I like camping.
I have an inner narrative that believes that I want to be a lumberjack… a mountain man. Living off the land in complete self-sufficiency. Although I’ve learned A LOT in my adult life about surviving in the wilderness, and consider myself quite capable, what I really need most of the time is just a good weekend away in the woods.
And so we go camping.
Us vs. nature.
No walls.
No running water.
No power (well, except for the battery pack in the car).
The ultimate quest of battling the elements to claim our dominion over a small plot of carefully groomed campground… complete with fire pit and some of the sturdiest picnic tables to ever come out of a Forest Service wood shop (seriously, those things are indestructible).
Ok, so maybe our most recent camping trip wasn’t exactly Swiss Family Robinson (if you don’t know who that is, you’ve just confirmed that I’m old… just Google it), but at least we didn’t have cell service!
Welcome to Crescent Lake National Forest Campground on the edge of the Boundary Waters Wilderness. A beautiful slice of heaven with some of the most exquisite first-come first-serve campsites in northern Minnesota. Not to mention, incredibly clean vault toilets!
We left home early on a Friday because we wanted to ensure that we’d get our pick of spots. The last thing we wanted to do was show up after dark to a mostly full campground and end up being one of “those people”. The ones who circle back and forth between the last two crappy spots available, unable make a decision. “Stop sniffing and just lay down!”
Our early arrival meant that we got to practice the even more time-honored task of circling the ENTIRE campground to carefully examine every potential vacant option for our single night of bonding with mosquitoes. In the end, it paid off. We found a beautiful spot on the shore of the lake, yet still sheltered a bit from the cool breeze. Our choice was confirmed to us by the campground host later in the day when he told us point blank “Yep, this is the best first-come campsite here!”
Score!
Our plan was to stay here for a single night before heading into Grand Marais to meet up with our friends Mike and Beth for a second night of camping on the Superior Hiking Trail. So we packed the camping gear that we’d use for backpacking, despite having access to our car for this first night. That meant sleeping on the ground in our trusty Nemo 3 person tent, instead of our glamping tent setup with 4” memory foam and a cot. No biggie, we’ve roughed it a ton.
As the afternoon wore on we explored this new-to-us campground and I got to spend some quality hammock time. However, for most of the rest of the day there was a weird spittle-like rain. Almost like we were existing inside a fluffy cloud as opposed to being rained on, but it made for a somewhat cool and clammy evening.
What do you do when the weather isn’t super awesome but you’re camping in the great outdoors? You curl up in your cozy tent and spend hours reading books and napping. At least that’s what I WOULD have been doing except for the fact that I forgot my Kindle and so I ended up with very little to read on my phone. Curse this glorious yet frustrating lack of internet access!
No worries, we still had games to play. Between spittle-sessions (did I just make up a thing?) we hit the picnic table and pulled out the cribbage board and started to deal. A lot of times when we’re in our game room at home we put on music while we play or puzzle. I grabbed my phone to put on some tunes and quickly realized… ya there’s no internet (my moments of brilliance are fleeting some days). I checked my downloaded tab in Apple Music to find a goose egg (meaning nothing, not an actual goose egg… though I wonder if anyone has made a song called ‘goose egg’…). Then I remembered that I had been playing with an audio system on my home NAS and when I checked that app, sure enough there were two songs I had downloaded for testing. A whole two songs from Jeremy Messersmith’s Fox/Coyote album. So that’s what we listened to. At least a couple times, then we stopped that silliness.
It was getting cooler and damper so it was truly time to hit the tent and move the games inside. In we crawled and got cozy and comfy. I eventually played some old clicky games that were downloaded on my phone (Alto’s Adventure whoo hoo!!) and then decided to call it a night. Between the cool temps and cozy tent it wasn’t a bad night of sleep at all. It just started really early. So early in fact that my watch didn’t even realize I was sleeping until four hours later. I still awoke to a decent sleep score on Saturday morning but I would expect that when I’m laying in bed for 10 hours.
Ya, about those 10 hours. I wasn’t sleeping that whole time that’s for sure. But I was laying down, and that’s where I discovered… there’s such a thing as too much of a good thing.
Maybe you’re different, or maybe I’m the weird one. But lying down for 10 hours does NOT agree with my body. Don’t misunderstand, I love a lie down. Heck I even love a good long sit (“Oh, yes, sitting. The great leveler. From the mightiest Pharaoh to the lowliest peasant, who doesn’t enjoy a good sit?”… IYKYK). Ten straight hours of being supine? Not so much.
I crawled out of the tent to a beautiful sunrise, bright yellow and orange colors reflecting on the lake, tinged with a glorious bolt of lower back and hip pain, illuminating a fresh new day ripe with promise. The first of which was a promise to myself that I would avoid ever laying in a tent, on an air mattress on the ground, for ten hours straight, ever again.
As I hobbled to the lake shore, trying to stretch and bend my body back into more normal shapes, I decided laying down is nice… in moderation.
