Night Camping

The lighting of the tikis crew.

Last week I talked about camping with my book club girls. I think the real camping begins at dusk.  A dark night with a full moon gives the camping experience a little more teeth, don’t you think?

Someone's goofing off while on tiki duty.

We were walking back to the shed from the cemetery as dusk was settling in. Tiki torches had been placed around the perimeter of our camp and it was time to get them lit. The tiki torches give me a sense of security that no wild animals will wander into our camp. 

The fire, which had been burning for several hours, was now a bed of red-hot coals- perfect for our foil dinners. Our family calls the meal Hobo Stew. Some call it Hobo Dinner, still other names were bantered about but in the end it’s all the same great meal. A hamburger patty, sliced potatoes, carrots, onion, bacon and asparagus in butter, salt and pepper; all wrapped in foil and baked in the coals.

After we ate and cleaned up, we built up the fire and watched it crackle and burn. It’s that simple. Just relax and watch the fire and wait for the stars to come out.

Our moon.

Just before the moon rose above the trees we heard it. Coyotes howling in the woods. No matter how many times you’ve heard them, the cries of a pack of coyotes are unnerving.  After a few minutes they were silent and we didn’t hear them for the rest of the night.

I brought glow stick bracelets. We put them on our wrists and in our hair and took many group selfies, which pretty much did not turn out but made us laugh anyway.

We’d gotten text messages from our husbands about possible storms overnight. Because we’re such smart and resourceful women and we knew rain was a possibility, the tents were abandoned for the shed and blow up mattresses in the back of trucks with toppers.

We had a late-night snack of bananas and chocolate heated in foil over the fire, then squirted with whipped topping. Oh yum.  Then we decided to try whip topping (squirted straight into our mouth a la Tom Hanks’ character in Big style) with a Fireball chaser. That’ll cure what ails ya!

We may or may not have smoked cigars.

At 1:30 a.m. the rain started. We dashed for our respective sleeping bags and called it a night.

The scariest thing about the whole night was the very strong odor of skunk. A couple of weeks ago my husband and one of his camping buddies had a skunk come into camp. I was afraid of that happening again. I shined my huge flashlight over the perimeter to the woods several times but never caught sight of anything

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The next day was still rainy. The grill wouldn’t work and the fire was water-logged. We had left over taco dip and Rice Krispy treats for breakfast, instead of the omelets we were planning. We packed up and were heading out when the minivan got stuck.

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All in all, the camp out was a huge success.The weather was warm with low humidity. It was a beautiful day and night up until it rained. We got drenched the next day, and we ended up having to get help from the men, but we had a blast at Girls Camp Out.

Until next time,

Be Good to Yourself,

~Nadine