Annual Friends and Family Camping trip

It was our something-Annual Friends and Family Camping Trip again. I wasn’t really looking forward to it, but that had more to do with the 10 hour drive than anything else. My new Nook took most of the edge off of the trip. I read like a man possessed. I’d always wanted to read the Wild Cards series that came out back in the late 80s, so I loaded it up and devoured a few of them on the way there and back.

This year we met up a Lake Alpine. It had been almost 10 years since we had been there with Lala’s parents. I had forgotten how beautiful it was there. It’s above 7000 feet, so it’s pretty chilly at night even in the Summer time and there is snow on the ground where the sun never quite gets to. The days are nice and warm with temperatures in the 80s, however.

As usual, it was great catching up with some of the people that I only see at this annual event. Lala’s parents brought enough food to feed everyone there as well as the surrounding campsites. Literally. Her dad made so much tri-tip that we brought an untouched one home with us. We did the requisite s’more making and Lala introduced Owen to fire toasted Peeps.

I got to take our tandem kayak on the lake several times, paddling with Lala, Owen and even Atticus. Atticus didn’t help paddle, but Owen gave it his best try. There was one big tree-covered island in the lake and many small granite islands that were fun to paddle around and explore.

The drive back was uneventful until we got back into Oregon, but the events that unfolded when we got back home are best left private. They did, however, suck out much of the joy that camping created.

I’m composing this in the beta version of Windows Live Writer. I tried with the previous entry but encountered errors that I believe were related to the size of the images. I’ve resized all the images in this post and am trying out the “photo album” option to see how that works and looks.