Weekend Adventure

The Labor Day trip was a grand adventure. We went camping, canoing and hit the Minnesota Renaissance Festival. I’ve done all of these things before, so when the weekend was planned, I didn’t figure it would turn out quite the way it did. But I guess that’s why it was such an adventure.

We started packing around 5:30, and got on the road around 7:00. When we left town, we had about a half tank of gas. My parents live about halfway between here and the Twin Cities, and experience has shown me that gas is usually about a dime per gallon cheaper there than it is here, so I figured we’d drop in on my parents for a few minutes, let the kids use the bathroom, get a drink, gas up and split. I knew we’d cut it close on gas, but I didn’t know how close it would be. The “low gas” idiot light came on when we still had about 30 miles to go to my parents’ house. I asked the wife how far she could go once the light came on, and she said she didn’t know. We found out that her car would make it about 30 miles, but I was biting my fingernails by the time we got there. When we filled up, we found out that we had about two-tenths of a gallon left in her tank… enough for another five miles or so.

After we gassed up, we dropped in on my mom for a quick in-n-out visit. When it comes to my mom, in-n-out means at least a half hour, because she likes to talk, but that’s neither here nor there… it just means that we got to camp a little later than I had expected. In this case, “a little later” was about 12:30 AM. By this time, I was tired from driving. To complicate matters a bit more, I neglected to pack a flashlight, so setting up the tent was a difficult endeavor at best. I decided that we’d forego popping the tent, and we slept under the stars. It was a great night for sleeping outside.

Saturday morning, I took the kids to McDonald’s for breakfast. When we decided to do this trip, I figured it would be quicker, cheaper and easier for all of us if we just ate fast food all weekend. No food to buy, pack, store and prepare at camp, and this way I wouldn’t have to worry about the kids saying “I don’t like this.” When we got back from Mickey D’s, I set up the tent and unloaded the gear. Since it was a nice day, and the weather was supposed to be nice, I didn’t set up the rain fly on the tent. Yet another labor-saving step on my part.

Once the tent was up, it was time to go canoing. We got everything ironed out logistically, and were on the water in short order… with a stop at Subway along the way, so we’d all have a good lunch on the river. We started drifting downriver, ate our lunch, and the weather took a sudden turn for the worse. Within a half hour of drifting downriver, we were faced with a cranky Mother Nature. The storm clouds gathered, the thunder rolled in the distance, and the lightning flashed on the horizon. We decided to get off the water for a bit.

Around the next bend, we found a good place to get off the river. There was a nice, sandy bank, which had a big fallen tree not too far from shore. We hauled the canoes to the tree, flipped them over, propped them against the tree lean-to style, and sat under our improvised shelter until the rain – and hail – passed. When the rain stopped, we decided that it would be quicker to paddle back upstream. After an hour or so, we returned to the put-in point, a little tired, but none the worse for wear. So we packed our canoes back up and returned to camp.

At this point, I should remind you that I had left the rain fly off of my tent. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the tent wasn’t too wet inside. The sleeping bags that wifey-poo and I had zipped together were a little wet, and there was a small puddle of water in the tent, but everything else (most importantly, the kids’ stuff) remained dry. We put our sleeping bags in the car and cranked the heater for a half hour or so until they were dry.

Before I continue, I need to digress for a bit. It wasn’t just my family that went camping. It was also G-man and his wife, and Boogie and his daughter. Boogie and kid didn’t go canoing with us… they went shopping instead.

Anyway, we got back to camp, and the women-folk decided that they wanted to hit the Mall of America. G-man and I wanted no part of that, so we chose to stay back at camp. We all agreed that the women would eat at the mall and that G-man and I would eat at camp, and the women left.

When the women left, I went to the grocery store to pick up a couple of steaks for dinner. Just as I pulled into the grocery store parking lot, the second downpour hit – complete with another round of hail. I went in to the store, started shopping, and the store lost power. After 30 seconds or so, power was restored; I finished my shopping and returned to camp. When I got back to camp, I figured it was time to start a fire. When I checked the fire pit though, I found an inch of water in the bottom of the pit. So I bailed the water out of the fire pit with a tin can and started a fire.

G-man and I cooked our dinner, ate and chatted for a while and decided it was time to hit the hay. I had just fallen asleep when the cell phone rang. It was the women. They said it was raining again, and raining hard. Mother Nature was dumping water by the bucket on them, and the rain was so bad that they couldn’t see the road. During the drive back, they hydroplaned pretty severely, and they pulled over to wait out the rain.

After another half hour, they called back, saying that the rain was still too heavy to drive, and that they had gotten a hotel. They wanted us to drive to the hotel. The problem was, G-man and I were a little intoxicated, and it was raining so hard that the women-folk couldn’t see the road. Being men, we decided to ride the storm out at camp. It poured all night long, but we stayed dry.

Next morning, my wife drove out to our campsite; we packed up, and went to the hotel room to shower. The weather was fine at camp, but it was still raining cats and dogs at the hotel… and at the RenFest. We waited until the weather cleared and hit the Renaissance Festival. The kids hadn’t been to a RenFest before, so they were the proverbial kids in a candy store. We shopped, shopped, and shopped some more. I also had the opportunity to meet one of my blogger friends. Though our schedules didn’t give us an opportunity to talk much, it was great to meet him in person, and I hope to hook up with him again in the future.

By definition, an adventure is an unusual or exciting experience. I knew from the outset that this weekend would be an adventure. But the unexpected twists and turns of this weekend made for an experience that will stand out for the rest of my life. It wasn’t even close to what I expected, but it was a lot of fun.