Chelsea, Laura, Matt, Tim and I headed out to Dosewallips State Park on the Olympic Penninsula this weekend for some camping. The weather was perfect with highs around 80 and pure sunshine all day. We did a little camping, a little hiking, a lot of bumming around at the river, and we ate a lot of great food. It may have been the last park with available campsites, but it turned out to be pretty nice. Here's a sampling of the pictures. I'll post more later.
Side note: how high does that rate on the scale of awesomeness? I stopped at a 270 foot waterfall on the way to the grocery store. Washington rocks.
I've been there before, but each time I was there I only saw the falls from the top observation deck which is a few feet off the road. This time a helpful fellow onlooker pointed us to a trail that goes down to the base of the falls. It's a quick 15 minute hike and it was well worth the trip. We were there in the evening so the sun filtered down through the narrow canyon to create a rainbow in the mist at the base of the falls. Luckily Tyler had brought his camera along and we snapped some awesome pictures. This is the point where I would say "go check them out." Unfortunately they're on Tyler's camera and my card reader doesn't accept xD cards. Once he gets back to Jersey next week we'll get them posted. Until then you'll have to take my word for it that it was a great hike.
Apparently Ed didn't list the picture I put in my last post about the camping trip so he sent over some real pictures. From top to bottom are Ed and I, Christina Applegate and Kelly, our tents, and me attacking Ed with a trident. Maybe next time we'll be able to take some pictures that don't involve ponchos and rain gear.
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We played some games under the big tent, ate some great food, braved the rain to see a bunch of fantastic waterfalls on a 3 mile hike, and made a toxic fire of death. The conditions were by no means enjoyable, and I'll be the first one to admit that I'm not a hardcore camper, but it was still fun. We were pretty jovial for most of the trip so that kept the mood light. There were a bunch of good quotes from the trip but my favorite came courtesy of Ed, “Any day I get to wear vinyl is a good day.” He had a lot of good days this weekend because we had our rain gear on the entire time. Because it was raining, we didn't take a camera along on our hike. There were a few pictures taken this weekend so I'll post them once they find their way to my email inbox. Until then, I did a Google Image search for pictures from Ricketts Glenn. Almost all of them had people in them so I just put Ed's picture on a woman's body sitting on a tree over a river along the trail. Close enough. I think this is officially the end of camping season for me. That won't be my last trip to Ricketts Glenn, but my next trip won't involve a chance of snow.
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http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=benton%2C+pa |
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On Saturday, I set it up at home to make sure all the parts were there before I trecked off into the wild. One of the poles was broken so yesterday I took it back to the store. I asked them if I could just exchange the pole because I didn't want to try to cram that whole tent back into the box it came in. Apparently the guy decided it was too much work to undo the bag that the poles came in so he just gave me the whole bag. They didn't take my name. They didn't look at my receipt. They just gave me a complete new set of poles when I showed them one broken pole. I don't know how these people stay in business, but if you ever need any sporting equipment, their prices are hard to beat. And if you just stand there long enough, they'll probably just start handing you free stuff to take from the store. |
I've been known to complain about the weather forecast around here not being right. This weekend was no exception. Oh it rained just like the forecast 
I'm no weather expert, but I think this is a bad forecast when you're looking to go camping. There's a flood watch out. I guess I'll have to really pound those stakes in so I don't float away. It's not all that bad. I mean tomorrow there's a 1% chance that it won't rain at all!
There's rumor going around about a camping trip for the weekend of October 8 so I figured I should buy a tent. I did some shopping around and found one I liked at LLBean but it wasn't cheap. I decided to head over to SportsAuthority to see what they had and boy was I surprised. They had a Coleman 12'x7' tent for $50. This was normally a $100 tent (I have seen it listed online for as much as $200.) I decided to go ahead and buy it. When I got up to the register, I found out they were having a 30% off sale on most of their tents so the final price was $35. Not too shabby considering I had been looking at a $160 tent from LLBean.
Studio711 On Tour
It's great to have my weekends start to fill up. I'll be travelling all over in the next two months. I'll be in Jersey Aug 18-20. The next weekend I'm going camping with Chelsea, Tim, Laura, and Matt. And finally I'll be in Syracuse/Geneva for the big wedding the third weekend of September. I also just volunteered to be on the Drexel recruiting team so I might get some free trips back to Philly. It's going to be a lot of travelling, but I'm looking forward it.