So I started packing up my things and got ready to go...
On my way over to the campsite, I jamed to the tunes on my iPod and raced along under the protection of my radar dectector.
Getting there sometime in the afternoon there were a fw people sitting at a pavillion playing cards and a few others tossing a football around.
It was a nice calm day...it rained lightly on and off but it wasn't a big deal at all. I participated in the ball throwing and played a couple of games of scrabble (I actually won one (zoo on a triple word score (thanks to adam)). Later a few of the cribber's friend Jojo showed up with a game called Apples to Apples. It was a fun game where you had a category or topic (like boring) and words or events that you try to explain that are related to the topic and the judge (for the round) decides who wins. So you would get some really odd combinations (like Exciting and MidWest (that was me)). It was just basically a goof off day.
I didn't eat lunch before I left...so by the time I got around to eating (10:PM) I was pretty hungry and made myself a couple of very plain ham sandwhiches. Now because I know I snore like a bear...or like Dave says a chainsaw, so I decided not to sleep outside persay and tried to sleep in my car. Well I tried sleeping in the backseat but after around an hour I had a leg cramp or two and decided that wouldn't work. So I got out of the car and got into the front passenger side seat and leaned it all the way back. After a while I was able to fall asleep...but I imigine I didn't sleep very well...cause I got up at 5:30 AM (with the sun).
I wondered around for a while and took pictures of a few things and finally remembered that if I wanted any semblance of warm water in the showers up the street, that'd I'd probably want to head up there. Unlike the previous trip, where the water seemed to have been directly drained from iceberg runoff, the water was actually very nice...and it did wake me up for the day.
Coming back from the shower I see Jen up and she was curious where I had slept the night before...so I explained it all...
Eventually people got up...and after a nice lesurely morning (Jen, Dusty, Josh and I went to brekfast thrown by the Ely fire department) we decided to go to the beach...after talking with the Park Ranger, we found out that both the beaches near our campground were really kinda closed and if we wanted to go to a beach, we'd have to go to the one near the dam. So we headed down there.
It was a fun time...I watched people, Dusty, Jerry, Dave, Josh, Jen (I finally got to see the suit that she had been talking about, and I thought it looked good on her) and eventually Renee tossed a football around in the water. I walked along the water and it was cold...although it probably would've been refreshing, I still didn't get in. I got a lot of sun (which normally is a bad thing for my pale self) but after a while we decided to head back to the campground and eat.
Later, at my prompting, we headed up to Cedar Rapids to visit the town of my birth and watch the fireworks. Now apprently a few things had changed since I last saw fireworks there. the Science Station has an IMAX theater, there's a whole walkway behind the science station and other buildings on the Cedar River. There's also a building and bank on what used to be this empty field. We walked down by the science center on the sidewalk by the river and staked our place to watch the fireworks. It was quite crowded and they no longer fire the show from the island (which we were right near) the fired them from a floating barge.
The display was really better then I rememebered and I think we all had fun. I was proud of my hometown.
Getting out of downtonw Cedar Rapids, however, was a big pain in the ass. We sat in stop and go traffic in a parking garage for a long time, when we finally got out, I took Jen, Dusty and Josh (dave, jerry and renee were in another car) on a tour of my homes in CR...pointing out one of the schools that I went too...and other landmarks (Nathan's parents house on C ave, which if I got the right house was boarded up) and my house on C ave. I took them to see the second house on Chestnut lane and where my parents live now. I stopped by and said hi to my parents, Joseph and Isaac (josephy was breaking the law and lighting off a bunch of fireworks).
We headed back down the the campground and called it a night. Since the quality of my previous nights sleep was so wonderful, I slept in the storage tent (well not really...it was Jen's tent that nobody was using) and used my new self-inflating mattress....eventaully I fell asleep. It was weird though...cause I guess there was a slight incline so the first try I kept sliding off my mattreess...and when I rotated the mattress so that I was 90 degrees to where I had been, I kept sliding down... Apprently I didn't disturb too many people...to much...but almost everyone heard me (I think Jerry's the only one that slept right through it).
I again woke up at 5:30 AM so I took a shower (warm again) and decided that I'd go take pictures of this barn and silo near the entrance to the campground. I did...came back...and still had to wait for awhile before people woke up.
Most everyone decided to head home this morning. Jen, Josh and I headed over to this rubble from the spillway by the dam. In the floods of 1993, millions of gallons of water went over the spillway and unearthed and deposited a bunch of stones and etc that had fossils in them. We looked at them and around noon:30 we headed back towards des moines.
Me...I had trouble staying away...and I think I actually fell asleep a few times (while driving) for very short periods of time. about half and hour outside of Des Moines, I threw in the Fall Out Boy CD and I was fine for the rest of the drive.
So now I'm back home and after eating grilled out food all weekend, what do I do? I grill out again :) I also took a nice nap (which I needed).
All and all...it was a fun weekend. Spending time with friends was good. Although, before I go camping again I'm gonna have to take care of my little sleeping issue...it's not really fair to the people around me to sound like a chainsaw while they are asleep.