So those of you who know me well, know that camping, well, it's not exactly my type of thing. My first experience in camping was back in my Daisy/Brownie/Girlscout days and let me say, that did not give me the best introduction. My memory of those days is rain, cold, bugs, and hotdogs that were not fully cooked. You can sort of get why I didn't like it, right? Or maybe that's what camping is all about? None the less, fast forward a few years (or decades) to present day--including us living in Alaska. Camping is just another thing we do here. Eric and I have taken to all the other outdoor activities beautifully and even accepted the fact that it's not exactly warm in the summer (40s-65 average temps), and we're both totally cool with it.
So, why not camping?
A colleague of Eric's invited us (and 45 others) to camp at Quartz Creek Campground for the weekend. After asking many AK friends via facebook about camping tips (and asking my non-AK friends not to make fun), we didn't receive the best feedback, meaning, not that many had great things to say about camping in general. We did conclude from the advice that we should not sleep in a tent (bears!) and that we should rent na RV. Well, renting an RV was way too expensive for one night. If we were going to pay that, we might as well have paid for a hotel. So, we finally decided on sleeping in our car (even though my cousin advised against it, sorry), we figured this was our safest next option to the RV. Since Eric was up on the North Slope til Friday, we decided to forgo driving down to Quartz Creek (about 100 miles from ANC) til Saturday morning. It all worked out anyway as Friday was Friday the 13th and you can imagine the many things people had to say about that!
So, Saturday morning we work up nice and early, we packed up our car with clothes, blankets, firewood and food and headed on our way. As usual, it was a beautiful drive and the sun even started peeking out a bit.
We arrived at the camp site around 11:30 and found no one. We were going with 45 other people and we found no one. Hmm :) We walked down to the lake and eventually found one other person from our group, and after a short walk, we found more people, thankfully. Nearly everyone was in a RV or "5 wheeler" (camper hooked on the back of the car" and a few in tents. We, were sleeping in our car :)
Checking out the grounds. We hung out for the afternoon and then started to get ready for dinner which was at 6pm at the Pavillion. At one point it started to drizzle so these guys set up this nifty tarp over the campfire to keep us dry.
The question is: How many engineers does it take to hang up a tarp? Haha, many made fun of Eric's hand placement.
Starting to BBQ
Pot luck it was!
S'mores around the campfire, awesome. Also awesome, this was around 8:30 at night and still very light. Love Alaskan summers!
The messiest s'more
This is Keaton trying to prove to me that the s'more is definitely not larger than his mouth :)
When most of the kids left, Eric brought out the jiffy pop that Eric's Aunt Patti sent to us as one of our anniversary presents! I'm sorry Patti, this one did not work, Eric scorched it!!! Note: This was at 10:30pm.
Checking out the jiffy pop. Luckily someone else had another so we popped that one successfully :)
We stayed under the tarp while it rained for a while and every so often someone would lift the orange pole (in front of Eric) to alleviate some of the water forming on top and inevitably someone would get soaked from the water falling down. Luckily, we stayed pretty dry.
We decided to call it a night around midnight and cleaned up the mess and headed to bed when it was still as light as the picture above is. Even though the sun sets, it really doesn't get totally dark which is pretty cool now (yes, we know the opposite will be true in the winter, never getting truly light), maybe not in the winter :). Off to the jeep we went, to set up our bed and try to sleep. Not gonna lie, it was a wee bit cold (and pretty darn light without the blackout blinds)..should have brought more blankets. You see, when camping, minimal packing styles don't work. Better luck next time! We woke up pretty early and decided to head out.
A fifth wheel (RV) belonging to Cameron, the many who organized the whole weekend, thank you, Cameron!
This Westfalia was seriously the coolest thing! This bad boy is a 1991 VW Westfalia and is like a mini camper inside. The pop up top is where they slept! They only made them from 1986-1992 so they're quite a bit of money if you wanted to buy one now.
Last trip to the lake before we headed out.
Breakfast at Sunset Diner...at least if we couldn't get a shower or a bed, we could get a warm breakfast!
All in all, it was a successful first night camping. Does this make us want to buy a tent and camp all over? Umm, maybe, maybe not. I'm still a bit too scared to sleep outside with potential bears! And buying an RV wouldn't make sense for us. Sleeping in the car wasn't bad as long as we get a thin mattress and a warm sleeping bag! It was really peaceful and relaxing which was really so nice about Alaska. Until the next trip!
