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Weekend at the Dunes, part one (Friday)
Sep. 9th, 2001 10:29 pmCyn and I had quite a weekend.
The drive over was quite a bit shorter than I had remembered so we had more time there than I expected, but the rest of the evening was kind of a letdown. They had our reservations as Thursday and Friday nights instead of Friday and Saturday, so I had to buy another night. No alcohol in the park ("If you are found with alcohol in your vehicle you will be arrested and evicted from the park."), so we didn't have our wine with our spaghetti. We discovered what we had left behind - some of our food from the fridge. Ground beef for the spaghetti, beef for the stew, the soda. The water jug I had saved since our last camping adventure was found to be contaminated with little brown floating scum - after we started to mix some juice. The campground was very close to the freeway. Fortunately, the noise of the trucks was nearly drowned out by the cicadas. And finally, the showers and toilets were closed due to construction. They had four port-a-johns.
We thought the forecast called for rain, so I set up a rain fly over our picnic table, but the ground was too sandy, and the air too windy, so the stakes kept pulling out of the ground. After a while, I tried it again, in a different place. Instead of relying on stakes in the ground, I used stationary objects to tie the ropes to, whenever I could. I had three corners tied to trees, one rope on the rear view mirror of Cyn's car, and one corner anchored to a water jug.
The camp sites were situated very close together. There was little space, and no vegetation between them. Fortunately the noise of the freeway and the cicadas drowning out the people, coupled with the no-alcohol law meant the neighbors didn't bother us much.
So after we got camp set up we drove down to the beach to see the dunes, and wandered around a little bit, then drove off to buy some food and stuff. You'd think there would be a grocery store on that highway, but there wasn't. We drove for a very long time. We finally found what we needed, and came back to camp.
The drive over was quite a bit shorter than I had remembered so we had more time there than I expected, but the rest of the evening was kind of a letdown. They had our reservations as Thursday and Friday nights instead of Friday and Saturday, so I had to buy another night. No alcohol in the park ("If you are found with alcohol in your vehicle you will be arrested and evicted from the park."), so we didn't have our wine with our spaghetti. We discovered what we had left behind - some of our food from the fridge. Ground beef for the spaghetti, beef for the stew, the soda. The water jug I had saved since our last camping adventure was found to be contaminated with little brown floating scum - after we started to mix some juice. The campground was very close to the freeway. Fortunately, the noise of the trucks was nearly drowned out by the cicadas. And finally, the showers and toilets were closed due to construction. They had four port-a-johns.
We thought the forecast called for rain, so I set up a rain fly over our picnic table, but the ground was too sandy, and the air too windy, so the stakes kept pulling out of the ground. After a while, I tried it again, in a different place. Instead of relying on stakes in the ground, I used stationary objects to tie the ropes to, whenever I could. I had three corners tied to trees, one rope on the rear view mirror of Cyn's car, and one corner anchored to a water jug.
The camp sites were situated very close together. There was little space, and no vegetation between them. Fortunately the noise of the freeway and the cicadas drowning out the people, coupled with the no-alcohol law meant the neighbors didn't bother us much.
So after we got camp set up we drove down to the beach to see the dunes, and wandered around a little bit, then drove off to buy some food and stuff. You'd think there would be a grocery store on that highway, but there wasn't. We drove for a very long time. We finally found what we needed, and came back to camp.
