Sunday, June 1, 2008

Happy Campers

So let me just start out by saying that I am NOT a camper!! Sydney and I decided a few weeks ago that it would be really fun to do a camping trip over memorial day weekend. Well who knew that in Southern California that is like the biggest weekend for camping!! We could only get a site at Joshua Tree, so we just booked it then decided that camping in the middle of the desert this time of year might not be the best idea and a hotel in Palm Springs was sounding pretty good. As it got closer the weather wasn't quite good enough for laying out and swimming in Palm Springs so on Friday (the night before we left!) we decided to look into camping again. I found a site up in the San Bernardino mountains that seemed perfect, checked the weather and the day was supposed to be 74 and at night the low was 54 so we decided we'd give it a shot. We finally got all our stuff together on Saturday, went grocery shopping and we were all on our way. Only problem was that neither Ryan or Chris looked at the directions before we left, leaving it up to me and Syd. So 4 hours later we finally made it up there (it only took us and hour and a half to get home!) after driving 30 miles past Palm Springs! As we were driving farther and farther up the mountain we watched at the temperature go from 60 down to 48 then down to 42 pretty soon after that we started seeing snow on the ground as the temp dropped down into the 30's...It was so cold!! So as it turns out I had checked the temperature for the bottom of the mountain, not the top where we would be staying! It was in the low 30's during the day and into the 20's at night. Needless to say we weren't quite prepared for how cold it was going to be and I was made fun of the whole trip about the 54 degree mix up.













Ryan and Chris decided to be really manly and start a fire using a flint and a knife. They were so cute trying to get the fire started and wouldn't give up. But eventually after about 30 minutes of relentlessly trying and me and Syd freezing and wanting to get dinner started they splashed a little lighter fluid in the pit and tried one more time. It instantly started and as you can see by the picture they were so proud of themselves for making fire! We made a delicious dinner of hot dogs and beans and for dessert we made s'mores. I absolutely love anything chocolate and peanut butter so instead of using regular chocolate we tried making them with Reese's Peanut Butter Cups...so good! I strongly suggest next time you're making s'mores to give it a try, we all loved them. We spent the whole trip huddled around the fire, eating, and me and Sydney were entertained by Ryan and Chris acting like Bear Grylls. (The guy from man vs. wild, which explains the starting the fire without matches!)


Me and Sydney down by the lake


Bear Grylls wannabes hanging from the tree they decided to climb


Hanging out by the fire (isn't my outfit stylish?! I had on Ryan's sweatshirt over mine!)

The sign where we bought our wood, we thought it was so funny!!

It was a really fun trip but I'm pretty sure that next time we go somewhere I'm not going to be in charge of the directions or looking up the weather!!

2 comments:

Susie said...

What a fun trip! I definitely will be trying the smores made with peanut butter cups this summer at the beach!

Anonymous said...

oh whit!!!

we did have fun didn't we!! I would just have to say, even though you may not be a camper i was pretty impressed with your skills. We will have to do that again...but not until i get back home and i'll have to find someone else to take too. maybe Bear himself will come with me.
miss you.