Heath's Random Thoughts

Campin the Dunes

OK, I am being lazy here but Kelly did such a good job writing up our camping trip I am going reuse it below. Hope you all enjoy it! PS. You can tell its hers because of the lack of capital letters.

last weekend heath and i went camping in Michigan at warren dunes state park again. this time, heath's brother, Luke, and his girlfriend, Rebbecca met us there for the weekend. this trip started off absolutely horribly.1) we got a later start than anticipated, so we didn't get to the campground until 10:30 pm, which meant setting up the tent and everything in the dark.2) when we got to our reserved site, we found that it was now a lake. there were 3-5 inches of standing water on the entire site. so we had to go get a new one from the booth, which, thankfully, was open.3) we realized that when we left in such a hurry, we failed to bring flashlights. yeah. whoops.4) Luke and Rebeca were coming via a slightly different route than us, and ended up getting stuck on 80/94, which was completely closed in both directions due to flooding. they ended up being on the road for an ungodly amount of time, and arriving at the campground at 3:30 in the morning.5) while at the campsite and trying to figure out luke and rebecca's progress, heath could not have had a harder time getting a cell phone signal, so calls kept dropping, adding to the frustration.6) it rained overnight that night so everything we had left sitting out was soaking wet by morning.

so that was the bad part. by late morning on saturday, things started to turn around. poor rebecca, who had never been camping, was (rightly so) not loving the whole wet/tired/crappy experience so far. once the sun started to come out, things improved. we had lunch on the campfire, managed to get some of our stuff to start drying out, and everybody's mood improved. we hiked around a bit, and climbed the big dune near the campground. after that, we decided to drive over to the beach and hang out there (since we were all still sort of tired and worn out from the challening 12 hours previous). we got to the beach and the waves were HUGE! huge as in they would literally knock us down, great for bodysurfing and inadvertently removing swimsuit tops and bottoms if one failed to be diligent. it was a lot of fun, even though we got knocked around a bit too much from time to time. after the beach, we went back to shower and eat. unfortunately, heath had to be on his phone and laptop for several hours dealing with a work issue. once that was over, we sat by the fire a bit longer and hung out before going to bed. sunday was pleasant, too, we slept in and got to picking up the site to get ready to go home.
overall, it ended up being a really nice time. we had a lot of fun with luke and rebecca and laughed a ton despite the horrendous beginning of the trip. we're hoping to go camping again before winter comes, possibly in two weeks out near where heath grew up. hopefully it won't be immediately following torrential downpours!

posted by Heath @ 4:27 PM