Guess who went camping again!?!?

Me!

So let me tell you how it went.

Thursday I left work early to get some things done, and around 2 my brother, father, and I headed out to our friend Ralph's 200+ acre property in Loomis, NY (about an four hour drive). On the way there we stopped at the Chester diner, which quite possibly was the worst diner I had ever eaten at ever. I'm not even kidding you when I tell you that the cole slaw was bad. I know you're sitting there thinking, who the hell eats diner cole slaw. Well I do. My dad does. Its a thing. My dad tried the slaw, said, "Damn this shit is bad." I said, "Pops, all diner slaw isn't that great," then I tried it. It was so horrible. It was the worst diner slaw that ever existed.

We stopped at a liquor store that a nice old lady worked at. I remember her because she was smiley and helpful and nice, and she had a very well put together hair do. She was from Jersey, as it turns out. We left Chester.

Driving up to Loomis none of us remembered seeing signs for the Panda's Parlor. This kind of put a new level of excitement to the weekend - we were all wondering if the place was still there. I don't know if I talked about that place or not, but in case you're unfamiliar with it Panda's Parlor is an ice cream/carwash/coffe joint. Panda-themed. Heaven.

The first thing my dad did once we got up to Ralph's was get his truck stuck in a ditch.



After that was taken care of, we headed into the trailer for some much needed winding down with some box wine.



Ralph had a sandwich, because pulling vans out of the mud is hard work.



Truthfully, he was going to take us out to dinner, but we had already eaten at that horrible diner.

The next day we woke up to snow, and temperatures quite colder than the day before. We were now accompanied by our pal Jun, and made our way into the nearest town, Walton. Walton has a castle in it. It also has the largest walk in cooler around. I'm inclined to believe they have the ONLY walk in cooler around. You could also purchase girls underwear at the hardware store. I thought that odd. We had lunch at a different diner, which had


freedom toast

But their food was bangin. The locals stared at us for quite awhile when we came in, all eight of them. It was kind of eerie, but I knew it was going to be the last time in 3 days I was going to be inside somewhere and warm, so I stuck it out.

After pickin up a tarp, some groceries, and food from the dollar store we headed back to Loomis mountain and hiked everything up to the campsite in the ATVs. Set everything up, got rained on for a few hours, drank quite a bit. It took us about 2 hours to get a solid fire going. After we finally had the opportunity to warm up and grab some firewood, we realized we had no dinner. Lucky for us, my trusty new cell phone got text message service up there, and we entrusted Ralph Jr. with the task of bringing hot dogs.

Ralph showed up about an hour later, not only bringing hot dogs, but the warmer weather with him. It stopped raining, which made things a bit more comfortable. Ralph and Jun and I at one point headed up to the phone booth at Lake Flappenralph (the phone booth is just a spot on the top of the hill where most people can get cell phone service). There was a bit of snow on the ground, and Ralph decided to do some donuts in it. That is how he flipped the ATV, which you see at the top of this post. We all kind of dicked around for the rest of the day, until the night brought in the fog.

The thick, horrifying, blacker than the blackest black fog. You could not see more than 20 feet in front of you near the fire. When you left the fire, it was basically pitch black. Since we were expecting company soon and Ralph Sr. needed to know when to take the ATV back down to the trailer to pick them up, Ralph Jr convinced me to take the ATV with him back to the phone booth. We honestly could not see a thing. Even with the headlights of the ATV on it was incredibly hard to see. I'm not embellishing in the slightest when I tell you it was exactly like a horror movie. When we got to the top of the hill, Ralph flipped the lights of the ATV off - I was riding on the back -- and I couldn't even see the back of his head. I'm not talking about closing your eyes maybe seeing a little light behind the lids darkness, I mean I can't see my hand when I hold it in front of my face dark. We even got lost on the way back trying to find the entrance to the next field, passing it twice before finally using the light of the distant campfire to find it. I honestly was terrified, and though I usually get scared over the dark and dumb shit like that, this was a kind of darkness that I had never experienced before, and I doubt that many people have ever experienced it.

That night we were joined by a family of four, Ralph's sister in law (ex sister in law? hm) and her 2 kids and her husband. Two more people showed up at about 3am, but stayed in the trailer and came up the next morning.

The next day I woke up to see the trees - which is not supposed to happen considering I have a flap that goes over the top of my tent. Well that flap, and the tarp, were blown over by the wind that night. No one slept well, and everyone was freezing cold. My brother's things and tent were soaked, so he came and sat in my tent while we listened to the state of the art stereo system, which was really just my ipod and headphones hanging from the hook in the middle of my tent. The day was spent trying to keep warm, going for ATV rides, chopping firewood, exploring the rock quarry, and playing DS. I had brought my markers and some plastic to draw on, but it was certainly way too cold to even consider that. It did get nicer over the course of the day, and we spent about an hour that evening trying to track down the sound of turkeys coming from a distant field. Turkeys sound just like a bunch of kids laughing and fighting. Its kinda funny. We never did get to see the turkeys, but that just gives me something to look forward to next time. Dinner was ab fab spaghetti and home made sauce, accompanied by a tasty salad concocted by yours truly.

We got pretty wasted that night.

The next morning we all woke up a little chilly, but the weather was gorgeous. My dad went down and slept in the trailer with Ralph because he was startin to hurt (first real thing he's done since he got out of surgery), so Ricky got to stay dry by sleeping in dad's tent. I was ready to jet - present company was really getting on my nerves and I didn't want to spend six to eight hours stuck in traffic like the last time we came home from Loomis. We ended up leaving around 1. I do hate leaving that place, because its just so damn beautiful, but because of the rain, and the mud, and the snow, and the wind, I just felt horrifyingly dirty. This is coming from a girl who sometimes goes a week without showering. Thats how dirty I felt. And I smelled bad. Not the usual camping woft, but this was some brutal camp fire mud shit smell.

On the way home we DID see Panda's Parlor, so we stopped, but the ice cream place was still closed. I got some coffee from Panda's Java Joint instead. It was pretty damn good coffee! I actually didn't expect it to taste good at all, considering we were in the middle of nowhere and I figured that pot had to be stewing all day long. I was wrong. And it was only a dollar. Plus I got a cup with a Panda on it. How rad.

So thats about it - I'll probably have to come back and amend this if I think of anything else super rad that happened - but in the meantime here is a link to the pictures I took. Can't wait for next time!

Photos of us camping!

Photos of artsy things around Breezy Acres