HARD WORK  

So much hard work! First, it was mostly mental but then the physical work started. After being up all night finishing packing everything into their sections and double-checking my lists, the day started with a few morning errands then me finally starting to load up my rented pickup truck at noon. As it turns out, my “over the top” camping setup takes FIVE FULL HOURS to pack into a truck. Mostly because it’s a lot of stuff, but also because as I would soon learn, it doesn’t exactly quite fit. Whoops.

I made the 2-hour trip to Lake Whitney on a wing and prayer that the 8 grommets on the tarp I had over it all would hold. With every square inch of the truck filled to capacity, there was barely any room for me and my belongings in the front seat. In my pre-trip planning, I bought a particularly awesome cooler that would keep frozen things frozen and cold things cold for the entirety of our trip. It also happened to come in the perfect shade of yellow and has a bevy of optional accessories. I bought the “medium” size after seeing comparable options in the store but didn’t realize that the back door to the rented pickup truck didn’t open as far as a regular door and there was no room in the bed of the truck. Needless to say, the cooler was one of the “cool kids” got to ride upfront on the way down.

I did NOT take a picture as I did NOT want that potential catastrophe documented.

A full two hours behind my own schedule and trying to outrun the sun, I arrived at lake Whitney at sunset. Just enough time to see where things should go before, I started setting up in the dark. Rule #1 of camping is you don’t want to set up in the dark! Good thing I come equipped with headlamps, standing lights, plug-in lights, lanterns, Christmas lights, and a portable electric generator.

The good news is that for the most part the other campers were also running a little behind, not as much as I was but they only beat me by a half hour or so. So, we all got busy getting the campsites set up and preparing for our first dinner. I even created little “welcome home” sections in front of everyone’s tents.

I ended up reserving 2 Lakeview campsites so that we would have space to spread out and so if we got too chatty or energetic at night, we would have less of a chance of disturbing our neighbors. As we were preparing for dinner, we were serenaded with old-school R&B hits from our most immediate neighbors. We came all this way to listen to a rousing rendition of “midnight love” by the lake.