Adventure Time!

This weekend, I went camping.

Here I will briefly pause while I wait for you to regain consciousness and for your eyes to roll back forward...

Yes, I went camping, and yes I enjoyed it.

It was a ward campout and it was actually super fun. I was kind of sceptical at first, but I've decided that I can't be a hermit forever and I think a little piece of me was sick of people not knowing who I was. Though at the same time, most of me didn't care, which is odd... But anyway, I digress.

There were quite a few more people there than I was expecting, but before midnight more than half of them had gone home because they couldn't spend the night.

It was then that adventure time began. Rebekah (the girl who voluntold me to go camping and who dragged me along) and I and the two guys that we drove up with, Jason and Andrew, went on an adventure. This adventure consisted mostly of super lame jokes, large fields of over grown weeds, a mysterious barn that looked like long lost pyramid from afar, and ended with us realizing that we had just wandered all over a ranch where there was "no trespassing" allowed. We didn't know, I promise! I had no idea where we were.

Then we laid out in the middle of the road and looked at all the stars. Comparatively, you could see a BAZILLION stars out there and a little bit of the milky way! It was incredible. The competition of the night was to see who could see the most shooting stars. Jason was awesome and always caught them, and I always looked down at the wrong times! But finally I got to see a bunch and they were aweeessoooommmeee.

By the time we got back to camp, they had started calling us to see where we had gone. Nice to know we were missed! The fire was practically dead, so we went to bed. Rebekah really wanted to camp under the stars, so we did. We laid down a tarp, crawled into our sleeping bags and went right to sleep. It was 2:30 in the morning though, so I felt justified not staying up talking haha

The next morning was weird, though really cool. I had slept extraordinarily well, and I woke up around 7:45 because Amy was walking around waking everyone up because she was bored. What is awkward about sleeping out under the stars though is that in the morning, everyone can see you and what you look like right out of bed.. Fuuuun times. But we cleaned up camp, had some breakfast and then we headed off to the lake.

Little did Rebekah and I know that we were going to the lake because neither of us brought our swimsuits... But we got about knee deep in and we were playing frisbee and skipping rocks and whatnot. This lake though, holy cow, there were sooooo many rocks and pretty much no sand it really hurt to walk around. It was killer. Finally I found about three feet of sand in the water and I refused to go anywhere else for the rest of the time we were there hahaha

When everyone was done at the lake, we decided to head home. And by head home, that means more adventuring ;) Jason wanted to take the back route through the mountains so we went on this super rocky sketchy winding road back, but it was awesome. And when we got to the top, the view was incredible! As we were driving, we came across a bike trail or something like that with tons of cars parked at the bottom, so we decided to get out and look at the view. "Looking at the view" turned into hiking up the mountain, which I had not signed up for. But I'm always up for an adventure, so up I went! It was steep and I will probably really hurt in the morning, but it was fun! About 2/3 of the way up, everything started sparkling. Andrew told me it was just glass but I didn't believe him. Then we came across these rocks that were all black and sparkly and awesome looking. We didn't know what they were, so we asked the only other guy on the mountain that was coming up behind us. Fun fact, he was Russian. But he was living in Pennsylvania, so he spoke perfect English. He didn't really know either... But I wanted to include him in the story because, well, he's Russian and his accent was awesome. Rebekah took some rocks with her because she collects them, and then we kept on going. At the top, you could turn anywhere and look way down into the crevices of the canyon. It was so cool. We threw lots of rocks, oo'ed and ah'ed and then turned around and went right back down (which was very dangerous because it was so steep, but it didn't take nearly as long haha) and then he hopped back in the truck and kept on driving.

We then proceeded to turn the radio up as high as it went and literally shout every song that came on at the top of our lungs until we got back to the church.

It was wayyyyy fun! I'm really glad I went. Honestly, I would never have spoken to any of the people there if I hadn't gone to the campout and met them. If nothing else, I can say I have at least two new actual friends called Jason and Andrew. They are pretty great and lots of fun to be around.

All in all, a really great experience. Did a lot of things that were kind of out of my comfort zone, but it was good for me! Now Andrew is talking about going rock climbing and tubing down the river and all kinds of stuff that I would never be my first choice of activities to participate in, but you know what? I'm game. I'll go. How am I supposed to grow as a person if I don't ever get out there and have some adventures?

Though I am sunburned, and officially confirmed as the whitest person on the face of the planet, I would say this weekend has been a success so far :)