wouldn't be rain. But we had incredible weather all weekend. Clear skies, and it wasn't unbearable cold. In fact on Saturday we were all in short sleeves t-shirts as it was in the high 60s. And we had plenty of blankets to stay warm at night.




This blog would not be complete without including some of the funny happenings that occurred during our excursion. Luke quotes usually take the cake, "I'm smoking a leaf, not a log" or "when he has his first kid, he won't know to kiss it or to throw it." But probably the best quote from the entire trip was simply one word "NAAAAATTTEE!!" So this needs explaining. We were sitting around the campfire on Saturday night eating our hamburgers and beans for dinner. It was Nate's turn to gather firewood and he was trying to crack one of the logs in half. So he had propped it up and was going to jump on it to snap in it half. Something we had been doing all weekend long. But well this log was particularly thick so when Nate jumped, the log won and Nate slammed to the ground. But before even he hit the ground Luke had jumped out of his chair and was screaming, rushing to Nate to make sure he was okay. Nate just looked stunned for a few moments and then wanted to know what happened to his hamburger. Everyone was laughing until there were tears trickling down our cheeks. We found the bun, but never did find the missing burger patty. And we really looked around, it had mysteriously vanished.

Since it was Halloween weekend, we decided we needed some friendly boys versus girls competition: a pumpkin carving contest. The rules were as following, each team got one hour to come up with a design and have their pumpkin carved.  We went to separate campsites (as there were many open ones) and started carving. For me, at least I had stopped carving pumpkins in high school so I was so excited to get to pick up an old tradition again.

The girls' pumpkin is on the left and the boys' is on the right. 

We had thought for sure, that the girls would win hands down. But the boys showed an extremely valiant effort and it was a split decision as to who had won. Though I believed we ruled in the girls' favor at the end of the day. But both were unique designs that allowed us to show our creativity and have fun doing it. We had met these two older gentlemen when we were out fishing earlier in the day and talked with them for sometime. They were very friendly and tried to get us to make a "drunk pumpkin" but we explained that we had already completed the competition and all we wanted was their opinion as to who had won. They chose the girls :)

Luke leading the troops into battle

Next on the schedule was a hike before dinner. Well, we waited sometime before we actually got started so now we were racing across mother nature to get up the mountain and back before the sun set. Well we had gone about a mile and a half up and it looked like it was started to get dark and the path was pretty steep so the girls decided we should probably head back to be safe. But by this point, the boys were so far ahead the could no longer hear us. So we sent Luke up to tell them to head back down so as to not get caught in the dark. So the girls headed back to camp and prepared for dinner but were going to wait to make the burgers until everyone was back so the food would stay hot. Well an hour passed and there was still no sign of the boys and it was now dark. The girls were worried as to the whereabouts of our male companions. And then, the coyotes hollows started. We were freaking out.

Turns out the boys had decided they were going to continue up the mountain and watch the sunset as we had originally planned. They had no clue that back at camp we were worried about them. We were about to call a sheriff or something to go find them. And then an hour and a half later, the boys returned. And got quite the scolding. They apologized and we ate dinner. And it turns out that the coyotes noises we were hearing were coming from a recording that those two gentlemen were playing in order to try to scare us. Well it had worked, on most of us at least.

It was a perfect weekend! We couldn't have asked for better weather or better companions. We would stay up late at night playing charades or singing songs. It is until we had a rude neighbor come by at 10pm telling us we were being too loud. We apologized and lowered our volume but that was the end to the game of charades. But the best part about the whole weekend was having time away from our studies and the stress of college. And to just be able to hang out with each other!