Katie & Scott & Simon & Cecily.
Merry Christmas, one and all! I got you a little present.
Katie and I went to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom a few days ago for their Winter Wonderland celebration. Despite most of their summer rides seemingly closed, we got to take some pictures in front of the world’s largest Christmas tree (so they claim!) and smell some camels.
Today, we plan to see Sweeney Todd and eat a Christmas ham!
We hope your holidays are as joyful as ours!
Yes, the “Kampground” was more resort-like than anticipated, but it was also more like a cow pasture than anticipated! A herd of cows and two donkeys, which are actually owned by the KOA, reside just on the other side of a barbed wire fence, about four feet from out tent.
Really, the whole complex appears to have been planted down in the middle of a grazing field, with a random smattering of trees seeming terribly out of place. My guess is that it used to be someone’s farmland, and they decided to make money off of it by allowing people to pitch tents and start fires in the great outdoors. They put in a pool and a “kamper’s kitchen,” fenced in the cows, and began collecting money from families who don’t know that real camp sites generally boast more vegetation than livestock. I bet they get a tax break or something for having the animals…I had a drama teacher in high school whose parents kept emus because it meant their land was a “farm.”
I sound too bitter, though. We really did have fun, despite the irritating family the next site over (read: about 20 feet) with the son who sang loud songs about farting. But next time we’ll opt for a campground that doesn’t have karaoke.
Katie and I went camping this past weekend. We headed out Saturday morning and got back Sunday afternoon, driving up through San Francisco and over the Golden Gate Bridge to a KOA Campground (or, sorry, “Kampground”) near Petaluma, CA. We had recently gotten an REI tent as an anniversary present from my parents, and also purchased various other necessities. We packed up the car, ate at the Millbrae Pancake House on the way, and were excited to experience the great outdoors.
The Awesome? Camping is really fun. We ate hot dogs cooked over a campfire and chili cooked over a very small (and somewhat ineffective) camping stove and it all tasted fantastic. We were able to zip our two sleeping bags together and snuggle in the tent, read (or in Katie’s case, attempt to learn to crochet) without distractions, and just sit around a cozy campfire.
The Lame? KOA Kampsites might as well be resorts. A pool, shuffleboard courts, live music from cover bands, free WiFi. When did camping become about amenities? The whole point is to rough it, to experience nature, to have to walk to a bathroom, to cook over a dinky stove. We were within two minutes walking distance of a “Kamping Kitchen” which we would never have dared to use out of principle. It seemed like a contradiction in many ways.
Verdict: we’d love to go camping again, but probably won’t be making a reservation at a KOA anytime soon. Some of the national parks around here also offer camping sites, but we would have had to reserve them well in advance. I guess we’ll just have to start planning ahead. Oh, and I’ll have to get over my fear of a bear attacking our tent in the middle of the night.
My, my, how quickly a year can pass. It really doesn’t feel like we’ve been married (more than) a year now, and yet here we are.
For our 1 year anniversary, we trekked back to Pittsburgh for a few days to do everything we missed about Pittsburgh. A lot of it had to do with food.
We…
It was a magical time for all involved, and the sorry forgetful fact that we managed to forget D&As and Ritas simply means we’ll have to return to Pittsburgh at some point. We finished most of our cake (leaving the icing, which had become its own entity, it seemed), rented a pretty sweet Mitsubishi Eclipse while we were there, and managed to see the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile. All in all, a very enjoyable anniversary vacation to our hometown.
As a bonus, Katie got to fly back to San Francisco in first class. I played Puzzle Quest on my DS.
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