Camp Granddaddy Long Legs…

Packed up the car on Friday afternoon and headed…right down the street.  To be fair, it did take us about 45 minutes to get there.  My youngest daughter said all she wanted for her birthday was to go camping, so how could I deny her that right of passage.  How did it take me nine years to realize that the tent we bought about six years ago never got used.  Seriously.  Where does the time go?  The point is, it was long overdue.

When we arrived, the check-in cabin was hopping.  They were piping in some fife and drum music and it looked like Colonial Williamsburg paid them to decorate the shop.  To be fair, I was technically in Williamsburg.  I just didn’t expect the place to look so touristy.  The birthday girl was having fun picking up various items and we got the key to our cabin.  A nice man chatted with me and told me he had 19 grandchildren.  Wow.  Seriously.  No wonder you have an RV parked outside.

The girls were super excited as we passed some rainbow Technicolor jumping mat.  What in the world is that?  I think I have to try it out.  We pulled onto a gravel road and found our “Kabin”.  How cute.  It had a roof, and a light inside with bunks.  Now, technically, this is not true camping, so don’t criticize me yet.  I went camping from the time I was tiny until I was in college.  I can “rough” it.  I just thought this would be different.  Plus I had talked our friends into getting the one next to us and we had a fire pit near us to cook on.

As dusk was drawing near, our friends arrived and we got out the makings for hotdogs and s’mores over the fire.  Ahhh, fire.  I love a big fire under the night sky.  The first thing my tiny one did was drop her hot dog off her stick into the fire.  I couldn’t stop laughing.  I got it out and she wanted another one.  Ha.  Then we moved onto the marshmallow roasting phase and hers caught on fire.  I was laughing again.  She only likes things to be a tiny bit crispy, not black.  She was having so much fun.  She then decided to make me eat the burnt ones.  I couldn’t tell her that I also preferred the “tan” marks on my marshmallow, so I ate it.  Pretty good.  This is family togetherness.

There were quite a few pholcidae or granddaddy long legs around the camp.  They were in the cabin, the trees, and the bathroom area.  The second night, we were busy roasting things again over the fire.  My daughter told me she was “getting the hang of it” and her pioneer skills were kicking in.  She was doing a better job of slowly turning the food.  My friend and I decided to make packets of salmon and throw them over the hot coals much to the dismay of her husband.  He is wilderness man, and thought we would ruin the fish.  The fish turned out perfectly.  We were feeling pretty happy with ourselves and took the girls to the bathroom area.  We got inside, and I went to look at myself for the first time in quite some time.  I was in the process of saying how lovely we looked when I turned around to look at my friend’s hair and started laughing.  She was immediately suspicious of me, and then turned to the mirror.  There was a granddaddy long legs perched precariously on top of her hair.  I grabbed it and set it free outside.  What you don’t know is that my friend had been talking to them the whole time.  It was just one of those funny things.  Life is like that. 

“Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.”  ~George Eliot

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