(Note: This entry – and any others in the same vein which follow – are taken verbatim from the journal I keep while on vacation. Please excuse spelling and grammatical errors as well as repetition, sappiness or other examples of idiocy. Such things are probably the result of my having been DWT – “Drunk While Typing”)
Day 1 – 30/Jun/2007 16:18
So here I am in wonderful southwestern Ohio (just outside of Oxford, to be exact) at Hueston Woods State Park. I arrived here just about two hours ago and have busied myself since then with setting up camp. I must admit that the site I got is great. It’s large, fairly private, and far enough off of the main road so that very little traffic (vehicular or pedestrian) is around to bother me.
Having said all that, it’s sort of amazing that I’m surrounded by probably 20 other people in 6 or 7 campsites.
Setting up was a rather sweat-producing experience. It is a beautiful day – the sun is out and it’s probably about 78 degrees – but it rained recently, and the air is still pretty saturated. I brought my very large tarp (something like 300 square feet) with me and it was a struggle to get it strung up. Once I managed to accomplish that, I dragged the picnic table about 40 feet to get it underneath the tarp (told you it was a big campsite), got all the electric stuff hooked up, set up my tent, got the car parked close enough to the table so that I can use my camp kitchen, and moved the firepit far enough away from the car so that I don’t blow it up if I start a fire tonight.
This all took about 90 minutes, and when I was finished, I was very much ready for a beer – an absolute no-no in Hueston Woods State Park. No problem, right? I just pour the beer into a cup and throw the can in a trashbag and everything’s cool.
Only I couldn’t find my trashbags. It made me slightly insane, because I knew I bought a box of bags specifically for this trip and I couldn’t imagine that I’d left them at home. I even knew where I’d have logically put them in my kitchen – but they weren’t there. So I basically tore my car apart for 15 minutes before determining that, yes indeed, I’m a moron.
So I went to the camp store (needed some firewood anyway).
They didn’t have trashbags.
At this point, I’m getting a tad pissed. How on earth could I forget something as necessary as trashbags? And just how the hell am I supposed to discreetly drink my beer? Aha! A koozee! So I go into my trusty kitchen, pull out a koozee, pop the beer….ahhhhh….
Time to start getting dinner ready, right? Right. So I get out the oven and a pan and prepare to boil some red beans (for chili). At this point, my eye falls on the macaroni and cheese in the purple box right in the middle of my kitchen.
Only it’s not mac & cheese. It’s the damned trashbags.
I’m prepared even if I don’t know it.
Day 3 – 2/Jul/2007 14:06
Guess it’s time to get caught up on what I’ve been doing since Saturday afternoon.
I spent the rest of that day basically doing nothing. Read for a few hours, took a nap, had some crackers, ate my chili, etc. For the evening’s entertainment, I watched “The Hitchhicker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and fought with my external hard drive/card reader, which for some reason had stopped displaying its contents on the LCD screen and was very picky about giving up the data that is stored on it. I ended up letting it charge for about three hours and, while the LCD still isn’t working, I can now at least read the thing when it’s attached to my laptop.
I woke up fairly early yesterday because I was freezing to death. It gets down into the mid/low 40’s at night here. I was not expecting that and only brought along a couple of sheets and the throw that’s always in my car for sleeping. Having woken myself up, I proceeded to go back to sleep until 10 am or so, then got up and put on some sweatpants.
For the rest of the day, I did absolutely nothing other than cooking a steak, listening to the radio and reading.
Last night I watched “Gettysburg” for about the 50th time and realized that it was July 1st – 144 years to the day after the battle started. The terrain that I’m camped in is actually pretty similar to the battlefield, so it was cool to see my computer screen with images of Little Round Top set against a backdrop of the same trees and hills (only about 400 miles west) that those guys were fighting on. As usual, the film had the effect of kicking me in the gut and making me question “The Killer Angels” that we are. Went to bed pretty late.
I was awakened at about 4:00 this morning by the cold and the sound of shredding plastic three feet from my head. I’d left my bread on the picnic table (normally, I pack it in the kitchen) and a neighborhood racoon was missing no opportunity. I didn’t want to yell and wake up everyone in the campground, and I didn’t have my camera with me; so I just watched as he sampled a piece of bread before taking the whole bag and leaving.
When I got up at around 6:00 (again because of the cold), I took a walk and found the remnants of my bread about 50 feet up the hill that overlooks my site. After a few cups of coffee and some reading, I headed for the nearest decent-sized town (Eaton, OH) to replace the bread and get my annual extra blanket.
I think I currently own about 8 blankets that I’ve purchased because I went camping expecting to be warm enough but wasn’t.
I’ve never really been anywhere in Ohio off of the interstate and I discovered that it’s actually a very pretty state. No, there are no mountains; but it’s not as flat as you might think, either. It is the definition of “rolling hills,” actually. As I mentioned, my campsite is in a little valley between two very tall (and steep) hills; and the drive to Eaton is rather nerve-wracking because you’ll be tooling down the road at about 60 (speed limit is 55) and you’ll start coming up to the crest of one of these hills and realize that you have no idea what’s on the other side of it. You CAN’T see for miles.
Making things even more interesting is the fact that, apparently, the roads were constructed to go around cornfields (which are plentiful – along with fields of soybean and peas). So there are no graceful sweeping turns on the roads. There are 90-degree turns, and these are often thrown together at the corner of a field….so you’ll crest a hill and see that you have about 100 yards to slow down enough to make a right-angle turn to the left, followed immediately by a right-angle turn to the right, followed by another hill.
I bet it’d be great fun on a snowmobile.
Day 4 – 3/Jul/2007 13:07
Well it’s only 1:00 in the afternoon, but it’s been a productive day so far. First, to wrap up yesterday:
After returning from Eaton, I took a walk to the “fossil hunting” area of Hueston Woods State Park. Apparently, this section of Ohio was an inland sea a few million years ago (that may be disputed later in my vacation, when I tour the “Creation Museum” in KY. For now, I’m sticking with the pagan theory); and there is a stream about a mile from where I’m camped that is littered with fossil-covered rocks. I spent a couple of hours looking for a really nice one (didn’t find any) and taking pictures of the stream and surrounding country, then came back to camp and ate a couple of cheese sandwiches while reading and trying to get close-ups of various birds – all of which had an uncanny knack for staying just out of the spot that I’d focused on (camera on a tripod).
Last night’s movies (watched while drinking wine from a box – I have loads of camping etiquette) were “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and the first half of “We Are Marshall.” I’ll watch the second half later today.
My raccoon buddy visited me again last night. I heard him huffing and chirping his way down the hill to my campsite at around midnight, but by the time I rousted myself and unzipped the tent, he’d figured out that something wasn’t quite right and scurried off. Apparently he revisited the camp later, however, as I awoke this morning to find a hole gnawed through my trashbag and an empty tuna can next to it.
So, while making coffee, sausage and scrambled eggs (EggBeaters, y’all. I am health-conscious 24×7), I discarded the trash bag in a dumpster nearby and decided that I’ll try to setup my video camera on a tripod tonight (it has pretty good night vision) and operate it remotely from inside the tent.
I mentioned making coffee. Here’s the thing: I really like percolated coffee when I’m camping, but I hate the fact that I always end up with coffee grounds in the bottom of my cup. You take that last really big swallow and end up convulsively spitting it out all over the front of your shirt because it feels like you’ve just attempted to drink a beach. Fortunately for percolated camp coffee lovers everywhere, I’ve hit upon the solution: line the percolator basket with Kleenex! For best results, fold the remaining tissue over the top of the coffee, put the little metal percolator basket cover over that, and voila! Good coffee with very few grounds in the pot.
I would advise against using the type of Kleenex which is impregnated with skin cream (for the tender-nosed booger blower), but whatever floats your boat.
My neighbors left this morning and gave me a stack of wood that they’d been using. I think they were trying to calm down their 5 little girls before the trip, so they had the kids carry over all the wood and stack it for me while their dad and I talked. He and his wife are both morbidly obese (I’m talking 400+ pounds here), but seem like genuinely nice folks. I didn’t ask, but I suspect that most if not all of the kids are adopted or foster children; and the husband works as a truck driver for Goodwill.
The wife gave me directions to Eaton yesterday and invited me over for S’mores last night (I declined, being involved in my movie and mildly drunk on boxed wine); and the husband, who is probably a few years younger than I, chatted happily this morning about everything from cameras to computers to OTR trucking to Emerald Ash Borers (the current threat to Ash trees in 31 Ohio counties, including the one that I’m in) to insurance companies. His is Aflac, as I learned when he told me how great they were when he had a heart attack three years ago.
Given his weight, the story of the heart attack didn’t surprise me. I opted not to mention this.
After he and the kids went back to packing their stuff up, I decided to wash my dishes. That being the case, I proceeded to dump scalding hot water into my dishpan, in the process dropping the cover off the top of the kettle. This development engulfed my left hand in steam and burned the living crap out of two of my fingers. I put cream on them and bandaged one. Call me a boy scout or something.
Since then, I’ve been reading, listening to the local NPR station (run out of the University of Miami (Ohio)), and waiting for one of those stupid birds to pose in the right spot for my camera. The campground, which was nearly empty after my neighbors left, is beginning to fill up again. I suspect that it will get busy tonight and tomorrow, but – as I mentioned somewhere earlier – my site is very large and secluded. If I don’t go to the Grand Canyon next year, there’s a good possibility that I’ll stay here again.
Day 5 – 4/Jul/2007 20:54
I ended up taking a very long nap yesterday afternoon, waking up at dusk. Made some tuna casserole for dinner and watched the first half of “Hope Floats” while eating half of it and wathing it get dark. The campground did gain a few new arrivals but didn’t get (and still isn’t) nearly as crowded as I thought it would get.
When it got pretty dark, I built a fire and sat by it with my video camera for a while, waiting for Rocky Raccoon to make his appearance. He eventually did, but I couldn’t get the stupid “MagicVision” (or whatever it’s called) feature working properly on the camera. I may have gotten a few shots of him – probably not – and I ended up scaring him away, although he did let me get to within about 4 feet of him. I then got my big flashlight out of the tent and made plans to wait him out. Sometime after midnight I gave up and went to bed.
Got up around 5:45 this morning, put on a pot of coffee and started reading. And that’s pretty much what I’ve done all day.
This afternoon, it looked like it was going to rain, so I spent about half an hour rehanging my tarp to cover more ground (it has just now started to rain, some 8 hours after I prepared for it). I also ate the rest of my casserole and took a short nap.
After then nap (which ended around 7:30), I got up and made a couple of hamburgers, which I ate while watching the rest of “Hope Floats” (just finished).
Obviously, I am now typing this, but I’ve pretty much covered the day. I think I’ll now just sit at my table and watch the rain and feel the wind. Happy Independence Day!
Day 8 – 7/Jul/2007 12:09
I guess I have a bit of catching up to do, although not much of import happened between Wednesday night and today.
On Thursday, I spent most of the day reading and listening to the radio, which spent most of its time saying that I was due to get severe thunderstorms and hail all day. This did not happen, although one relatively strong storm did blow through late in the afternoon. By that time, I’d gotten in touch with Cy and made plans to leave Ohio on Friday (rather than Saturday) and head to Canada.
Getting in touch with her, by the way, was not all that easy. In order to get any type of cell signal, I had to climb the hill (aka “Mt. McKinley) next to my campsite, stand on one leg and hold the phone against my right ear using my left hand while making a pose reminiscent of John Travolta in “Saturday Night Fever.”
Having done that, I took down my camp in stages (before and after the rain and between chapters and glasses of wine). By about 8:00 or 9:00 Thursday night, I had everything packed in the car. I spent the next couple of hours watching the second half of “We Are Marshall” and then packed MYSELF into my car, where I slept (quite comfortably) until about 6:00 yesterday morning.
I violated yet ANOTHER rule of the Hueston Woods State Park at that point by (gasp!) taking a shower in the “A” section of the campground. Having camped in the “B” section, I was not supposed to use any of the “A” facilities – which included running water and showers. I was not, however, about to drive 10 hours to Canada after having not bathed in 7 days.
The drive to Ahmic Lake was rather uneventful, although I did have a fairly extended and pleasant conversation with the Canadian customs guy who was quite impressed with my camp kitchen and a little jealous that I’d been camping for a week and still had 10 days to go for my vacation. He seemed like a really nice kid (this was by far the most “conversing” I’ve ever done with a customs agent). About an hour later, I got a tad worried when I drove up to a section of the 401 that was closed and was forced to take an (unmarked) detour for about 20 miles.
Thank God for GPS.
The rest of the trip was boring. Actually, it was somewhat annoying between Toronto and Barrie. I’d forgottent that “cottagers” would be taking the same route as I on a Friday afternoon. The majority of them split off (on route 11) at Barrie, however, and from there to Parry Sound was quite pleasant. Just outside of Parry Sound, I noticed that I was getting low on gasoline and called “T” to make sure that there was gas at Camp Ulvik. Being assured that there was, I opted not to tank up.
Almost a mistake. While coming through Dunchurch, my fuel light came on, indicating that I had somewhere between 15 and 20 miles left before I’d be empty. For those of you not in “the know,” Dunchurch is about 12-15 miles from Magnetawan and the camp is on the far side of that wonderful little hamlet. I told Cy and “T” last night, “If you’ve got a martini glass and 3 olives, I’ll drink the gas left in my tank.”
I’m living in “The Honeymoon Cottage” for the next week, as I’ve done on two other occassions. This is a delightful little house with its own dock (and a screen porch) located just down the hill from the main cabin. It is very comfortable (I didn’t get out of bed until about 9:30 today) and has an wonderfully isolated feeling.
After breakfast, Cy and I put our heads together and got a wireless router working in the main cabin (DSL was installed last year, and I immediately saw an opportunity to network the camp and “give back” a little; so I got the router for them this year). After quite a bit of trial and error (the error being that I’m an idiot and had wired the router to Cy’s laptop instead of to the DSL modem), we were pleased to discover that not only did the setup work, but also that it reached all the way to the cottage in which I’m currently sitting and composing this.
Very sweet.
Cy and “T” have since gone to the farmers’ market “downtown” (Magnetawan has a population of about 300 full-time residents) and I’m getting ready to go fall in the lake, although it rained this morning and is still somewhat dreary looking.
Jamie Tall and 4 or 5 other people are scheduled to show up at the camp tomorrow, which should make for a pleasant, if somewhat quiet, week.
-TWD