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prev home archive next Announcement! May's new Storyteller topic is up! Go! Write! Momentary Thought Reading Jayne's holiday entry about her trip to France made me ache. I so want to travel!!! High/Low High: I got the most amazing fan e-mail today. Someone who wrote to me and told me my words were touching their life and making them a better person. There is no more profound honor for a journaler and writer than that. If you're reading, my friend, again I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Low: Ex-boss' kitty cat died. Remember, the one I used to take care of all the time? I think I may cry - I loved that cat! Current Obsession Financial re-arranging. I talked to a guy about a debt consolidation loan last night, but he hasn't gotten back with me yet. Plus, I applied for a credit card that has an 8% APR on balance transfers - the three balances I'm looking to transfer have a 23%, 21%, and 17% APR respectively. Improvement, much? Grin Source "...I know they're thinking about the countless cows, pigs, and chickens, and the stray ostriches, deer, and caribou who are lining up in the afterlife to give me a hard revengeful kick in the shins. I tend to chew more slowly and savor my meat even more upon those occasions." Sarah, on vegetarianism. Singing I see skies of blue, and clouds of white, the bright blessed day, the dark sacred night. And I think to myself, what a wonderful world... Louis Armstrong, "Wonderful World" Storyteller Bio Dramatis Personnae Who I Read Recipes |
I get stupidly excited about planning camping trips. And that reaction in me is no mystery. I'm a small town girl, living in a lonely world... Sorry. Lapsed into Journey there for a second. Calvin and I have the week of July 4th off, and we're all going camping in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest from the 1st through the 6th. Well, sans Michael, who will be boot camping his little heart out by that time. The prospect of getting the hell outta Dodge and going up North always excites me. Cool air. *Trees*, by God. Wildlife and pine needles and a deep breath that doesn't contain smog. Aw yeah, baby. I love sleeping in a tent. The air gets positively frigid at night (yes, in July; yes, in ARIZONA) - the elevation's over 9000 feet. We have quite comfortable air mattresses, plus two sleeping bags that zip together to form one, plus blankets piled up on top of us, plus Calvin's snuggly warm form to press against. Marie will be quite toasty, too, with three (count 'em, three!) dogs to pile around her. Yes, they sleep in the tent with us. Although this year, seeing as Kye is fully grown, she may stay outside. Gadget and Gypsy are quite well behaved in the tent, though. Better so than if we locked 'em in their crates, as we sadly discovered in one of our past camping trips. I just love all aspects of camping. We have so much gear it's not to be believed, and don't let me anywhere near a camping store! I'll find dozens of items that I just "have to" have. The neat cutlery set that fits all together. The matching camp dishes. The stackable pans with retracting handles. The folding camp chairs with attached foot rests. The rope hammocks. The flashlights somehow powered in such a way that you never need batteries. The shower thingies you hang from a tree. Fishing gear, and jack knives, and hatchets (oh my!). I even enjoy camp cooking. We have a really great camp stove, and we end up eating such things as steaks, burgers, chicken boobs, soup, spaghetti, eggs and hashbrowns, grilled cheese sandwiches... basically anything we want (short of crock-potting). We certainly eat like kings while we're camping, with no shortage of junk food. Now if we can just catch some fresh fish... We're even able to have our much-needed morning coffee, brewed in the funky little camp percolator. The "old fashioned" way - which makes for some strong-ass coffee. Some day we may be brave enough to attempt the remote campsites that are "pack it in, pack it out" - meaning all trash you take with you, you pack back out. Usually no potable water. Usually no other campers! But for now we stick to the locations that have a store at least a half-hour away, that we're able to drive up to. Dispersed camping (camping along the edges or nearby a "hosted" campsite) is as adventurous as we've gotten. We tend to stay for at least four days at a time, and by that time the ice has melted and the water's getting low. So a store, or at least a spicket, is necessary. The best trip we've had so far was two years ago, to the Mogollon Rim (pronounced MUH*gee*on). One night, Calvin and Michael went to the edge of our campsite, and started howling. Coyotes answered back. They'd shift around the edges, coming from different directions, and Calvin and Michael kept up a conversation with them. Freaked the dogs out, of course. We were also visited by a racoon, who partook of a basin of water we left outside our tent. We hiked, we ate, we took our inflatable boats down to the Blue Ridge Reservoir and splashed around and fished. I most certainly didn't want to go home, when it was time. Last year's trip was down south to Mount Graham, home of the Vatican Observatory (did you know they had one?), and sacred mountain to the San Carlos Apache Indians. Lots of controversy, there, with the endangered Mount Graham Red Squirrel's habitat threatened by the construction of the Observatory. Not to mention the position of the Indians, and all the activity on their sacred mountain. None of this controversy factored in to the negativity of our trip, though. No, it was the ride in the truck, up switchback and winding roads, with very carsick dogs. *Three* very carsick dogs. Then, two kids who didn't particularly get along for the whole trip. Noisy camping neighbors. A puke-and-poop incident (involving the dogs and a furious Calvin at 3:00 a.m.). Then the whole stupid ride home. Nope. Not going back *there* again. So this year it's back up North again, to the Big Lake area, where Calvin and the kids have camped before. Me being my organized self, I have a list of all the gear, food, etc. that we need for camping, and re-use the same list (in Excel, of course!) every year. No forgetting lighters or bug spray for *us*, nosiree. We already have our campsite reserved (it being the busy 4th of July season) through Reserve USA. How cool is that, to be able to reserve a camp site via the internet! Now all that's left is the damned waiting. I hate to wish my life away, but I *do* wish it were July already! |