Labor Day Camping

Labor Day weekend I went camping with some friends. We like traditions so we returned to Crabtree Falls Campground where we'd camped the year before, and even stayed in the same two sites. We also arranged our tents in the exact same places as last year, though I'm not sure all three are ideal spots. Anyway, it was fun. I wish I had time to go camping more often.

We'd been worried about storms in the forecast, but luckily the weather wasn't too bad. We showed up Friday night and got set up and then enjoyed Cory's homemade grilled pizzas. And of course we had a fire.

 Saturday morning we had bagels for breakfast, then set about rigging up lines and tarps to protect some of the tents from any impending rain. Then we drove about four miles away to hike up Spy Rock. It was about 2.5 miles uphill (but not super steep) and then a final little scramble to the 360-degree views at the top. The top also had puddles in the rock with lots of tadpoles. And even though we sat for a little bit and enjoyed a break and snacks, we didn't stay too long because there were clearly storms in the area and sounds of thunder sent us down to get away from any potential lightning. (Though I was surprised at how many people we passed going down who were still on their way to the top, umbrellas in hand and weather-be-damned.)

Luckily it didn't start to rain hard until we'd reached the cars. Then it poured for a little while and got all our chairs wet even though we'd gathered them under a little popup tent. Oh well. Once the rain calmed down a little and we'd all had some food we sat under the popup and played Mexican train dominoes. And when we realized it really wasn't raining any more we took a break to go down the little trail from our camp site and check out the river. It was running much harder than last year.

For dinner Saturday I made everyone frito pies. Then we had another fire and made s'mores before one more game of dominoes.

Sunday we ate more bagels for breakfast and then packed up our site. I'll be honest I was bummed we were all cleared up and ready to leave by about 9:45am. I wanted to stay longer. But at least we kept the fun going by stopping at Devil's Backbone Brewery on our way home for a 3k walk and an outdoor lunch. I'm ready for a 3-4 day camping trip next time, but it was still fun to get outside with good friends. Hopefully we'll do it again next year!