Our First Camping Trip

Two and a half weeks ago, Jon and I thought we'd be proactive and plan a camping trip. We'd always talked about how fun it'd be to go once we were finally married, and now we were, and so we were gonna' make it happen. We figured out the details, got the materials together, and were excited to go!

Day of: Grey clouds. Cool breeze. I tell my students I'm going camping and one of them says: Isn't this weekend supposed to have the coldest nights of  the summer so far? Weather forecast said rain. Things are looking just dandy.

I called Jon to see if he still wanted to go. He was already sick, after all. He gave the affirmative, and I agreed that it would be a fun adventure, so at 6:05 pm Jon picked me up from work and we were off, headed up into Payson Canyon. For the most comically lame camping trip of our lives.

We got to Maple Lake, the first campsite we had looked up online, and decided to check out the one after it instead of settling. One full campsite and thirty minutes later, we found ourselves back at Maple Lake hoping that there was still an open place. Around 7:45 pm we found a place we liked, set-up tent, and finally thought that we had some time to breathe, eat, enjoy nature...

Upon going to pay for our site, we discover that we're not really set-up at a site. Rather, it's a picnic spot for day hikers. Should we try to move? We spend five minutes trying to find the campsite owner to talk to him about it, decide it's too late, and that we'll just hope we don't get kicked out.

As we start building a fire to roast our hot dogs over for dinner, it starts to sprinkle. Rain. Pour. We give up and go sit in our tent to eat the hot dogs cold (Jon refused to eat one...too gross, and he has a point) along with the buns (which Jon ate plain), yogurt, and trail mix. This can still be fun, we think...just playing games and eating snacks in the tent.

The only photo from the whole trip: Jon feeling
very well rested and dry on the way back home

Things only got more interesting. The water falling from the sky turned from a "pour" to a lightning-and-thunder-stick-your-fibia-outside-for-two-seconds-and-you're-drenched-head-to-toe (how does that happen when you only stick out your fibia?) type of rain. It was insane. We forewent the games, read our scriptures, tried to go to sleep, found out that the "condensation" on Jon's water bottle was actually a leak in the tent that had been gradually soaking his cotton/cloth sleeping bag, tried to squeeze together for the night in my sleeping bag (which had a water-resistant outside), froze a little, heard a wild animal outside our tent in the middle of the night that I thought was eating something alive and might come eat us next (it didn't), and then finally got out of our tent at 6:45 am, packed up the mud encased/water drenched tent, and left. Less than 12 hours after getting there and after having done essentially absolutely nothing, we were gone.

Most of the whole ordeal was a pain, but there were still definitely moments of laughter, and now we have a very original "first married camping trip" story to tell, especially for two experienced outdoors men like us.

A week-and-a-half later and the tent still hasn't been washed off. Don't tell my dad.