Camp For Tramps: Part Three

For the last two days, I've been telling about my first camping trip in a long while. Where I just left off, we were through for the day after a long post-dinner conversation. At bedtime, four of us went into the big tent, with myself and one other going into the small one. I found it to be adequately spacious, but cannot speak for the large tent. I heard no complaints except to say that it could only with difficulty accept any more people. Of course, like little boys on their first campout, we talked for a while longer between the tents while in our sleeping bags, but there got to be longer pauses in between witticisms expressed by fewer and fewer people. I slept not so badly, although I found I was not any better disposed towards sleeping on hard, cold ground than I had been as a boy. Not helping matters was that I was less well equipped than in those days. I would have loved to have at my disposal half of the things I know are sitting around in my family's garage.

The following morning we had our breakfast of juice, bananas and cereal bars. There was some conflict centering on those bars, which seemed to be in shorter supply than anticipated. Some had been eaten the day before, but this did not account fully for the discrepancy. I realized after a fashion that I had pocketed a bar, forgotten about it, then pocketed another. The surprise appearance of two more bars was a welcome salve. We got in one more rather unstructured hike that morning, but the real point of interest was a comical burrowing rodent which was at the time repeatedly called a mole, but which I'm certain was in fact a gopher. We watched for a long time as he would appear through a hole, cover the hole up, then appear in another hole and repeat the process. I don't know that we saw him make a hole. They were everywhere. The whole thing was rather amusing.

It was time to go, but not before a long, acrimonious debate about where to eat lunch and the way in which that affected the route we ought to take home. Eventually it was decided to take the quicker, less scenic route, get off at a certain street, then just drive around in our two respective cars while connected by phone to decide on a restaurant. Again, I made my bids for various places, and all were shot down. We wound up at another sit-down restaurant, this one having a waiting list. This only exacerbated the experience of the day's unpleasant weather. Making up for this was the spotting of a particularly famous actor from the world of blockbuster films. I aggravated myself by getting excited at his presence, since I don't like him to begin with.

Once inside, we had a nice meal, with gifts and advice being doled out to the groom. I had chili and also shared in a stack of chocolate chip pancakes given as an apology to a member of our table who was told that the restaurant had run out of his initial order. He had then requested a burger with free cheese on it, and was told in effect that "we'll see". We all assumed that just meant "no", but evidently not. We ate and talked, and when I was through I went to use the restroom. Another member of our party had done the same moments ago, and while I and a lady I didn't know waited, we made jokes about stealing the supplies stacked around us in the kitchen passage which led to the public restroom. After I returned to the table and made one last joke about attempting to wait out the bill in the bathroom, we split up and the outing was over.

Tomorrow, I'll write about something else!