Family Campout 2019 Fun

Hey everyone, it's that time again, family campout with my camping friends. It's always fun seeing the camping friends considering we only see each other a few times a year (not because we're anti-social, but because we all live so far away now and it's like the only time we can see all get together). I packed everything on Thursday and went over to my parents house for the night. When we were planning things on Wednesday my mom asked me what time I would get there on Friday, and I said "well I was planning on coming over on Thursday night," and that made things a little easier because we were able to practice pack. Then at night I watched SpongeBob using my parents slingTV subscription. I have playstation vue and don't get Nickelodeon, so it's great watching Nickelodeon at my parents house. I watched SpongeBob's Big Birthday Blowout, and I need to do a review of this, because it's the 20th anniversary special and it's basically an apology for Truth or Square, one of my first reviews. [Editor's note, I did do a review, here it is]. We went out for pizza on Thursday for family fun. That was basically Thursday night.

Now for Friday. We packed-up the perishable things (cooler food) and that was it since we packed all the other things the night before. We drove a while and stopped at the outlet mall. Normally we stop at the pepridge farm store because I like goldfish crackers and millano cookies (and it's always fun to see what kind of other things they might have), but since I still have a bunch of stuff from last year we didn't stop there. We did stop at the Colman store and I got a cooler and my parents got my aunt a cot. After that I just kind of played my switch and slept while I waited for us to get to camp.

Now we get to camp. We were squatting on my godfather's site this weekend. We arrived before them, so we spent the time waiting for them to show-up visiting with the others that were already there. We gave my aunt the cot and not too much longer my godfather and his family showed up. I helped them set-up their tent, and being the tent expert I am, it went up quite easily. While I was working on the tent, my godbrother was on top of the car helping to unload the cartop carrier. Watching him do that, I was quite jealous, because my parents never let me climb on top of the car for any reason. After helping them set-up camp, we had lunch. I had a hamburger and spam sandwich, with cheese. Yum. This year I didn't have to share my burger with my cousin's dog Louie, because he was far more comfortable this year. Here's a picture I took with him.

After lunch we went to check into our motel. It was pretty uneventful, just unload our night bags, sleeping stuff (my cot and sleeping bag), and electronic stuff for at night. After check-in we went back to camp. Since it was so hot and I brought my gold rush nugget buck, and I read there was trace gold in the area, and that it's recreational gold panning is legal in my state, I put on my swimsuit and went swimming for the first time in years. My goal was to go into the lake some, dig down to what I thought was black sand (I remember from as a kid if you dug deep enough you'd get to black colored sand) and hopefully find some gold. If nothing else, just have fun playing on the beach. I didn't find anything. A lot of my camp friends asked me what I was doing and wanted to watch, and I have experience panning the dirt I buy online so I kind of know what I'm doing, but there wasn't any gold in the lake. Doing a little more research on where to pan for gold, I figure a lake is a pretty bad spot since you want basically "1 way water flow to wash away lite sediments" instead of "2 way waves layering the lite stuff on top of each other." Oh well, it was all for fun anyways.

[time skip in writing]

Woops, I must have said "I'll come back to this after a break" and then 3 months go by. I'll do my best to recall what happened, but it's going to be a little more fractured.

After swimming we had dinner and a camp fire. It was a fun time hanging out. When it came time for the squatters to leave we went back to our motel. The rooms didn't have air conditioning, so we were hot. I remember waking up like 4 times throughout the night and drinking 4 cups of water because I was losing so much water. Breakfast was pretty typical. I had a muffin and bacon at the motel before we went to the campground.

Saturday was pretty eventful. The morning started out pretty tame, just hanging out, catching up. One of the gen 2 girls teaches Zumba and brought her music with her, so she led a Zumba class for anyone that would join in. My mom was one of them, as were some of the other moms. I also did some dog sitting for Louie while his owners went swimming. He had some separation anxiety (because he was rescued off the street), but when I took him for a walk he got really happy and enjoyed the exploring. I brought some manga with me (Splatoon volume 2 and Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man's Chest) and decided to read it after lunch. Well then it started raining, and I was REALLY glad I brought my manga because otherwise I would have been really bored. Everyone huddled under various dining flies, and some people brought out cards for different card games. I had a few people look over my shoulder to see the manga, and I had a little fun explaining why it read backwards. I think around 3PM my parents said "lets go back to our motel," and we did. I did some web surfing and watched TV, and we waited until it was time for mass.

Mass was a little different this year. Normally we go to this church that's kind of out in the woods on Sunday, but this year we went to a church that's in the city on Saturday. That meant I wasn't able to watch the sign language interpreter, because the woods church has ASL. Afterwards my mom ran into someone she knows, apparently an old friend of the camping group. She introduced me as "remember my eldest son? This is him now." That tends to happen quite frequently with me; not as much as when I was in middle school and such, but still happens occasionally. After church we went to the pizza place for dinner. We've been going to this place for about 10 years now, and this year we decided to eat in the restaurant. While we were planning to eat in the restaurant, it was really good since it was still raining. While I was there I found this little sign.

I thought it reminded me of Sarcastic SpongeBob. wE wAnT yOuR cOmEnTs

By now it had stopped raining. We had a camp fire with the wood we kept dry and the chairs we kept dry. We also burned some card board boxes. One thing I did was I brewed decaf sun tea all day, because that night I was going to make my special cocktail "backwoods arnie." I made up some shots for everyone that was old enough to drink and interested, and a lot of people were and thought it tasted really good. My godbrothers also wanted some to drink, so I let them have the decaf sun tea. I made sure to tell their dad it was just decaf sun tea, because I didn't want him thinking I was giving his 11 and 6 year old alcohol, or caffeine before bed. When we went back to the hotel we realized we should probably open the window, and that made things much better.

Sunday was pretty low key. Normally Sunday is church day, but since we already went we didn't go. We had a communal breakfast where we had pancakes, bacon, French toast, and whatever was left over that people didn't want to take home. After breakfast we said our goodbyes, packed-up our camp chairs and other things, and went back to check-out of the motel. After that we started our drive back home, and after unpacking all their stuff I made my way back home. It was great to see everyone again. This has been pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.