The Seahawks Camping Adventure Part 3 (final installment)

Ideally, what I should be writing is, "Sunday morning my eyelids fluttered opened as I was roused by the ambrosial scents of summer mornings, and at once I had a impulsive urge to grab my notebook, dash down to the water’s edge and write about everything as I soaked all the glory of daybreak in. So, I did just that. The air outside the tent was cool, but not crisp, which was a sure sign of the weather officially having made the transition over to summer from spring. My heart was filled with virtually overwhelming bouts of joy and delight as I scampered down the trail and laid eyes on the softly shimmering waters before me. I simply had to record the feeling at that very moment…”

Unfortunately for all parties involved (or maybe just me, I wouldn’t know…), my morning went quite differently. It was 8:30 when I was finally jerked awake by SOMEBODY loudly asking, “Did you boys sleep well last night?” Yeah…sleeping…right…so much for that.

As Lizzie illustrates in her own blog, everyone else had already begun stuff for breakfast-ing, so all we girls had to do once we got out was collect the Starbuck’s bottles, separate the three into four cups evenly, and then drink said Starbuck’s. Easy, right? For me, everything is easy in theory. In the execution everything is quite different. Even walking over to the other side of the room. But I suppose that when I theorize about walking across rooms I typically forget to take into account all of those nice little obstacles no one decided to clean up which are lying directly in my path. So I guess that figures into everything I theorize about…it becomes idealizing. Humph. I knew I wasn’t good for much in that respect.

The premise: Three Starbuck’s bottles, four of us. Us means Lizzie, Sarah, Nathan, and Jessica. Four cups, one very meticulous and precise Jessica to measure out said three Starbuck’s bottles into said four cups. One of said four people per one of four said cups, each of said four people drinks their portion, wakes up, is happy, everyone is glad because of this and the day goes on as it is supposed to.

However, some younger members of the party insisted that it was their right as much as anyone to have a share of the Starbuck’s. Another great debate about this determined that said four members of the 15-18 age group HAD to share with younger children the prize coffee. Mr. J appeased our broken spirits with some Maxwell House he magically brewed up. Still, the pride and dignity among the 15-18’s was unreasonably humbled.

The day went on a little less eventfully. Lizzie and I were going to play in the water some more, but we were so tired (again and as usual), and the little sitting rafts looked very attractive. I got the blue one and she got the silver one, and we began to float. At first we were afraid of everyone trying to tip us over and so were on our guard a lot, but after everyone actually got the message and went with it (a rarity among siblings, boys, and fellow swim team members in that order) (so it is especially rare if you, like Lizzie, have boy siblings who are on swim team with you), Lizzie and I were able to comfortably, peacefully float out to sea. At first we were going to try to paddle south towards some foreign shore where we hoped the natives would greet us and ask us to stay for dinner (lunch, rather, but perhaps they were a little uncultured and hadn’t gotten the memo that it’s typically called lunch now and not dinner as it was in the olden days), but after a while we realized that the wind and water really wanted to drift us in the other direction, so again we gave up the quest for the South shore and instead freed ourselves to be at the mercy of the light breeze. We closed our eyes for a while, probably close to ten minutes. After that while I thought for sure we had gone around the bend and were to end up in Whoknowswhere Land. Then I was suddenly jerked to full attention when I felt something under me. Had Alec and Chandler followed us all the way out here and were now about to tip us over into the dark depths of the foreboding Jordan Lake? Had we run upon a sandbar and made a very important discovery which could prevent the injury of thousands of boaters and water skiers? I shrieked in surprise anyhow, and Lizzie asked what it was. I said, “I felt something under me!” Finally I had the nerve to stick my hand under the raft. Sand, or some other sand-like squishy substance. I looked around…

Land ho!

We had washed up on shore. I felt like a dying whale. Not on the outside, but I suppose physically…? Maybe it was rather silly of me to feel like a dying whale. As a matter of fact, it was. I should have never let myself feel that way, because I might have better spent my time feeling like Robinson Crusoe or the Swiss Family Robinson people or like Wolf Larson…well, I didn’t. I felt like a dying whale, but THAT IS VERY BESIDE THE POINT. Lizzie and I laughed at ourselves and so paddled out to the middle of the lake so we could begin drifting again. We had made a lot of headway for doing absolutely nothing and wasting all that time running up on shore. We were quite nearly around the bend.

I don’t really remember much after that. I believe we had woken up enough after beaching ourselves, and decided to have a paddling race back to our own little area of the water, where we concluded it was definitely time to go eat something. Again with the potato salad and hotdogs, but I really don’t care. The difference between American and Southern Style is that Southern Style is made “more right” than the American style. And Mrs. H, I am up for hotdogs anytime. I think God gave me a lovely gift of the tolerance for eating large amounts of hotdogs over however long I must endure. If I had to survive off of them, I would do it without complaint, and I don’t know why.

After eating food, we headed back down to the water for another Sunfish ride. Mr. H had something surprising in mind—let Lizzie sail the Sunfish! He gave her a quick lesson and let me listen in so I could take over if Lizzie messed up terribly or something. As Lizzie said, Nathan and I were the brave passengers who agreed to go along on such an adventure. After we almost crashed, we got underway and did quite nicely, which is a comfort to me, because Nathan said that if we got stranded, they would eat me first. Nathan wasn’t wearing his trunks but was just in his normal attire and so jet skiis occasionally went by and we would then over the wake, causing him to complain about getting more wet each time. After a while we finally got used to it, we declared it was definitely the life. This provoked Nathan to pronounce himself captain, since he had the good paddle. I quickly took first mate, since I had to be more important than Lizzie (and I had the little broken paddle). After all, she got the fun job of steering the boat. So Lizzie got second mate. Somehow we got to talking about how Allison should have come, and if she did, then she should be both cook and cabin boy.

Our seafaring expedition couldn’t last forever, though. Eventually we could see in the distance that the parents were beckoning us to come back in. With a sorrowful unisonous sigh of colossal proportions we set sail towards land, leaving the waters behind evermore-or at least until the next camping trip.

It was time to pack up. I can tell you from experience from the whole home school conference vendor life: packing up is the worst ever. When you’re packing to go somewhere, you have motivation. You’re all excited, everything is in a bustle, and you have to fold your shirts just right so they don’t wrinkle. When you get to that somewhere, setting up may be exhausting, but at least you have motivation. It’s exciting. You have a few days of a new experience to look forward to.

Breaking down and packing up is terrible, though. All you have to look forward to is going back to the mediocre life back at home. Sure, home isn’t bad, but compared to wherever you’ve been before, it will take a long time before the thought of home really becomes exciting. Packing up is the worst. It’s strenuous, laborious work that you just don’t feel like doing because you’re too tired from all the stuff you’ve been doing the past couple of days. Not to mention, everything you’re trying to pack up seems to know this, and tries its best to agitate you more by NOT FITTING. No matter how hard you try, it takes forever to get stuff into their designated bags. I am quite thankful it was just Marck and me in the van. If we needed to we could just kind of fold up stuff, throw it somewhere in the van and deal with it later. We did that with a lot of things. Fortunately I had packed my suitcase light (not much is really needed for camping), but the tent was the hard part. I have determined I will make millions of dollars by selling a tent with just one slight alteration—a bigger bag. Nothing too big. After all, the smaller bag is for the convenience of packing and all. But it is a pain in the everywhere-you-can-think-of to put that BIG TENT in the little-bitty bag it came in.

I mean, those tent manufacturers just don’t understand that, while the tent is folded by machines the first time and so OF COURSE it fits into the bag, humans aren’t that…efficient. Not naturally, anyways. So why not provide them with something just a tiny bit bigger than the bare minimum? You know, so five people don’t have to push and pull in every direction just to squish it in long enough to get the zipper over that one portion. And what if you forget to put something into that large bundle? The bag on the Jessica brand of tents will open easily. None of the contents will unceremoniously pop out of the bag like an obnoxious Jack-in-the-Box with pomp and blare…

Well, you get the point.

After wrestling with the tent bag, Marck and I joined the others to help haul the Sunfish back up. That was a job, and I hated it so much I don’t even feel like reliving it long enough to relate it to you all, even for drama’s sake. I know, I guess I’m being wimpy…

After helping with that, Marck and I had to take off. Marck had a bad sunburn from the day before and mom and dad had said come home.

Marck didn’t like camping as much as I did, I believe. I say, “this is the life for me,” and he says something like a grunt to that. But I don’t care. I believe I shall be doing this till the day I die, especially if we all follow through with that colony idea…

--Jessica