First, a note: The traditional Monday Morning Post should now be considered just the Monday Post. Now that Soupo is in Kindergarten, I may not be able to get these out first thing in the morning. But they should be getting out sometime Monday. And by “Monday”, I mean no later than Tuesday evening, maybe Wednesday. While it is conceivable I could write these up on Sunday and get them right out, I wouldn’t count on it.
Saturday morning I ran away from home. Or, more exactly, I went camping. I headed out under a glowering sky Saturday morning undaunted. “Glower away sky!” I cried, shaking my fist. “Your feeble attempts to daunt me are in vain!” Or I turned on the radio and sang along with Barenaked Ladies. One of the two.
Rolling into camp (that was East Fork Lake, just east of town), I showed up before the camp office was even opened. But that was OK, they have a Self Registration. Self Registration is just dandy as long as you have correct change and a pen. I had correct change anyway. It worked out in the end, as things usually do, because by the time I got my campsite together, the office was open and I could borrow one of their pens. So you see? It was going quite well so far.
I should tell you about my campsite. I just feel compelled. It was just a peachy pi site. Number 314. (See? That’s a joke. “Peachy pi” and Pi is 3.14 (and a bunch of more numbers but that’s not important) and my site was 314. Well, it’s like a joke anyway.) I thought it had everything, a place to park my car and a spot to put my tent and a fire ring (because why go camping if you can’t burn stuff?) and a picnic table. It was pretty good. Only, other than the spot I put my tent, the whole thing was slanty. It was like camping on an old Batman set. You know, like where the villain would be? It was slanty like that.
After I got squared with the office, I went walking around. Some people like to say it hiking, but really, the way I do it, it’s walking around. I had a rough plan for the day, but it didn’t pan out. (But on the upside, the sky got with the program and quit glowering. So that was nice.) I was going to follow the Perimeter Trail for a while and find Camp Site #4 and have lunch there and then just wander around a bit, following whatever trail looked promising. (Yeah, this is a good way to get lost, but I was hemmed in on both side by roads with a third road to the north and the lake to the south. If I stayed in that box, I couldn’t get that lost. Technically I didn’t get lost at all. Technically.)
Only I couldn’t find the trail going the way I wanted. Not the real trail anyway. East Fork Lake has all kinds of trails crisscrossing it. Mostly horse trails, which really works out pretty well. Horse trails are about a horse wide, so they’re pretty easy to follow. The biggest problem is horses poop. A lot. When you get to the trail they have a box of “Mutt Mitts” so you can pick up after your dog. This is a good thing. An even better thing would be a “Mustang Mitt” (to keep with the cute and clever alliteration of “Mutt Mitt”, even if it doesn’t flow quite as well). Of course these would have to be 55 gallon trash bags. And you’d need eight of them for your average horse. Do horses actually do anything but poop? But the trails were clear. (Except for the horse doots, which I won’t dwell on anymore. You’re welcome.)
So I picked a trail headed in the right direction and followed it. It was supposed to cross the trail I wanted about where I wanted to be. “Supposed to” is the key here. I followed it for a while and it dove off the wrong way, so I skipped over to another trail that went nearly the right way and followed that for a while until it petered out, so I followed another trail. None of these trails were on the Official Trail Map I got at the office. What I really needed was a good topo map. Or a GPS, that would have been handy.
Just as I figured I was about as lost as I could get, the trail broke out to a road. Right by a horse farm. It had it’s name and address right on the sign out front. So now I knew right where I was, so I could figure about where the useless, shaggy-assed map I had said I should be. As it turned out, I was right. This is when I saw the kids.
A group of five kids (“kids” in this case means 15 to 17 years old. It wasn’t like there was a mass-escape from a local day-care center or anything) came pounding up the trail and I asked them if they knew where they were. (Because, honestly, I wasn’t quite sure.) And they said “no”. Between us, we figured where we were and how to get where we wanted to be. And they were loster than me. I was just walking around, they were trying to get somewhere. So I had that going for me. So they went their way and I went mine.
About 10 minutes later, I came to where Camp Site #4 was supposed to be. Remember? That was my Goal For the Day. And I found it. Only it was… not quite there. The shell of the outhouse was there, sorta, but that was it. And the trail that was supposed to go past it and continue to the campground went past it and… stopped.
Not to worry thought. Way back in 1978 someone decided it would be a good idea to dam up the creek and make a lake here. For flood control probably. Well, way back in 1977 there were roads and stuff. When they flooded the valley to control flooding, they just left the roads there. One of these Ustabeah Rd’s (Whenever you go hiking (or just walking like me) and there’s an old, abandoned road that crosses your path, it’s Ustabeah Rd.) went right past where I was. Following it, I’d hit the big park road. So I did and I did. Following the park road got me back to the campground, and voilá, there I was. (I’m just clever that way.)
After dinner, before it was quite dark enough to start the campfire I fired up my little stove and made Jiffy Pop® popcorn. (Which is how this thread got it’s title. It could have been “I Walked Around Some on Saturday”, but I think I made the right choice.) At least I tried to make it. Jiffy Pop® should have, printed right on the paper top you peel off before you actually pop the corn, instructions that say: “If you make this on anything but an electric stove top, preferable one that’s either avocado green or harvest gold, but white will do in a pinch, you’re just gonna scorch the heck out of it.” It doesn’t say that, but it should. Now this is the same little stove I made Basement Popcorn on a couple of weeks ago, so I knew it would work. But I didn’t take into account the alchemy that is Jiffy Pop®.
Man! I just scorched the heck out of it. But it burned nicely when I threw it in the fire a little later. A fire, I might add, I built with only one match. Yup, one match and I had a roaring fire. [sub]One match and the entire “Business” section of Thursday’s paper. But we don’t need to dwell on that.[/sub]
Something else mentionable happened Saturday night. But let me set the stage… While I go walking around I try to see how many animals I can see (and identify). When I go with my brother, it’s a friendly competition. It was just me, so it was practice. I didn’t see much of anything. There was the box turtle, and a hoppity-toad and a couple of frogs , a cardinal and a turkey vulture. But that was about it. Well, Saturday night I got to add another animal to my tally. It was a skunk.
A skunk just came hopping into my camp. I’ve never seen a skunk hop before. Usually they sorta waddle. But this one hopped. Not like a bunny hops, but like a ferret. Which makes sense considering they are both in the weasel family (weaseldae, in Scientific). So it comes hopping into my campsite.
Now, I had a couple of options right here. I could have said “Ahhhhh! A skuuuuuunk!”, but you never want to startle a loaded skunk. Or I could have snuck up behind it and seen if it was ticklish. (Once again, see instructions for a loaded skunk.) I figured it would be best to non-threateningly let the skunk know I was around. “Hellllooooo… little skuu-uunk… hi… I’m just going to stay over here and you stay over there… OK?” And the little skunk saw me and hopped behind my tent and disappeared into the woods. Everyone felt that was for the best.
-Rue.
