Camping

Camping

I went camping in Wisconsin this weekend, the Kettle Moraine area to be specific. It’s just a couple hours North of Chicago and I’d highly recommend it for anyone within driving distance. My wife had planned an art/camping weekend with some of our more artsy friends. I agreed to go along on the condition that I wouldn’t have to participate in any of the art related activities. I’m a big fan of camping, but not such a fan of art projects. As you can tell by the awesome layout/design of this here blog and website, an artist I am not.

The trip didn’t start out so well. My wife and our friend who would be driving up with us have half days on Friday, so the plan was for me to work at home, and them to get everything ready so that we can leave as soon as I was done. I got up early so that I could have my necessary hours in by three and then we could leave. Of course the one day I opt to work at home in the past year is the same day that Comcast decides to mess with their system, resulting in me getting disconnected about every five to ten minutes. That made for a real productive day let me tell you.

Three O’clock finally rolls around and I shut down my laptop and get ready to jump in the car and go. Only problem is that my wife and our friend haven’t made to our house yet, and nothing has been packed into the car. A few minutes later she calls saying that they just got on the expressway from downtown, which means that at best they won’t be here for twenty minutes, at worst an hour. It was the latter. So much for getting on the road early enough to beat the Friday rush hour traffic. Good thing I got up early to get my done so could leave.

We finally make it on the road at about a quarter to five, and surprisingly don’t hit run into too much traffic. Our other friend calls to say that she’s getting close the campground but to warn us that there was an overturned semi blocking all lanes of the expressway near where we have to exit. No problem I think. We’re still at least an hour from there, they have to have it cleared off by then, and the traffic in Wisconsin can’t be nearly as bad as around Chicago so I doubted that we’d even notice.

Yeah wrong. As we approach the area where the semi was supposedly overturned, traffic comes to a halt. Not just slow moving, an actual halt. We didn’t move at all. Judging by the signs telling us how soon to the next exit, it took us over an hour to move two miles, and as far as we knew we had at least two more to go before we made it past the semi. Luckily we were able to exit the highway, and follow some middle of nowhere country road back to where we needed to be, but that put us at least another hour behind schedule.

By that time it was already dark. One of my biggest frustrations with camping is arriving after dark. You would think I would learn, and just take the day off so I could arrive in the early afternoon, but no, we usually leave after work on Friday, and arrive at our campsites somewhere between ten and midnight. It makes it a pain in the ass to actually figure out where you are going since there aren’t too many streetlights out in the wilderness, and it makes a real pain in the ass to set up camp. There are few things that piss me off more than trying to set up a tent in dark, and I end up doing it just about every year.


Anyway, our friend had already set up a tent that claimed to sleep four. It looked like their claim was actually legit and that we could all comfortably fit in there. At least one thing went right. That is until it started raining. And the so called water-proof tent started leaking. By the end of the night we were all soaked as was just about all of the gear that put in tent. I think I got about twenty minutes of actual sleep.


After that, everything went pretty well. Our stuff dried quickly, we got some hiking in, and they did their art projects while I caught up some poker reading, and the weather was great. Despite the rough beginning it was quite the relaxing weekend. Now I just have to catch up on the poker playing that I missed.