And now I have time to finish my camping trip update.

Saturday morning (continued):

• We all head out to the canoe rental place. Dom's mom organized us into groups. I was put with Matt and TOP.


• And off we go onto the crookedest river of like, ever. I was sitting in the middle and feeling useless. Instead of just sitting back and chillin' like I should have, I traded spots with Matt and became the pilot. (I would have said "captain" but TOP was totally the captain.) I didn't do much better (we ran into a lot of stuff) but I think I might have done better if one of the crew members wasn't almost tipping the canoe each time he tried to take a photo. That, combined with me getting distracted by the scenery he was taking pictures of. It was beautiful! But, I'd get distracted and we'd run into something. Sorry guys! Looking back, its actually kind of funny how awful we were at not running into things. :)


• I'd gotten cocky and hadn't put any sunscreen on. I now present to you the awesomeness of my tanline:
  
  
  The white stripe! It blinds!

  
  

  
  The burnt parts are now the loveliest golden tan. I just wish this could transfer to the rest of me. My legs aren't victorian-death-pallor-white anymore, and are finally flesh toned, but a little bit of that golden tan would be be nice.
• I'm still buzzing with exercise endorphins at this point and had not yet realized the pain of power paddling. (we totally turned the jets on at the end. Which was super fun, but way stupid. "Hey, I haven't canoed in a year, and I'm a girl with not as much upper body strength as a boy. Lets get cocky and paddle at full speed! Whoooo!" )
• We were bussed back to our campsite and I immediately hit the showers and changed clothes.
• Now feeling more human, I went back to the site. Dom's dad was cooking dinner (best hamburgers of EVER. Seriously. OF EVER.) on the fire at his site. Everyone from the 4 (4 or 5?) sites gathered for our communal dinner. We were sorta on our own the rest of the time, but everyone was all sharey and stuff. We'd get like, random plates of pancakes and stuff at our site. It was awesome. Or everyone thought we couldn't fend for ourselves. Either way, its blueberry pancakes, man.
• After dinner, a group of us headed off for a hike. On the way, someone dumped a handful of prickers down my neck. So I spent most of the time of the hike trying to find discreet ways to root around in my shirt. Itching drives me crazy and makes me get all tweaked out. I came thisclose to just taking the dang shirt off behind a tree or something. Heck, I was ready to just take it off out in the open. I mean, I had a bra on, and we'd just been canoeing, so I could have totally pretended the bra was a swimsuit top or something. While the group was looking at the scenic overlook, I quickly scurried off to the side and was able to get a good look to get the pickers out. I finished just in time as some more hikers came up behind us. Heh. Great way to get to know a bunch of new people. "Hey, did you meet Rae?" "Who was that?" "You know, the girl who kept frantically looking down her tank-top and rummaging around?" "Oh yeah! She was cool."
• Then we headed off to the top of the mountain for an astronomy lesson and some telescope time. Apparently, by some boon, we managed to be camping the same weekend as an astronomy club. It was flippin' sweet. We got to look through HUGE telescopes at Nebulae, globular clusters ("Hercules is my favorite!" Your cousin (or aunt?) is adorable, Dom.), remnants of a supernova, a really bright star, and Jupitar with three of it's moons. I almost cried. So flippin' sweet. Plus, Dom figured out how to turn his star-chart into a do-rag and join the geekiest gang of all time.
• We were all pretty wiped after astronomy, so we hung out for the campfire for a little bit then scattered to our various tents.
• I think some point in the night, my arm fell off. (see above comment about power-paddling.)

Sunday:

• After general morning preperation and packing up (my tentmates got my tent to fit back into it's bag, AND zip all the way up. I was thrilled.) we sat around a bit and poked at the most pitiful fire of all time.


• THEN, we headed back up to the astronomy field and got to look at the sun through a special telescope. Solar flares rock, my friend. They seriously do.


• After one more attempt at hiking, the group headed out.


• I followed the party to Madison, where we walked a bit and I whined in my head about my arm. But, then we found the coolest store of ever and I bought a fantastic pink-plaid hat.

  

• We found an Afganistan resturaunt to eat at. It smelled wonderful. It tasted wonderful too, once mine finally arrived. (Mine first came without the lamb, and then when I got it back, it had a hair in it. But, as TOP pointed out, we'd been basically sitting in dirt for the past 3 days, so I just scooped that part off and ate my dinner.)


• We walked around Madison some more, and I tried not to feel sad that I was going home. I didn't do very well.
• I drove home, listening to my recently aquired set of Sufjan Steven's music (thanks dom!), which might not be the best music to drive away from friends with. Needless to say, I got a bit teary-eyed on the way.

But, I had a marvelous time, and filled my mom in when I got home, and got happy again remembering it. I was slightly out of it that weekend. Just a general funk, I guess. But, I think it was my thinking about it that promoted it. I let myself get annoyed with people and frustrated with myself when I shouldn't have. Because looking back, the only funk from that weekend should have been our general stank from being out in the sun all day. That weekend was awesome. Thanks to everyone who made it possible!! :D