Boy's Weekend

It's almost too good to be true but this past weekend Wifey momentarily lost all control of her senses and gave me a pass to go camping with the fellers. Yup, that's right - boys weekend. Very simply put, it was an excuse to get away from it all (including all the crappyness I've been feeling lately), make large fires, sleep in a tent, eat lots of dead animals and drink copious amounts of liquids you don't normally find at play group.

Life was good.

After literally months of going back and forth about locations, dates, who could and couldn't come, more locations, etc., etc. we finally made it happen at Cunningham State Park. After waiting so long to make up our minds about where we wanted to go all of the 130+ camp sites were booked at the Houck area so at first I thought we were out of luck. But, I've been watching and learning from my world-class planner Wife and I had a backup plan all set. CSP has a secondary camping area separated from the main part of the park that is first-come-first-served so I thought that if they still didn't have any room at the inn on that day I'd just head up early and grab a space for us in the Manor area. If that still didn't work for some reason we had the Catoctin Mountain Park campground to fall back on but that was a last-ditch choice for us. Why you ask? There's no drinking allowed in National Parks. :)

I got up to the manor area of Cunningham around noonish on Friday, found a great site with an electric hookup and mostly put up the borrowed tent (thanks G&K!) by myself. Then, I settled in to wait for the rest of the guys to arrive. One by one they (almost) all showed up and I had dinner already cooking. I was seriously domestic for this weekend. I ran the planning (with way too many emails - I just didn't want to plan something that anyone objected to!) planned a menu, did all the shopping, did almost all of the cooking, cleaned the place up each morning before the hungover/lazy b-tards even got out of their sleeping bags... it was impressive if I do say so myself. But don't tell Wifey - she's not a huge fan of me doing crap like that elsewhere when not much of it gets done around here.

The weekend was literally fantastic. It rained some on Friday night but we were drinking enough that we didn't even notice much. By the time we all passed out it had stopped so the weather Saturday was absolutely perfect. After friend #6 showed up, and making breakfast for some hungover chaps, it was time to sample some of the local flavor. Not wanting to just sit around all day I dragged a few of the guys up to the main part of the park where we took a short (and slow thanks to my still messed up knee) hike up to see the falls. They weren't as impressive as I'm sure they are in the spring with more water coming over them but they were cool to look at anyway.

A pic via the cell phone -

Then we took a drive through Catoctin Mountain Park, a National Park Service park. My only goal was to try to check out Camp David which is surrounded by the park. As you might imagine, we weren't even able to get close. We saw the road that led up to the Camp but it was flanked by some hard to mistake Do Not Enter signs. Instead of adding ourselves to the daily news cycle by storming the Bastille we just drove on by. I had to be comforted by a fleeting view of one of the watch towers that are a part of the perimeter of the facility.

Yup, that's the tower. How doofy am I that I thought that was so cool?

Anyhow, after we got back it continued to be a lazy and totally relaxing day under beautiful mountain weather. A lot less liquids were consumed which was a good thing. Especially since this is how certain people were feeling on Saturday morning....

Not to poke fun at someone else's misery but... :)

We did stoke up an excellent fire, played some cards and listened to C play his guitar for a while. A nice relaxing night.

FIRE!
J & D
C & M
The Big D

Camp was struck after a truly mesmerizing breakfast feast prepared with love by D. I had packed a few pounds of hamburger which I had seasoned with some Worcestershire sauce, garlic and Italian seasoning (YUM for hamburgers!) but not so much for a breakfast meat wouldn't you say? Someone came up with the idea that it would be great to turn that into a breakfast meal with the dozen eggs we still had. Um yeah, I didn't try it. But some other crazy men did and they even mentioned that it was even borderline good. I took their word for it and ate Saturday's left over normal eggs and bacon. Look at me being the smart one huh?

By noon the camp site was cleaned up really well, the cars were packed and we were all on the road. Didn't want to say goodbye to a fantastic weekend but I knew Wifey was eager to not be a single mother any more.

All in all it was a hell of a weekend. We're definitely going back next year (and a certain someone better get off his thespian-ish back side and join us! and another certain orange colored luzer better tell his wife who's (or should that be whose?) boss and ask really nicely if he can join us too.).

To top it all off the park is also already on the agenda for a family camping outing next spring too. I'd highly recommend that park - loads for the kids to do at the main part of the park... we just need to get off our duffs and make a reservation in time. :)

----------------------------------------

And, just to provide definitive photo evidence of something never before seen - and it's bigger than getting a picture of Nessie or the Abominable Snow Man..... it's a large angry Asian being domestic!

That's right folks, the big D was doing dishes. I know, I couldn't believe it either. Hence the picture.