Campings & Bikings & Raftings, Oh My!
I'm wearing pants I wore on Friday. They smell of woodsmoke. This pleases me.
So, Friday, stentoriansista and I got in her car and drove out to Harper's Ferry for a weekend of being crunchy hippy granola types. We get to the Harper's Ferry KOA with rising amounts of OMGWTF because of the sheer volume of people and smallness of campgrounds. It's luau weekend. Our list of activities for the weekend include a hula competition and a pig roast. We decline said activities. We check in, I buy firewood, firestarters & a camp chair and drive out to our site. Which is right next to a family with four small children and no firepit. We drive back to the store and get a new campground, across the way from the original site. We pitch the tent, I start the fire and stentoriansista goes to inflate the airmattress, only to discover that the pump I bought from Target a few weeks ago... has no back. We go back to the camp store and I pay $5 more than I paid for the first one for a pump that has to go into your car adapter. Inflate the thing, I attempt to rekindle the refusing to burn fire with firestarter #2, we realize that we'll be sleeping on the mother of all downhill angles and stentoriansista moves the batteries from the backless pump to the flashlight... which doesn't turn on. stentoriansista goes to get her campchair only to discover it decided to stay home and canoodle with the kiddies. Moving to a hotel is discussed and rejected because my will is stronger than wood. stentoriansista has a bucket to sit on. Firestarter number three actually gets a fire going. Wine is swigged from the bottle. We go to bed, only to be woken up an hour later by the people across the way from us swearing loudly (probably drunk).
We get up at the crack of 7:45 to get some breakfast and then go to River Riders to get checked in and everything. There's an informative bike safety video, a nice gentleman from Austin with a large beard and even larger ear spacers loads the bikes and some other folks' canoes into a van and we head out. stentoriansista and I, being nice people, strike up a conversation with him and he invites us to hang out with him & his wife in Shepherdstown that night. Canoers get dropped off and we get dropped off at Lock 38? of the C&O trail and start biking.
The C&O trail is absa-frigging-lutely beautiful and runs along the Potomac at a 1% downhill grade, so the biking time is easy and fun. We bike 12-ish miles in an hour and a half and then head into Harper's Ferry, eat some food looking out over the water and then wander around the old church & cemetary. We make it to our pickup point right as our picker-upper shows up and then wait around for 20 minutes as he tries to figure out how to ratchet the bikes into the trailer. We drive very, very slowly back to River Riders and get back to the campground, where I change into a bathing suit and we drive into the mouth of hell itself Wal-Mart, where we get a camp chair, flashlight, more firestarters (we used all the old ones!), a lantern and a faux-bathing suit for stentoriansista and drive back to the river, where we climb out onto some rocks and proceed to just hang out and enjoy the sun and water. There's a bunch of folks around, including some people with a few German shepherds that are swimming. One, named Ruckus, pulls himself out of the water, shakes himself off on OUR TOWEL, relieves himself and then shakes himself off on OUR TOWEL AGAIN and runs away. At this point, we realize we're going to make the car smell like river. We head back to camp and I leave stentoriansista to make fire while I take a much needed shower.
We continue to fail at fire until I remember that you need kindling before the big logs and we burn up a bunch of deadwood & leaves and then the big logs finally catch. We roast weenies and marshmellows and drink more wine and generally have a lovely time until the people next door show up at 9pm and proceed to set up their tents by headlight, ask us really dumb questions and then be loudly annoying and drunk for the next three hours. We go get more beer (we would have gotten more wine, but they were selling Little Penguin for $9 a bottle, which is pretty outrageous). We drink a little more and proceed to go to bed, after I ask the twelve drunk people to please keep it down. They proceed to laugh at me.
We get up at 9:45 and attempt to be as loud as possible as we break down camp, because we know Drinky McDrunksaLot next door are still passed out. After a leisurely breakfast, watching the drunkards next door pee in the woods (the bathrooms are almost as far away as you wandered to go hide behind trees! What's wrong with you!!!) and checkout, we go peruse the flea market next door, where everything that is crappy in the world has come to die. Seriously, it's the worst flea market ever. We get to River Riders at 12:30 for our 1 o'clock check in, eat some snacks and check in promptly at one... when we are told to be back at 1:45. So, we sit on top of the car and knit and watch the sky, which is pretty, but also gray and threatening rain. I'd gotten a phone call saying that we couldn't raft on the Shenandoah because the water level was too low, but that we could go on the Potomac, which was supposed to be "near constant rapids." It was disappointing. Our guide was awesome (I think he enjoyed hanging out with girls near his age and not families or teenagers), but the route was almost exactly what we'd biked along the day before and there was a lot of shiny nature (herons, osprey & egrets), but not a lot of action. We did jump out and swim the final rapid, which was pretty awesome. I forgot to take my watch off, but it took a licking and kept on ticking. We finally got back to the base, changed, and made it home by 6:30ish, where we proceeded to be dead on the couch and watch What Not to Wear until we passed out.
The SUPERLOUD THUNDER woke us up at 1am. It was crazy raining. And then I finally shipped my spinning wheel back to Wisconsin. The damn thing cost $50 to ship. Apparently, it cost extra because they were shipping it to a "rural area." WTFever. If I get a hundred dollars refunded for the thing, that's $50 more than I had before I shipped it and I don't have to have it in my house anymore.
So, to sum up, River Riders = win, Harpers Ferry KOA & UPS = suck. Also, for future camping trips, we're only going to by firewood while camping. Also also, I won't forget pillows. Or dishes.
So, Friday, stentoriansista and I got in her car and drove out to Harper's Ferry for a weekend of being crunchy hippy granola types. We get to the Harper's Ferry KOA with rising amounts of OMGWTF because of the sheer volume of people and smallness of campgrounds. It's luau weekend. Our list of activities for the weekend include a hula competition and a pig roast. We decline said activities. We check in, I buy firewood, firestarters & a camp chair and drive out to our site. Which is right next to a family with four small children and no firepit. We drive back to the store and get a new campground, across the way from the original site. We pitch the tent, I start the fire and stentoriansista goes to inflate the airmattress, only to discover that the pump I bought from Target a few weeks ago... has no back. We go back to the camp store and I pay $5 more than I paid for the first one for a pump that has to go into your car adapter. Inflate the thing, I attempt to rekindle the refusing to burn fire with firestarter #2, we realize that we'll be sleeping on the mother of all downhill angles and stentoriansista moves the batteries from the backless pump to the flashlight... which doesn't turn on. stentoriansista goes to get her campchair only to discover it decided to stay home and canoodle with the kiddies. Moving to a hotel is discussed and rejected because my will is stronger than wood. stentoriansista has a bucket to sit on. Firestarter number three actually gets a fire going. Wine is swigged from the bottle. We go to bed, only to be woken up an hour later by the people across the way from us swearing loudly (probably drunk).
We get up at the crack of 7:45 to get some breakfast and then go to River Riders to get checked in and everything. There's an informative bike safety video, a nice gentleman from Austin with a large beard and even larger ear spacers loads the bikes and some other folks' canoes into a van and we head out. stentoriansista and I, being nice people, strike up a conversation with him and he invites us to hang out with him & his wife in Shepherdstown that night. Canoers get dropped off and we get dropped off at Lock 38? of the C&O trail and start biking.
The C&O trail is absa-frigging-lutely beautiful and runs along the Potomac at a 1% downhill grade, so the biking time is easy and fun. We bike 12-ish miles in an hour and a half and then head into Harper's Ferry, eat some food looking out over the water and then wander around the old church & cemetary. We make it to our pickup point right as our picker-upper shows up and then wait around for 20 minutes as he tries to figure out how to ratchet the bikes into the trailer. We drive very, very slowly back to River Riders and get back to the campground, where I change into a bathing suit and we drive into the mouth of hell itself Wal-Mart, where we get a camp chair, flashlight, more firestarters (we used all the old ones!), a lantern and a faux-bathing suit for stentoriansista and drive back to the river, where we climb out onto some rocks and proceed to just hang out and enjoy the sun and water. There's a bunch of folks around, including some people with a few German shepherds that are swimming. One, named Ruckus, pulls himself out of the water, shakes himself off on OUR TOWEL, relieves himself and then shakes himself off on OUR TOWEL AGAIN and runs away. At this point, we realize we're going to make the car smell like river. We head back to camp and I leave stentoriansista to make fire while I take a much needed shower.
We continue to fail at fire until I remember that you need kindling before the big logs and we burn up a bunch of deadwood & leaves and then the big logs finally catch. We roast weenies and marshmellows and drink more wine and generally have a lovely time until the people next door show up at 9pm and proceed to set up their tents by headlight, ask us really dumb questions and then be loudly annoying and drunk for the next three hours. We go get more beer (we would have gotten more wine, but they were selling Little Penguin for $9 a bottle, which is pretty outrageous). We drink a little more and proceed to go to bed, after I ask the twelve drunk people to please keep it down. They proceed to laugh at me.
We get up at 9:45 and attempt to be as loud as possible as we break down camp, because we know Drinky McDrunksaLot next door are still passed out. After a leisurely breakfast, watching the drunkards next door pee in the woods (the bathrooms are almost as far away as you wandered to go hide behind trees! What's wrong with you!!!) and checkout, we go peruse the flea market next door, where everything that is crappy in the world has come to die. Seriously, it's the worst flea market ever. We get to River Riders at 12:30 for our 1 o'clock check in, eat some snacks and check in promptly at one... when we are told to be back at 1:45. So, we sit on top of the car and knit and watch the sky, which is pretty, but also gray and threatening rain. I'd gotten a phone call saying that we couldn't raft on the Shenandoah because the water level was too low, but that we could go on the Potomac, which was supposed to be "near constant rapids." It was disappointing. Our guide was awesome (I think he enjoyed hanging out with girls near his age and not families or teenagers), but the route was almost exactly what we'd biked along the day before and there was a lot of shiny nature (herons, osprey & egrets), but not a lot of action. We did jump out and swim the final rapid, which was pretty awesome. I forgot to take my watch off, but it took a licking and kept on ticking. We finally got back to the base, changed, and made it home by 6:30ish, where we proceeded to be dead on the couch and watch What Not to Wear until we passed out.
The SUPERLOUD THUNDER woke us up at 1am. It was crazy raining. And then I finally shipped my spinning wheel back to Wisconsin. The damn thing cost $50 to ship. Apparently, it cost extra because they were shipping it to a "rural area." WTFever. If I get a hundred dollars refunded for the thing, that's $50 more than I had before I shipped it and I don't have to have it in my house anymore.
So, to sum up, River Riders = win, Harpers Ferry KOA & UPS = suck. Also, for future camping trips, we're only going to by firewood while camping. Also also, I won't forget pillows. Or dishes.