The Swiss Family Olsen

To satisfy the curiosity of all who know me as a suave, polished sort, I'm here to state for the record that I did famously on our recent trek to the Adirondack mountains as we roughed it for five days.

We began our trip with Yours Truly in fine form, singlehandedly shopping and packing all but the few final items that needed Hero Guy's help. Hero Guy was putting in some extra hours at work, but I did 90% of the prep work so that he could throw his clothes in the bag and we'd be on our way. He assured me that it would only take him 15-20 minutes to toss his clothes in the bag, throw our gear on the handy-dandy camping trailer he built to haul our stuff, and we'd be on the road. It was to be our first trip in The Beast and we were all excited about the prospect of loading up absolutely anything and everything we wanted to take with us to test out Hero Guy's claim that it was so HUGE, we'd never run out of room. Let me just say that 4 hours of packing later, and many protests by Hero Guy that we absolutely did not have room for all the stuff we wanted to take, we got on the road, moods a bit dampened by our unrealistic expectations.

We arrived at our campsite in record time. We spent approximately 3 hours setting up camp and I will say that Hero Guy and I make quite the efficient team erecting tents, screened-in kitchens and all. I even do quite well adhering to Hero Guy's rules of not getting anything dirty, wet or sandy because he wants to keep us all pleasantly comfortable and we're sure to be miserable if any of that happens. Unfortunately the clouds decided to vacation with us as well and by morning, the storm clouds were in hot pursuit. Also unfortunately, our camp site was not permanent. A new resident was coming in 2 days and we were going to have to move. We made a snap decision to move into our second site before the rain began so within 12 hours of setting up camp, we were tearing it down to reset a few sites down. We decided that to make things easier, we'd just drag our stuff from site to site. However the sheer size of our gear along with the winds whipping this way and that, it became easier to disassemble and spend another 3 hours setting up our new house. As we finished, the rain clouds opened. Somehow, between Hero Guy ordering everybody to stay out of the rain, not let the sleeping bags get wet, dry this off, carry this in, etc., we managed to collapse at our picnic table and watch the river and we were only slightly wilted. The rain lasted the entire day and we awoke to a swimming pool on our tent floors Sunday morning but none on the beds.

We spent the next days drying out, enjoying the water, fishing and letting me try my hand at camp cooking. During our only other camping trip, I had been the soux chef, and didn't actually have a hand in preparing anything. It is with self-satisfaction that I report everybody declared my food delicious (and I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that everything tastes better when you're camping).

In addition to the normal camping activities of sitting around the fire, roasting marshmallows, fishing in the lake and such, we also visited an Iron Mining museum, went to Whiteface Mountain, watched snow skiers practice jumping at the Olympic training site and spent an afternoon at Fort Ticonderoga.

We liked it so much that we're camping again in another week, and then we'll probably be ready to do each other in. This time, we'll be ready for the rain (which probably won't come) we'll be more realistic about how long it actually takes to pack up our gear and with any luck, we'll teach our kids to do the set up and we can be the ones playing army in the woods, pelting each other with pine cone grenades.