Camp weekend

I know the camping weekend is truly over once my clothes are in the washing machine and I am enjoying a nice warm shower. It is a nice clean that feels like any other. About the only thing that remains is the shave on Monday morning, cleaning away the weekend of stubble.

It is hard to recap some of the stuff that goes on. Though others claim what happens on a camping trip stays on a camping trip, I can't help but notice how the stuff ends up on their blogs.

We had headed out to Yellowstone State Park on Thursday with the intention of going into Iowa for some gambling on Friday. The park itself was quite interesting. It wasn't as flat as the others I had been too. You had to go up one big hill to get to the sites. Once up there, the sites themselves were rather unbalanced. We ended up pitching the tent on a slight angle. I was also impressed with the showers they had. Unlike other parks, the showers were separate from the restrooms. I couldn't help but think one could get some nookie while taking a shower in the morning. In fact, I would recommend it just to save on water. Yep, that's me. Mr. Environmental.

The highlight of Thursday was the bat watch. At dusk the bats would drop from their bat houses to begin their night of feeding. It sounded like a cool thing to watch, something one doesn't see in the city. But it was rather anticlimactic as they simply take their time dropping out. Watching them fly around in the sky making sharp moves back and forth was more interesting to me.

Saturday night at the campground featured an event called Universe in the Park. Some grad students from the University of Wisconsin go around the state setting up a nice telescope for campers to view the sky. They start with the moon and then move on to whatever is best visible in the sky. In this case, we got to see Jupiter and four of its moons. The image is pretty close to what we saw. You could actually make out the different color on the planet. It is pretty amazing even when you have been drinking all day.

Beyond that, it was the same banter all weekend. Bullshitting around the fire. Playing washers and ladder golf. Arguing about being the champions of washers and thus the grand champions of all camping games. One conversation that took an funny turn involved names. Somehow we got onto how nicknames are derived from regular names. Like Jack from John. How does one get to Jack from John? During this time, I made the comment, "how do you get Dick from Richard?" Well, Gambino's father was with us and his name is Richard. With impeccable timing, he quickly stood up and acted like he was going to pull out his unit while saying "I'll show you!". Well done Richard, well done!

So now its back to work. Got some good news upon my arrival. I have access to my parking spot once again. The only down side is there seems to be quite a bit of dust in the area. I thought about putting the top up on the car when I parked but figured it would be ok. A smarter man (or is it not as lazy?) would have put the top up and let the dust land there instead of risking getting the interior filthy. Hey, I live on the edge! I am willing to take that risk!

Looks like my pc is done with the virus scan and I may be able to do some work.