Ahhh....camping.
We drove up to the property on the Mogollon Rim
Friday night, after work. I did all the packing, because Rudder couldn't get out
of work early, and I could. Packing up the truck for camping in 100+ degrees
weather was such sweaty hard work I had to shower afterwards -- I didn't want to
*start* my weekend all sticky and smelly, even though I knew I'd probably end up
that way. (After a mere two days. Yes, Americans in 2001 are a finicky
bunch.)
The second half of the drive up is on a two-lane road, and
there was lots of traffic this weekend. That meant, of course, that that part of
the drive was an exercise in patience while stuck behind a camper going under the
speed limit. Fortunately, the earlier, more mountainous part of the drive is all
four-lane road now, so it's not nearly as frustrating as it was a few years
ago.
Our acre lot is bounded by a large house on the north side, a
hangar on the south, airplane tiedowns and a runway on the east, and a road on the
west. Fortunately, none of these has much traffic (the owner of the house doesn't
live there). We have lots of pine and juniper, but have cleared the underbrush,
deadwood, and low branches out (required by the CC&Rs, because of fire danger). We
have no permanent structures except for a picnic table chained to a cement
footing. All of this means there is much less privacy than I would prefer for
camping. There's a lodge with bathrooms, a kitchen, showers, pool table, TV, and
so on, but it's about a 10 minutes walk away. All of this adds up to an
experience that brings me renewed appreciation for my little
href="http://dichroic.diaryland.com/freshette.html">female-to-male
adaptor.
We must both have been exhausted before this trip; we
barely woke for thunderstorms outside the tent or any of the usual discomforts of
sleeping on the ground (we use Therma-Rests on top of thin foam pads under the
sleeping bags). Of course, the fact that the temperatures were perfect for
sleeping and we have soft pine needles and duff under the tent helped, also. But
we slept until 7 this morning, unheard of on a camping trip.
After
clearing off some of the dead branches and manicuring a few junipers to keep them
from strangling young pines growing up within their branches, we drove up a bit
North to check out Jack's Canyon, a climbing area we'd heard a lot about. Jack's
looked like a great place to climb, with good rocks and plenty of shade. It's
mostly sport climbing (that is, there are bolts already placed to clip on to), and
according to the guidebook, most of the routes are very well-placed, by climbers
who knew what they were doing. Just about all of it is lead climbing (no way to
hike around and set up a top rope first). We've mostly top-roped so far; one of
these days we'll have to break down and really start leading, which is much
scarier, because you can fall a lot farther.
We're back now, rested,
and ready to finish out a peaceful weekend doing the laundry and shopping sort of
things we don't have much time for during the week.