This is Where We Live

Fourth of July in Anacortes.

Camping trip part Two

This time we went to Baker National Forrest for my 25th birthday. I had this grand idea that I would camp like the English do, with beautiful canvas bell tents and bunting flags and fine china. My attempt was less glamorous, but I did make a string of bunting and found some really great outdoor dishes that have pretty flowers and colors. I was pleased.

(The S'more. Will made the graham crackers at home for the trip and Kelly bought us some marshmellows at a bakery in town. Then we smeared Fran's Dark Chocolate sauce all over the graham to make this evil dessert.)

This trip started off like our last: We were running late. We didn't arrive at the site until 8:30, the sun was almost gone and it had started to rain. Hard. Luckily, I had bought Will a canopy with a screen wall for Christmas that would fit perfectly over the picnic table. We could still make dinner, set up camp, and keep dry.

As we pulled into the site, Kelly and I pulled out the canopy while Will took charge of the tent. I ripped open  the never-been-used canopy while the rain started dumping even harder. I pulled a seemingly endless nylon screen from the box and shouted at Kelly to hand me the poles so we could start assembling. I assumed that she must have them since I was at the end of the nylon and the box looked pretty empty after that. She handed me a handful of L-shaped stakes and I realized, as my hair started to drip, that I did not have a "Screen Walled Canopy" as the box described, but merely a "Screen Wall" for a canopy that is a separate item entirely. Uggghhhh!!! We all just stood there, processing that reality as the sky darkened and our bellies grumbled. Will put together the rest of the tent with his shoulders slumped in a depressed sort of way. "Wait!" Kelly ran over with a tarp that she had found in the garage and packed for the trip. "Put this under the tent so the water doesn't seep in."

"Maybe we should put this over the tent since it's raining so hard..." Will said as he opened the sealed bag and pulled out a cotton-ey mesh web that looked more like insulation or fabric. He flipped over the packaging to look at the cover and realized it was a garden tarp used to keep plants warm... We suck. 

After I pumped up the tent (realizing that our three person tent was literally just enough room for three people) we all clammored inside while the rain relentlessly pounded overhead. I felt a few drops hit my face and wondered if our tent was even waterproof....

Will ran back out to the car to grab some foods since none of us had eaten dinner. He came back with:

Trail Mix

Bread

Bubbly

And that was our dinner. Kelly produced a pile of birthday presents from her suitcase, which made me happy. Especially since one of my presents was a box of chocolates. Which I ate immediately.

Sometime after we all drifted into a semi-conscience sleep as the rain beat down upon our tiny tent, we wondered why it hadn't stopped at ten o'clock like weather.com said it would. Suddenly Will jolts up and shouts "Oh no! Oh my gosh... Crap!! The water is going to leak into the tent!"

"What??! Why? Where?!" I gasped looking at the celling where Will was poking his finger, apparently at the place it was supposedly going to cave in.

"The water is collecting on the rain tarp and it's too heavy! Its going to collapse!"

"Did you feel the water coming in, Will??" Kelly asks, frantically. 

"Are you going to go outside and fix it?? Where is the water collecting? I don't see it!" I say.

"Will..." Kelly asks. "Will!" She shouts

He doesn't respond. He's just sitting there. 

"It's fine." Kelly concludes. "He's asleep"

"Are you asleep, Will?!" I say, shaking him. I am still terrified. The thought of getting drenched at two in the morning in the middle of the forest sounded horrible. And yes, Will was asleep. He imagined the roof was collapsing.

The next morning, the rain cleared and it turned out to be a pretty fantastic trip. I feel like the entire experience was us troubleshooting gourmet recipes in the wilderness. Our most successful meal was steamed mussels in a white wine and cream sauce with crispy bacon. Our least successful meal was our bruleed grapefruit and irish whisky oatmeal. The grapefruit kept falling off the skewers before they would successfully caramelize and we burnt the oatmeal to a crisp. Will was convinced the addition of the whisky in the oatmeal masked the burnt flavor. I think whisky tastes like burnt oatmeal in general and that Will was in denial that it was disgusting. Kelly also made a skillet cornbread that started off well and then took a turn for the worse. Just as all seemed right, Kelly made the cardinal mistake of turning up the heat and in seconds, the whole thing burned. Kelly was not about to let the whole thing go to waste so she attempted to "flip" the cornbread that was charred on one side and completely liquid on the other. She used the spatula to slice out a wedge, flipped it then proceeded to slice out another wedge until the whole thing was "flipped". It sort of worked. The few portions that did not burn completely tasted pretty good. Like that corn maize paste at Mexican restaurants that they stick a cactus shaped corn chip in.

 (our not-so-bruleed grapefruit. They were barely even warm! but they do look pretty)

 (irish oatmeal. This is a nice pic of it!)

 (this was another successful meal. We made fig and goat cheese BLTA's. YUM! It's a gourmet update on an American staple!)

 (another successful meal: pork chops with apple chutney and fingerling potatoes)

 (corn maize paste thing)

 (steammed mussels with wine and crispy bacon!)

(Crumpets! I attempted baking and it payed off! The orange marmalade was homemade too!)

 (I think that's our fingerling potatoes. I think those might have been the only thing that did not burn over that campfire)

 (Red corn salad with manchego and jalepenos. Kelly made this for our Taco Night. Pretty tasty!)

(carne asada Taco Night!)

Other things we burned"
-garlic bulb- we stuck it in the fire to soften it up so we could spread it on baguet - BURNED
-tortillas- raw tortillas we tried to roast on the grill grate over the camp fire. They fell through the grates immediately.
-baguette- why did we insist on cooking things over the campfire?? It was clearly  against us.

Aside from burning food, we went on a few mini hikes, took naps, drank wine and beer, used a hatchet, played badminton, made fireside terrariums, baked crumpets, shared Coors Light and mini cupcakes with our camp neighbors, obsessively cloroxed the oilcloth table cover... you know, the usual.

I am not going to lie, as much as I love sleeping in a crowded tent and peeing in a pit, as soon as the french press mystically exploded on Sunday morning, I was totally ready to leave. "You mean to tell me that the toilet has shit all over it and we have no coffee?? That's it. I'm going home." And so we did.

Garage Sale!

Look what I bought for $3 at a garage sale...

Fairhaven is one of those towns that makes you want to settle down and have a couple of kids. During the summer, the entire town meanders around with gelato and dogs on leashes and coffee while the sun sets into the ocean in the distance. Everyone wears shorts and flip-flops and has no where to be but where they are. I wish there was a town like Fairhaven in Los Angeles for us to move back to. Tonight is Movie in the Park night  and all the kids on summer vacation are snuggled under blankets, feeling all grown up to be out without their parents. One group of youngsters had pockets full of one dollar bills and they took turns buying kettle corn and cotton candy for each other. The highschoolers to our left were not so entertaining, however. Lots of loud, obnoxious shrieks and grotesque PDA. I hate highschoolers.
Tonight's movie is How to Train Your Dragon  and I couldn't be more excited. Will and I saw it in the theater when it came out but Kelly was seeing it for the first time. Eeep! Since I had to work all day, Kelly and Will prepared an awesome picnic: Bacon fig and goat cheese hoagies, fresh, local fruit salad (pineapple, blueberries, apples, walnuts, bananas, oranges and peaches) and cherry hand pies. Hand pies might be my new favorite thing. I want to make a million of them and wrap them in butcher paper and hand them out to everyone I meet so they can understand the happiness I feel. They are made with fresh black cherries as well as dried cherries, sugar, corn starch, all wrapped into individual puff pastry pockets just small enough to hold in your hand. Oh my goodness. So delicious. We ate everything in about five minutes.

Since summer is officially in full swing, the sun was still shining bright at 9:30 so the movie was set to start at 10:15. While we lounged on the grass, with our smuggled wine in hand, a local artist played her guitar and sang about her garden and the immigration laws in Arizona. Her hoakiness seemed fitting for the amount of kids that turned out for the movie. I was ecstatic when she finished and it was just dark enough to start the show. Everyone instantly hushed and snuggled closer together, ready for the intense emotion this movie delivers. Kelly, Will and I were on the edge of our blanket, tears welled in our eyes and silly, joyous smiles on our dorky faces. We love sappy kids movies. I started getting nervous as a few rain drops splashed on my face about ten minutes into the movie. The clouds had moved and I wondered if we would get rained out. Luckily it only sprinkled and my hoodie was enough to keep me dry. That never would have happened in California. We would have drown!