Campventure

This weekend Art and I headed up to St. Croix State Park for a camping adventure (or "campventure") with our friends Zach and Julie.

It . . . could have gone better.

Our troubles started on Thursday when Art came down with a case of pinkeye. And while I think I did a pretty good job of being an understanding girlfriend (after all, I'm no stranger to the conjunctivitis) and even put in his eyedrops for him, I was a little nervous about the prospect of spending two nights in a two man tent with someone with an infectious disease.

This, however, wasn't really a problem because there is plenty of extra space in the picnic shelter Art grabbed from his mom's garage instead of a tent.

You know, one of these:

But, as the optimistic group of campventurers we were, we decided that if we put a tarp on the ground (I'm not sure if you can tell from the picture that there is no bottom) and borrowed Zach and Julie's sleeping mats, everything would be okay as long as the forecasted rain wasn't too heavy.

And it was okay when we first went to bed. It was actually quite pleasant to have a breeze blowing through the "tent," and since we were at a walk-in site, there weren't people walking by and seeing us in that awkward position.

But then it rained. Hard. And while the "tent" offered some protection, there was water dripping on our faces for the better part of the night, and my sleeping bag was getting increasingly wet at the bottom, forcing me to curl into a smaller and smaller ball as the water seeped toward me.

By morning, we were both pretty miserable, and since it was still raining, the group decided to abandon nature for a few hours and seek shelter at the Grand Casino in Hinckley.

Side note: I had never been to a casino before. They are really, really depressing.

After losing a bit of money at the penny slots (and watching Zach win quite a bit of it), we headed back to the park. The the rain had stopped, so we spread out our wet belongings in the hope that they might dry despite the overcast weather and went for a hike.

Side note: Here are some pictures from Zach's photoblog of our hike and Art looking defeated by our tentlessness.

After the hike, we returned to discover that there was just no way Art and I were going to have dry sleeping bags or pillows by nightfall, and we all decided that we had better just cut the campventure short.

However, I will say we made the most of those last few hours by drinking the beer we had left and making s'mores.

So all was not lost.