25. Watch the Perseids out in the country; 97. Go camping

25. Watch the Perseids out in the country;
97. Go camping

Little late on the updating, sad to say. I started a draft of this back when it was fresh news, didn't possess the attention span to finish it, and it sat in drafts for over a month. But as a wise man once said, "know thine enemy." It's not specifically applicable, but it's good advice, regardless.

But I digress.

So, Jason and I went camping in August. There were supposed to be more people going with us, but that's all we'll say about that. Suffice it to say, however, that a good time was had by both (in this case, 'all').

Here's a tip, though, for anyone inclined to go camping on a weekend in August, and don't plan on hiking five miles to get to your site: either go somewhere that takes reservations (which translates into a site that will probably be overpopulated by kids and people with RVs [why do people 'camp' in an RV? if you want to see nature but not really experience it, well, there's always the Discovery Channel]), or plan on getting to your campsite as early as possible on Friday. If you intend to show up Saturday morning, even early Saturday morning, well, you'll end up spending about five hours trolling for somewhere (pretty much anywhere) you'll be allowed to set up a tent.

We ended up spending Saturday night at Lake Easton State Park. I'm not a big fan of camping at state parks, and here's why: we spent roughly half our time watching kids on bikes almost running into Jason's car. Also, there was the major road a couple hundred yards behind our campsite, so from an auditory point of view, it was like camping next to Hwy 99 (without the hookers). Not ideal. On the bright side, at least we didn't have to turn around and come home, as we got the last campsite at this park (and possibly the last site in western Washington).

Then on Sunday morning, we got up early, packed up, and were out by 10am. Because virtually everyone goes home early Sunday, we made our way back to our first choice camping location, Cooper Lake. Man, talk about night and day comparisons. We got there at around 11am, and the place was deserted (a stark contrast to the day prior, when it was virtually overrun). We found this excellent little campsite that was reasonably isolated from the rest of the area, and even had its own private access trail to the lake itself.

On a completely unrelated tangent, it was perfect if, say, we had needed room for two more tents. You know, if we had needed them.

The only problem we were looking at, however, was the fact that the temperature had cooled a bit from the sunny first day, and the skies had gone completely overcast. Given that the timing of the trip (and the reason we were camping until Monday) was set to coincide with the Perseids, that was acting as a bit of a spirit dampener for me, though I was trying to keep a positive, "well, if it's out of our control, there's no sense letting it bother me" type vibe. Every so often, blue skies would threaten to start breaking through. That would last about fifteen minutes, before the clouds closed back up and seemed even denser than before. Finally, we ended up going to bed a little after dark, and on a near whim, set an alarm to get back up a few hours after sundown, just in case.

Damn good thing we did, too. Go to bed at about 9, dense cloud cover. Get up at about 11pm, stick head out of tent, skies are damn near crystal clear. One of the main reasons we wanted to get far out of the city for this, as well, is that this year the Perseids also happened to coincide exactly with a new moon. Meant almost zero light pollution. Having been so long since I'd been camping in the first place, I'd really forgotten what an amazing sight the night sky is, when you get up in the mountains. Add onto that a spectacular cosmic fireworks show, well, words like 'spectacular' and 'incredible' just don't seem sufficient.

Suffice to say, it was a good trip. :)