Camping Misadventures
This weekend my buddy Josh and I decided that we needed to go camping. We had bought food on Thursday night along with fishing licenses. I was very excited all day to get to go. The mood was dampened a little bit when I found out that they were expecting rain for Saturday morning. I decided rain wasn't a big deal and it should serve to cool everything down for us. Silly me...
I left work early and managed to get home a little before 4:00. I had not packed yet, so I was running around trying to pull everything together by the time Josh got there. Josh got there about 4:30 and had to wait for me to finish packing, but we were out the door by 5:00. We drove up to Bonham State Park. Bonham is a very small park. The ranger station was actually closed by the time we got there, so we set up camp and then drove back into town. Our plan had been to eat on the way, but neither of us were hungry. So when we went back into town we had some dinner at a local steakhouse.
After we got back we sat back and relaxed for a while. We played Backgammon. The first game we made up our own rules before we actually read the instructions and the second we played according to the rules.
We climbed in the tent and attempted to sleep, but it was stifling hot with no breeze. When I woke drenched in sweat I moved my ground mat and sleeping bag outside to try and sleep. When Josh found me I was on top of the picnic table sound asleep. Rain drops splashing down had awakened him and he was fumbling around for the rain fly. We got the rain fly on and then both of us crawled into the tent. A short while later the heavens opened up. I expected rain, but what we appeared to get was the torrential remnants of Hurricane Charlie. The rain started coming down hard and only proceeded to get harder. At one point I realized that the tent was getting flooded so I poked my head out to see what was going on. That's when I realized that the whole tent platform had 1.5-2 inches of water. As soon as I climb out of the tent I'm immediately soaked with very cold water. I tell Josh to get out and come help me move the tent. He took his time, but finally emerged to help drag the tent down to a sloped grassy slope. We climb back inside the tent cold and soaking wet. Josh is more than a little bit slap happy and everything seems to be funny now. He's laughing at me, at the situation, and the fact that he's shivering. We manage to go back to sleep for a little while.
When we finally get up and get breakfast going, the park ranger comes by to ask us to swing by the office. They were closed when we got there last night so we needed to get officially signed in. Since the sun finally came out we put everything out to dry and walk up to the office still undecided about staying another night. We asked about the weather and are informed that we can expect more showers. Josh and I looked at each other and decided we'd had enough for the weekend.
