A-Campin' We Have Gone

Went camping this weekend in Great Sand Dunes National Park. It was a great trip. It felt really good to get away, even if that did mean not showering for a couple days, smelling like a campfire the entire time, and finding sand in all sorts of places. We took our buddy PJ with us as he's having some wicked knee surgery in a few weeks and wanted one last hiking hurrah before going under the knife. With his knees, my knees, and my general lack of endurance, we hiked up to the highest dune in the park in true leisurely fashion. But my quads and calves are still killing me. Note to self: hiking up 650ft over the course of a mile isn't a big deal unless it's all sand. The hike back down was fun, though.

PJ's one of the more serious amateur photographers I know, so he had a fun time playing with all of his lenses and filters and films. Mark and I brought our own point and shoot cameras. We realized the necessity of this during our trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton. Mark takes the pictures for photo albums and the website (assuming he'll ever update that thing again), and I take pictures of little images that inspire story ideas or belong in my fantasy world. I had a lot of fun with that on this trip. Great Sand Dunes will be a prominent feature on a continent of Velorin that I hadn't really fleshed out a whole lot yet.

There were two problems on the trip, though. The first was the wind at our campsite. There are 88 sites at the park, available on a first come, first serve basis. We got the very last one, and there was a reason why it was the very last one. There had been a slight fire near our site in the recent past, robbing the immediate area of trees and large bushes. And it was at the very edge of the campgrounds. So Mark and PJ had fun making sure our tent was secure enough to withstand the wind. It held up fairly well until we woke up Sunday morning with one side of the tent blowing completely over PJ with each gust. The second problem was the meat we brought to grill. PJ doesn't eat red meat, so we decided to bring nothing but chicken breasts since the only other thing we had was hamburger meat. As we're sitting over the grill on Friday night, we remembered that we have not just one but two stacks of cheddar bratwursts sitting in our freezer that we had completely forgotten. So the phrase, "I can't believe we forgot the cheesy brats," was uttered frequently. They would've been the perfect camping food - in addition to the barbecue sauce smothered chicken.

So that was my weekend, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Now I have to get back to the grind this week and finish my 8-page synopsis for the RMFW Colorado Gold Writing Contest. I'm hoping to mail my stuff off by the end of the week, but writing a synopsis this long is a very hairy process.