Camping

Yarr!

Last Friday I took a day off and headed up t' me parents' place for a weekend campin' with t' family. G was stuck at home, havin' t' work durin' t' weekend due t' an impendin' product release, so I'd decided that rather than drivin' up on me own, I'd join up with one o' t' two motorhomes goin' up. So I hopped into one with me parents and drove off towards t' mountains, someplace I hadn't been t' for a few years but had found meself thinkin' about ever since I came home from me neice's birthday party at t' beach and smelled t' campfire smoke in me sweater. P-) I was a little wary o' bein' encased in a box with them for 4-5 hours x 2, + 2 nights, lest they revert aft t' Parent Mode(tm) but we got along very well, and partway through met up with me sister's family and their mo-home. Since me sister was along, we met, o' course, at Starbucks. After waitin' 15 minutes for coffee (at least it was fresh) and touchin' base with t' other group, we lined up t' mo-homes, put our walkie-talkies at hand and headed for t' higher elevations. We eventually arrived at Silver Lake, a nice area that t' group had been t' before in previous years.

Much o' t' weekend was spent geocachin' (or, as we must refer t' it today, treasure huntin'!) I'd never done it before, but it seemed fun, was a good excuse for a hike, and all in all I can give it a good review. Two hunts sent us on a nice walk on Friday evenin'; t' sprogs were particularly good at findin' t' spot in which t' treasure was hidden, and got dibs on what t' take and what t' leave; I think t (lower-case because he's a kid) gained a tiny plastic telescope and e was up a pink Piglet pen. A blue and white hotwheels car was retrieved from one cache only t' be left in t' next one when t' telescope was discovered.

Saturday sent us on another hike for more treasure (arr!); though we had two electronic treasure-finders they disagreed by about 30 feet, leavin' us t' root around in a large area covered with massive happily crumblin' tree trunks and a path edged with a double-row o' white rocks. So after spendin' some half an hour checkin' under all t' rocks and wanderin' around a large area o' forest, e finally found t' treasure box -- hangin' in a tree! Clever. T' next treaaye spot was buried by rocks near a nice little pond, and t' last was in some brush high up on a cliff ledge that had us wonderin' if we should have brought along climbin' equipment, but fortunately it was more navigable than it looked and we made our way safely down t' cliff face, plus one pedometer and minus one dinosaur.

Our tired crew ended t' day with some games, a nice what crawled out o' t' bung hole and (of course) s'mores. I managed t' pull off a royal flush in one game o' tripoley and get a nice stack o' chips, only t' get plank-walked by me nephew (playin' his first game) in another.

Sunday t' sprogs went out in kayaks with R, while t' rest o' us were comfortably lazy, read books and and toasted our english muffins over t' fire. E collected pine cones for a class project while t' sprogs (now dried off and happy) enticed me into playin' 'Careers'; it's a 50-year-old board game that R picked up at a garage sale that still plays very well. We port at around noon, meetin' at Starbucks again for lunch, then goin' our separate ways. All in all a nice weekend. Arr! t' hear that both groups might be sellin' their motorhomes soon; I think they're not findin' enough need for them (now that t' sprogs be busier) and they involve a lot o' upkeep. I'll be sad t' see them go if they do, but hope that it's not t' last we'll see o' our September campin' trips.

Translation provided by: http://talklikeapirate.com/translator.html
Notes: I am amused that it translates "treasure" as "treaaye", gave me a lot of 'port' when I was just trying to have 'left', and that a couple of times I got a 'connection limit exceeded' error. I bet that'll happen a lot today! And of course that bit about the bung hole...I think it just means 'dinner'!