By the Fire Revisited

So all in all an awesome campout. Hung out with my bro and cousin and had a great time. HOWEVER, I will never ever again go to the Dennis Cove Campground in TN from april till november. The campground host is an absolute lunatic. When we first arrived, we introduced ourselves to Gary. At first he seemed like an amiable guy. A little slow on the draw, but overall a nice guy. So we go on a merry way for a few hours. Now I dont know how many of you know this but the federal government decided at some point that they weren't going to allow people to drink alcoholic beverages in their campgrounds. Something I can understand a little bit but at the same time seems like a stupid rule, and wasn't one we were going to, or did, follow. Later that night as me and my cousin are going on a hunt for firewood, we get verbally assaulted by Gary who is now wielding a flashlight and a long stick. He comes out of nowhere and is like "STOP RIGHT THERE, PUT THAT DOWN" and he proceeds to point the stick at us and accuse us of drinking. Now im carrying a can of Arnold Palmer with a some Firefly vodka mixed in, but he couldn't know that and we put down our stuff and try to calm him down. No luck. This guy is freaking out like a chick in a horror movie. Nothing we say can calm this guy down and it takes us walking back into our campsite before he lets off. On a scale of 1 to 10 on weird scales it ranked about a 7. The next day we find out that not only had the campsite beside ours been issued $120 drinking fines and had all their alcohol poured out, but that Crazy Gary and some park rangers had been hiding behind trees watching people with binoculars. WTF?!?! Well like I said we had a great time and met some really nice people who go by Tokahontas and Bong Smith, but for your own sanity stay the hell away from Dennis Cove Campground and Crazy Gary.

By the Fire

There are few things I enjoy in this world as much as camping and in just a few short hours I will be in TN doing just that with my brother Jonathan and my cousin Andrew. A fact that brings to mind countless nights under the great night sky from my childhood. On a personal level this is the first time that I can remember that i'll be camping with either of them in the truest sense of the word. Sure there are always those family trips but 9 times out of 10 we didn't sleep outside and just relax. This is CAMPING camping. The only thing we could do to make it more of an authentic camp out would be to hunt our own food. Which were we to get some kick ass crossbows could be a possibility, but seeing as thats never going to happen we'll just stick with harris teeter steaks cooked over an open fire.

What is it about camping that makes it so enjoyable. Is it leaving the stresses of our modern age behind and clinging onto some ancestral roots from times of old? Is it just simply being outdoors and in nature where we get to take a step back and let our souls breathe? Whatever it is every time I go camping I come back feeling renewed and refreshed. Some people dont like camping(how thats possible is beyond me). To those people I can only hope they find or have something like camping that allows them to just dive into nature and find the beauty that is there. With all of our worlds modern advances and new technology, its so easy to forget that there is nothing man made that comes close to the beauty of the starry night sky, or to a sunrise over a lake, and nothing as purely satisfying as sitting around a fire with loved ones swapping stories and just enjoying each others company without music blasting in the background or a tv on.

My friends camping is the shit. It's as simple as that. Now its time for me to pack and go grab some big ole steaks and have an amazing weekend. Have a great weekend.

My First Blog

I'll start this first blog off by saying I never in a million years thought I would ever start a blog. I have friends who have them(females only) and one or two friends who still livejournal(you know who you are). That being said there are times when I really want to say something but unfortunately dont have a medium with which to do so. And that brings me to this blog. I dont always have a lot to say and there will be times when the things I want to say are purely for my own pleasure or benefit. There will be times when I find something while perusing the web that I feel I should share with the rest of the world, so their day can be brightened or enlightened the way mine was. Other times I may share some insight into life that I have stumbled upon that maybe someone somewhere can read so they dont make the same mistakes that I did. Whatever the case may be, I hope whoever randomly stumbles across this blog enjoys it.

Chris