Friday morning we awoke to dark skies and pouring rain. FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC! We debated if it was safe for us to take our trip amidst Hurricane Danny, and baleed dat, decided to weather the storm. A little rain never hurt anybody, right? Plus, if we got wet, it would kinda count as a shower and then we'd be clean! After packing up the car in our rain gear and getting stuck in a wee bit of traffic, we finally made it to North South Lake a couple hours later. We checked in, bought some fire wood, were repeatedly told "DO NOT LEAVE FOOD OUTSIDE YOUR CAR DO NOT LEAVE FOOD OUTSIDE YOUR CAR DO NOT LEAVE FOOD OUTSIDE YOUR CAR" because apparently we look like the kinda gals that like to play with bears just for the hugs, and asked some questions like "Can we still light a fire in the rain?" "Where do we pee?" "Are there are a lot of people still here? People like boys our age? That could maybe help us if we needed it?" After a few minutes, we were back in the car getting excited and driving 15 mph to camp site #68, AKA Camp Fort Rocks, AKA 5 Girls 1 Tent. Shana, Rocks & I drove in my car and Ali & Jamie took the Jeep because there was no way 5 of us plus all of our luggage would be fitting in 1 car. The 3 of us got up there earlier because I drive a little fast (hellllo too many speeding tickets), and hoped to have at least the top tarp up before they rolled in. Umm, do you know how hard it is to hang a tarp to branches?! There are no hooks on trees, and we're short. This equation does not spell "D-R-Y." Right when things started to look real grim, we heard a big truck pull down our drive. "Ali & Jamie are here! Yay! More hands to help!" I thought. But no...it wasn't them...it was better than Jesus himself...it was the Park Rangers! The Park Rangers that would help us hang our tarp using some MacGyver like maneuvers, call us "Citiots" and look annoyed when we tried to tip them. Eventually the Rescue Rangers left, Ali & Jamie showed up and it was time to pitch our tent (he he he...creep)
Once we got shit set up & dumped all our bags in our makeshift home, we decided we should eat. How does one cook in the rain? Well, that's simple. Someone holds the umbrella, someone does the cooking, and someone is in charge of shuttling the plates between the grill & the car. Our assembly line was great. Everything was fine and dandy, we were like a well oiled assembly line UNTIL JAMIE DROPPED A POOR, DEFENSELESS, DELICIOUS, VEGGIE BURGER. IN THE MUD. THE MUD! We ate in the car, which would smell like trash until it was washed yesterday, listened to the radio and all kinda started to laugh manically because of our situation. I also found out that mud adds flavor to your food. Who knew? May I just interject for a sec and add a little notation? With the exception of Jamie, I think the rest of us are pretty OK being dirty kids. We don't complain when we have dirt under our finger nails or spill food on our clothes, and so I think we handled this monsoon, exceptionally well.
After dinner, there wasn't much else to do except get in the tent. And that is exactly what we did. Except for when we had to pee, which was when my brain outweighed the options of peeing my pants or getting soaking wet again...when it comes down to it, it's really kind of the same, so I opted for option 2. Anyway, we sat around & played Apples To Apples while the sound of rain tap danced on our walls for a good couple hours, made finger puppets, talked about how hungry we were, listened to the people in the campsite next to us howl, and laughed. A lot...duh! Would we do anything else when we're together? Even though we're 25, we don't act it when we're in 1 room. We speak our own language, make prank phone calls, and when we go to the Hamptons House, even though there's like 18 other rooms with beds in them, we all stay in the one that has 5. And I wouldn't have it any other way.
Saturday morning we all started stirring around 6AM and realized that none of us had really slept and we needed to go back to bed. 11AM and we were all up for a second time, eating cold s'mores and contimplating what our next move would be. As much as we wanted to stay, the forecast said the weather was going to continue to be shitty and none of us packed enough dry clothes. So we decided to break down the tent, wait for Trae to come meet us that morning, and head over to Woodstock. The rest of the day was spent walking around the hippie town, wishing I wasn't so soggy and tailgaiting in the municiple parking lot. I also scored a sweet set of fake mustaches, ballet slippers and a new sleep mask. Hurricane Danny: 0/ Ashley: 1
We headed back to the island Saturday night, but didn't let anyone know we were home & continued our weekend of fun hiding out in Jamie's house. All in all, it was definitely a great & memorable trip. I can't wait to go back in to the wild...only maybe when it's not raining. If my heart was a compass, you guys'd be north.
<3
