Well, we're back. I'm at home, trying to catch up on things before bedtime, and it's not working too well. I did manage to get my photos uploaded from the trip, so until I make time to write up the whole thing, I figured I'd go ahead and say that I had a blast, and here are some shots.

Paul and I met at the parking garage at 3pm on Friday to jam stuff into my car and get out of town before traffic got too bad. It was amazing, but yes, traffic was already stopped up on Rt. 66 at 3. Good grief. Yeh. I know. I've got to move out of here. Fortunately for us, Paul and I qualified for the two-person HOV lane, so we flew past most of the mess and only had to stop briefly in Manassas before the roads opened up again.

I hadn't been on 81 in a while. Most of my Natural Bridge trips involved driving first to Richmond and then down 64 to 81. This was my college route, so it brought back some memories. The trucks that I so fondly remembered were all there, blocking both lanes going 45 up hills. Ahh. The memories.

Around Harrisonburg, the sun opened up the sky and things looked quite nice outside. It was about 60 and coming up on 6:30. We pulled into the meeting spot and didn't even need to call Mike- he was walking towards the car. "I've been walking around here all day, looking for good spots to camp," Mike said. "I thought we had already decided," I told him. "Yea, but the water has rushed through everything and it's kinda bad here," he said. Not wanting to believe him, I got out and walked the road with him and Paul. The overgrown road stretched along the creekside, and although covered in leaves and some patches/puddles of mud and water, looked definitely drivable. We got to the site and looked around.

I'm going to sum this up because this whole part of the story took almost two hours.

We walked to another site, which was at the bottom of a steep hill. It was decided that it would be a kick-ass campsite, but not for such a large group, since the only way in and out was going up this huge hill. I definitely think we should hit that spot sometime. This just wasn't the weekend for that. We decided to test drive the road to the site we'd planned on. Having walked the road already, I knew there would be trouble spots, but it was nothing I couldn't drive up. After all, I'd done Mackey Mountain. Seriously. Could it be worse? :)

I got in the car and started at it. Bam. Stuck in the mud. We waited for Mike and Eric to join us. (again, I'll sum up here) a few more times getting stuck and unstuck, the boys helped push out the Corolla and eventually I made it all the way to the bridge. The bridge was about 400 feet from the campsite. I parked there. We decided that we wouldn't get another car through there. We'd just hike the rest in, use the farm truck to shuttle stuff back and forth to the site, and by sunday when things dried up, I could drive back out of there- no problem.

Mike and Eric decided that they couldn't use the truck to haul stuff. So this site was out of the picture. That was good and dandy, except Paul, Kelly and I had already unloaded my car in several trips. When they called saying the site was no good, we insisted that a decision was made immediately. We were losing sunlight, a storm was coming in, and two more drivers were on their way to a spot we wouldn't be in.

I proposed that we check out the clearing up by Mike's uncle's property just after his driveway. Mike and Eric went to scout it out. The next issue was hauling up the stuff that we'd just unpacked. That wasn't going to happen. It was too steep of a climb. So, we took several trips of gear back to my car, I repacked everything and the boys came down the hill to push me back along the road. (only got really stuck twice that time.)

We settled in up at the top and started getting the camp site ready. The group tarp would be our dining fly, the fire pit would be nearby but not too close, and there was lots of land for tents. By 10, everyone was there and we were all settled in and ready to camp. Tents were going up and hotdogs & marshmallows were abound. We had a great night, just hanging out by the fire. The only victim of the night was the poor Corolla, soaking and covered in mud.

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Saturday, I was up around 9:30. Stupid work schedule has me waking up with the sun (or shortly thereafter) and I couldn't sleep too well. Charlie and Matt were yammering at incredibly rude levels so it wouldn't have mattered if I did sleep through the bright sun. I got out of the tent and walked through tent city. I met up with Eric, who was also up. We got started working on the sausage.

Mike arrived about 30 minutes later. He had left with his grandfather that morning and came back to whip up some pancakes for everyone. We set up the assembly line and within the hour, had 13 people fed. :) The rest of the morning, we just relaxed. The sun was out and shining brightly. It was a beautiful day. We sat around and watched the day go by in the beautiful mountain setting.

In order to replenish our supplies (ice, beer, and banana bread), we took a trip to Wal-Mart in Lexington. We said farewell to Traci and made our way out there. Of course, being the geeks that we are, most of us dove into the huge barrel of $5.88 dvds. Most were crappy, but a few folks found some good deals. Because we had ice, we didn't fart around too much. We got back in the convoy and made our way back to the site. Fortunately, the strong weekend winds hadn't done much damage to the site. We chilled out a bit. Some of the gang started hacky-sacking with a koosh ball. Jeff, Mike and Eric got dinner started. I helped get the dining area all set up.

Dinner was a fine meal of grilled chicken, biscuits, cous cous and salad. Mike's grandparents came up to hang out with us as we ate. The sun fell behind the trees and we were eating by lantern light. Karen and I led the group in wishing Chris Hollomon a happy 25th birthday. I had made a cake the day before and managed to keep it hidden from him, so hopefully he enjoyed the surprise. I know I did- it was yummy. The dough-boy sure does make a mean cake. (hmm mmm!)

The grandparents left and we stayed around the fire. Plans to stay up late-night were pretty much pissed on by the overbearing part of our group. We stayed up as long as we could. Many tuckered out before it was even midnight. It had been a long, relaxing day in the sun. Who could blame them? I made sure we got the ashes out and hit the sack myself.

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Sunday, I got up closer to 8:15am. Charlie and Matt were hollering once again, so I didn't have a choice. And since this was omelette day, I got right out of bed and got started working on chopping up some veggies. Making omelettes for a dozen people requires a little bit of prep work. I went to the dining area to get started on the veggies. When those were done, I went to the car to get the 5k form for Eric. (It's official. Eric and I will be running in the National Race for the Cure this June. We're registered. It's on. Bring it.) I brought the laptop over to the site to inventory what we had and what we wouldn't need to bring next time. (time passes between our trips, and we keep bringing stuff like plates that we don't really need to buy since we have leftovers from the past.) I did that while more people were waking up.

Breakfast time! Eric fired up the bacon. Jeff was my chef's assistant. We had an omelette-making factory going by the time the 6th one was made. Everyone seemed pretty happy with them, so I'm pretty sure they were a hit. I enjoyed mine!

After eating, we broke down tents and the tarps. Kelly left to go to her parent's house, Chris, Karen, Charlie and Matt left. The RichmondGeeks were the only ones left. We hung out for a while. I began phase one of cleaning the car: the windows. The sun had beaten down so much on the car that when Windex was applied to the sunroof, it actually sizzled. 14 sheets of paper towels later, I had a filthy car with sparkly windows. That was enough to get us home.

We continued breaking down the site and cleaning up as we went. We hung out a bit at the grandparents house and finally broke camp and left around 4. Paul and I gassed up and were home just after 7:30. I hosed down the car, trying to get rid of the big chunks of dirt. The next step was pulling the car out and hosing down the mud-clotted driveway. It would have been pretty shitty of me to borrow my parent's hose and crud up their driveway and just leave.

I went upstairs, uploaded my gallery of photos, and went to bed. All in all, it was a fantastic trip. I'll never forget the beautiful weather and the great company we had on this camping trip. Good times, great friends, and lots of fun.

I'm already thinking about the next one. :)