“Ok.” “We will.”

I finally made Lloyd go Cramping!

Friday night was forecast to be deliciously cool – the daytime high was 67 and the low was supposed to be in the mid-40s. I mentally planned all week, got stuff together Thursday night, and after work on Friday I zipped home to Lloyd, who said, “If we’re going to go, we need to go right now because I’m about to fall asleep.” With that enthusiastic attitude, we zipped off to Branched Oak – a state park about 15 miles from here!

They welcomed us with an equally enthusiastic attitude!

You hear that, Lloyd? “Enjoy” it.

For my money, it couldn’t have gone much better. We have never camped on our own before, and Branched Oak was the closest place. I’ve only been there once before for a picnic, so when I looked at the website, it seemed that the only places to camp were ‘parking lot’-type areas. The map just showed a big loop where each spot was right by another one. That was not what I was after.

Fortunately, we drove around and found an area for ‘primitive’ camping – no electricity or water, or in my opinion, “camping”. It was perfect!! There was nobody in our whole area, and it was right by the lake. We unloaded the car and I made Lloyd read a book while I set everything up.

The entryway sign had a warning that if you were there to camp, you’d better have something to camp in – a tent or a camper or an RV. (They must have heard I was coming.) Fortunately, I had packed our rain shelter thing along, or as I now call it, ‘The Loophole’. “Sure, we have a tent! See… this??”

We got the fire going, I burned some brats, and we settled in for a night of fire-watching for me and book-reading-by-flashlight for Lloyd.

Ok, here is how the Prius is supposed to get set up for sleeping: You push the front seats all the way forward, put the rear seats down, and use some tubs or crates to extend that level surface. (The crates make it too high. I will work on that if there ever is a next time.)

Roll out your mattress and there you go! This is a mattress topper from long ago that has been cut apart for various prototypes. The blue part is about twin-mattress size and the pink part has a couple of pieces stuck together inside. We used the duvet and were plenty warm. HOWEVER. I forgot the pillows. Since I did, we tried an alternate arrangement of the seats (no crates or tubs: front seats leaned way back to raise the head area like a pillow) and that was not successful. Very, very cramped. Lloyd said he would have preferred the regular set-up with more sleeping area and no pillow. Sorry, Lloyd.

I also made some window screens to keep the bugs out. It made it crazy cold inside, but with the amount of condensation we had inside anyway, I’m glad we had a window cracked.

By the way, look closely at the bottom of the screen. See that nice scalloped edge? Yep. It’s made from my wedding veil.

Happy Anniversary to me!