We’re going away to Berta’s aunt’s cabin in the Poconos this weekend. I’ve been trying to think of what else we might need to do to get ready. We already packed all of our stuff in the car last night after Abby went to bed.
Yeah, get this- All of the following is inside Berta’s car: A bag with a weekend’s worth of clothes for the three of us. A tent. Three sleeping bags. A queen-sized inflatable mattress with battery-powered inflator. Two battery-powered lanterns. A telescope in a large plastic case. A telescope tripod. Two adult bikes. One bike buggy trailer.
Only the backmost seat is laying flat. That is, there are four completely unobstructed seats in the van, and there is a clear view out the rear window. Crazy big van.
I was thinking of some things to do while we’re up there. Usually when I attempt to organize my own activities, I never get to do them. I suppose that the act of “organizing” is a kind of catharsis from the impending doom of in-law relations. But I would really like to accomplish some of my activities.
Obviously, I would like to use my telescope. With such nice unpolluted skies in the mountains, it would be a shame to miss the opportunity for some real stargazing. I need to print out a star chart so I know what I’m looking at. This site provides pretty good monthly maps along with interesting monthly celestial events. I wish that there was software that could do it as nicely. Hmm… I see that the Perseids start next week.
I think using the telescope is more dependent on what weather we have for the weekend. If history has anything to say about weather it’s that when I remove my telescope from storage, the clouds cover the sky faster than ants do a dropped lollipop. Or something.
And now having looked at the weather I will remark- Holy crap! It’s going to be 48 degrees tonight! And we’re going to sleep in a tent! There was apparently some turmoil in Frieko-ville over our tent decision, too.
I guess that Berta mentioned to one of her sisters that we were got a tent and were going to haul it out to their aunt’s for use. Somehow the fact that I am actually an accomplished camper (more on this in a bit) escaped the discussion. By the time Berta talked to her family again they had decided for us that it was best to not have the pregnant woman sleeping in the tent, and so Berta’s mom and dad would sleep on an inflatable mattress in their pickup or some crazy thing. Nevermind that we already set up the tent in the back yard last weekend and slept in it just fine.
But there are bears! I’m sure that the bears won’t bother us.
Yeah, actually, I was in scouts and we did a little camping. I have actual useful woodsman training. And before you start making comment like, “Well can you remember any of that?” I will tell you that I tied some pretty impressive knots on the tent lines when I couldn’t figure out the crazy tightening mechanism they came with. Personally, I liked my knot better - it was very easy to use.
So, yeah, tent.
And I went through all of the trouble of figuring out how to put the bikes into the car, we had better use them. I’ll probably hitch Abby’s trailer to my bike and haul it around a little. I don’t know how far we’ll go considering that we’ll be in the mountains. I’m not keep on riding uphill without a trailer, much less with one. And Berta’s going to have to learn how to use her gears. I’m not going to end up hauling her around either.
Another thing I’d like to try (maybe with bikes, maybe not) is looking for a geocache. I got the coordinates for one in Hawley (that’s near where we’re going), so we might get a real chance to find one. I already programmed the cache into Berta’s GPS (for some reason hers was in my car and not mine… hmm), so there’s no way we’ll forget the cache locations this time. Maybe next weekend I’ll remember the Johnstown cache locations and we can hunt them out there, too.
I bought a bunch of cheap pencils and erasers at Eckerd this afternoon with the intent of drawing over the weekend. I was doing so well drawing before my programming class, and now I don’t draw at all. I think if I keep at it, I could really become mediocre at it.
I also got a bunch of spare batteries from Eckerd. Mostly junk brand. I figure that the batteries only have to last through two mattress inflations (actually, one inflation and one deflation) and they’ve served their purpose fully. If they don’t last that long, I’ll just take the Duracells out of the lantern and use those.
And I’ve been considering bringing a book. After all, there’s no TV and nothing chore-like to do when in the woods in the mountains, so why not read? I tried to find my place in the Quicksilver book this afternoon, but that wasn’t happening. Looks like I’ll have to start that book over. Again. Especially after Mike from Cherry PJs sent me the second book in the trilogy for helping him out with WordPress. (Thanks, Mike!)
I have the book that I bought at the Spy Museum yet to read. It’s not really a reading book, more like an instruction manual for spying. Seems like good stuff. It reminds me a lot of those Worst Case Scenario books, both in physicality and content.
Should I bring my juggling stuff? It might be fun to watch Berta’s family attempt to juggle. Maybe I could bring the fireballs, too. It would be cool to finally get a picture/movie of that actually happening. The only thing is that I’d have to transport the fuel, and I’m not confident it wouldn’t somehow leak all over Berta’s car. Still, maybe I could put it in a Ziploc bag and carry it that way. And I still haven’t quite figured out how to light them all without letting one ball sit still. Eh, maybe I should just leave those at home.
I looked up some stories online in case we have the opportunity to tell woodsy campfire stories. I looked for scary ones, but there just weren’t any good ones. I remember when we went camping as a class trip in 6th grade (they don’t do this any more, unfortunately), we were told the best campfire story ever by my math teacher, Mr. Hart. The story was pretty creepy, and well-told, and Mr. Hart looked a lot like Vincent Price anyway, so that made it all the more terrifying.
I think that Berta packed all of Abby’s stuff last night. As I was telling her, Abby probably won’t need a lot of toys and such, since she’s likely to be perfectly content playing with sticks and stones in the woods behind the cabin. Just a few books for the dark hours and some DVDs for the car trip are all she’ll need.
So yeah, almost everything’s in the car and mostly ready to go. I should just be able to drive 3 hours and relax a little. Boy, if this trip doesn’t go as planned, we should definitely plan another trip with just us and the tent.
