Camping

A few weeks ago, The KoB and I celebrated our 4 year anniversary. That's not really the point of this story though.

He's all mine, Ladies.

The point of the story is that The KoB and I have been together for 4 years and for the past 3 years and 11 months, I have been basically begging him to go camping. The thing is, The KoB is an Eagle Scout and he's essentially Ron Swanson without the moustache.

This could have totally been a conversation between us.

He grew up camping, he has all the camping gear, he knows tons of the campgrounds at local State Parks. But, I could never convince him to go. It's like, camping is his thing. But, I dunno, he had forgotten it was his thing or something. Ugh. It was so frustrating.

For the first couple of years, I'd mention it... and I'd basically get no reaction from him. Except, maybe a feeble... "yeah, sure." Which means... "yeah, no."

Classy dude, yo.

Then, after another year or so, I wore him down and he started to respond with a... "let's do it." And then we'd look at a calendar and essentially push it off until... "Next month." 

He thinks it's real funny to tease me about it and out of the blue say.. "Hey, have you ever thought about camping?" And then I'll give him the stink eye and the middle finger. A couple of weeks before our anniversary, I said... let's go camping for our anniversary. We put the date on the calendar and when the date rolled around, the camping gods smiled upon us with perfect weather.

Class and ingenuity.

We headed down to a State Park and got our campsite all set up. 

And then began the REAL experience of camping with The KoB:

 1. The gathering of sticks.

As we walked to and from the campsite carrying our shit, The KoB was commenting... "ohhhh. That's a good stick." and then he'd shift his weight and squat down while carrying a tent, a cooler, sleeping bag, and his backpack to pick up those "good" sticks. Once at the campsite, he'd wander off into the woods gathering sticks. (Don't worry, I helped also, but I was not nearly as successful as he was).

 2. Starting the fire.

In an effort to last another 4 years, I will not disclose how long it took The KoB to start the fire caveman style. (And by caveman style, I mean, he had a flint thing and some kind of magnesium or some shit and was trying to light crumbled leaves with sparks from the flint). I sat in a chair and watched like a lazy ass.

3. The organizing of the sticks.

After a very short period of time (cough cough), the fire was lit and I foolishly thought we'd get to sit back and enjoy the fire. Oh no. Now it was time to take the massive pile of sticks we had accumulated and break them down into neat piles based on size. 

And then once that was done, it was time to do the whole damn thing over again. 

But we did finally get to settle down and cook some dinner and relax in the peace and quiet of the outdoors.

Until the people at the next campsite starting karaokeing around 7pm. By, 1:30am, I asked The KoB if it was okay if I took the hatchet and walked up to their campsite. He got up and unzipped the tent and yelled at them (nicely) that it was 1:30am and that people were trying to sleep. They apologized and started to quieten down.

The next morning we woke up and started the whole fire business again.

Nothing like unzipping the tent in the morning.

Not surprisingly, we never heard a peep out of the other campsite that morning. We quietly had breakfast and broke down camp. 

It was awesome. The whole experience. Even the annoying singing from the other campsite couldn't dampen my love of the night. It's a good thing, too. Since we are tentatively planning a backpacking trip this summer. There will be many more camping trips in our future and I can't wait!!!

Thanks, KoB, for finally taking me camping, and thanks for a fun first four years. Woo.