On Friday we packed up my van and went up to camp. About halfway up we went to the outlet mall where I purchased about $50 worth of discounted goldfish crackers, all with varying flavors. Some were manufacturer's defects, some were past sell by, some were well beyond expiration, but I've been eating outletmall goldfish for years, so I don't care. I do remember one time Mom baught goldfish on sale from a regular grocery store when I was younger, and they were amazing. After hours of driving, we arrive at our motel. We pulled out all our stuff and settled in for later that night. Now for something interesting. On Monday I went to the doctor with some pain in my ear. I needed some medication, and got my throat swabbed for strep, because as my doctor said "your throat is supposed to be the color of pork, yours is the color of beef." Turns out I had strep, and needed anti-biotic. Well, I'm hundreds of miles from my home pharmacy, and it can't wait. So, I look up where a pharmacy is, and lucky for me there's a RiteAid in the local town. My doctor faxes my script to the RiteAid and I pick it up after it gets filled, hundreds of miles from home. Technology sure is impressive.
Now that I got my medicine, it's time for camp fun. We parked our car on my godfather's site. Fridays are easy going, just set-up camp. I said my hellos and enjoyed the fun. For dinner I had a pre-cooked hamburger and a hotdog. My 8 year old godbrother saw what I was eating and asked his mom "why is he having a hamburger AND a brat?" and she answered "because he's big and wants both." It was true. After diner I helped make the group's fire. Being an Eagle Scout, I know a thing or 2 on building a fire. I was able to build it well, though I ended up burning myself on grill grate that our friend installed to cook on. A burn that's still on my wrist a week after the incident. I didn't have it on there long, but it did take me a little bit to realize it, so I don't know if I'm permanently branded or not. Oh well. I did show it to the little kids to say "this is why you need to be careful around the fire." I had a smore and enjoyed being with friends I grew up with and watched me grow up. One of them wanted to open a bottle of beer but didn't have a bottle opener. I made sure to bring my multi-tool pocket knife for situations like this. Around 11 PM we left back to our motel. I watched some youtube videos and fell asleep.
Now it's Saturday, and we're ready for some fun. I had my normal muffin breakfast. It was just some good visiting with everyone. I wasn't able to go in the lake, but I did sit on the beach reading my Mallard Fillmore book. Oh man, like a fine wine, Mallard Fillmore got better with age. All of the jokes are more relevant today than they were in 1995. I also sat there snacking on sunflower seeds, because that's something I have to do when camping. I love sunflower seeds, but the worst part is finding some place to spit the shells. When you're outside though, you can just spit wherever. When I go camping, you know where I sat, because I'll have a nice scatter of shells on the ground. My 3 year old godbrother asked if he could try one, and I know his parents wouldn't want him chain munching them like me, but I also know he lacked the coordination to eat them without getting shell splinters (not dangerous or anything, just annoying pokes). I've found that wtih really young children, it's best to let them try 1 seed and find out for themselves "this hurts, I don't like this" than try to explain "no, you're too little." I also watched the 3 year old for an hour while his parents ran an errand.
After my godfather and his wife finished their errand, my dad and I went to the town just to see if there was an event going on. Many years there has been a little art fair happening when we went camping, and it was a fun thing to do. There wasn't anything this year, so we just went to the St. Vincent DePaul thrift store. I must say, this was some pretty high quality thrift junk. Dad found a china set with plates that were worth $15 each for like $2 sticker. If we lived closer, we would have tried eBay with them. I found some games; DDR Disney Channel for PS2, Urbz for PS2, and Toy Story Action Player for Windows 3.1/95/and higher. I had it as a kid, but it didn't play well on our computer back in the day. I decided I was going to try it out on my Windows 10 computer. Unfortunately it won't work since it's a 16 bit program and I have 64 bit Win10, but I'll hopefully find proper emulation. I mean, I have DOSbox, and I know windows 3.1 can be booted in DOS, so I can hopefully find a way to make it work. Whatever.
After exploring town, we went back to camp and just hung out. One of the 1st generation adults talked about how it all started and the kind of fun they had. All of them were about my age when they met and started this. It's kind of crazy. Since many of us 2nd generation are adults, the stories are now a little more...mature. However, since some of the 2nd generation are little kids, they can't get too mature. One funny thing they told us was when one of the 1st generation had "too much juice." Soon it came to dinner time. Back when they started, Saturday night was steak night, which evolved to catered chicken night when the 1st generation started having kids, which turned into pizza night when the 1st generation decided they didn't want to go through the hassle of catering chicken. Since my family set-up how we were going to order, we went to pick it up. The order wasn't quite ready when we went to pick-up, so I got to watch an episode of The Loud House on the restaurant TV. It was lucky for me that they had a channel that I liked on. We picked up everyone's pizza order, packed it up in the van, and went back to camp. It was good.
Now for the fun part. Every year since the start we've taken a group photo. We added in "generation pictures" (adults and kids, with the whole group) when everyone started having kids. This year after 27 years, we added "3rd generation" and "retired" pictures since now one of the "original kids" had their own kid and one of the 1st generation is retired. Oh it's fun watching how we all change. We had another camp fire, but only after going to the local ice cream stand. Every year we walk up to the ice cream stand that's about a quarter mile from the camp ground. This was really funny. One of the younger girls (10 years old) wanted to ride her rip stick down the hill we were on, and her parents said "no, it's too steep, you're going to get hurt." About 5 minutes later, her 2 oldest brothers (19 and 16) come zooming down the hill on their rip sticks. After that, her dad said "OK go ahead, we're not that far up now anyways." At the ice cream stand, I had tripple peanut butter cup; peanut butter ice cream, peanut butter ribbons, and mini-peanut butter cups. We had some fun hanging out eating ice cream. Once ice cream was over we went back to camp and had our fire. Again, around 11 PM we left for our motel.
Now it's Sunday. My family packed up our motel room and went to church. All of us our Catholic, so every year we go to this church up there. We take up the same 3 rows in the back. It's right by the cry room. It's kind of funny how much room all of us take up. After mass half of the group went out to breakfast, and the other half just made a bunch of left overs. My family was planning to eat something on the road, but we had left overs so we contributed to the group "lets make left overs" breakfast. After breakfast we went home. We stopped at a different outlet mall, but there weren't any stores I was interested in, though Mom got something I think.
All in all it was a good little vacation. It's great seeing everyone again. And here's a little something I took for SurfersSelfies #vidmewashere initiative. Well, this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.
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