I haven't been camping that often in my life, in fact I think I can count the number of times on one hand, but last week, I can say that I've been camping twice in the last 2 years. We took a leisurely drive out to the Shenandoah National Park on Saturday and got there in the early evening. I learned a few things last time that we prepared for this trip. Bring some padding unless you're ready to sleep on a bunch of rocks. Last time, we didn't know and I got about a few hours of rested sleep until I realized there were a million jagged stones underneath the tent and they were digging into me whichever way I rolled. This time, we learned the hardway, bring shitloads of blankets if you don't have a decent sleeping bag. Weather.com had told me that the weather in the mountains were going to be in the 60s and 70s during the day. What I failed to notice was that it was going to be 10 degrees cooler in the mountains, and that it drops below 30 at night. So we all woke up shivering our asses off around 4 in the morning. Also, if you bring an air mattress, you need to have something lining your ass, or you will be literally freezing your ass off since all the heat will escape under you even if you're bundled up with blankets on top of you.

We also brought some wood up since last time we were ill prepared to make a fire, but I realized that if you want bonfire quality campfires, you gotta either drop the cash on bundles of wood from the sundries camp market, or you go foraging into the woods. The only drawback of foraging is most of the wood is too wet to burn, so the fire will smoke and well, by the time we got back to DC, we smelled like we were hung upsidedown in a smokehouse for 48 hours. We also had 2 little charcoal bags that we got from the Columbia Heights Giant, but I've since found out that they're a complete rip off. 3 bucks for a little burnable bag of coals? I bought 2 family size ones from CostCo just yesterday for 14 bucks.

Thanks to my wife, we were well fed with lots of campfire foodstuff, and junkfood to pass the time away between playing cards, poking our bonfire and talking about life philosophies. I've also found out that Coke from a bottle tastes about 10 times better than when its from a can or the fountain. I wish they came in the bigger sizes, and yes, I try to recycle all my glass bottles.

On the way back, we stopped in Sperryville to find some apple butter, another thing that I'm fascinated with but I don't seem to stock up on. Sperryville is also apparently right next to Washington, VA aka home of the famous Inn at Little Washington. While stopping off, we saw a huge biker/hog meetup. Its funny though cuz none of these guys seemed very authentic, more weekend warriors than anything. It was neat to see though. We also stopped by this pretty neat place that was a nursery/restaurant/fancy grocery store called The Epicurious Cow, sorta felt like something that would existed in Cicely, Alaska if Northern Exposure was based in a real town.

By the time we got home, we stopped for a quick bite to eat in Clarendon and then got home and passed out around 5pm and more or less slept til we had to get up to work the next day. It was fun and we're going again this weekend, but this time, I'm gonna try to be more prepared.