Spent the weekend at Sesquicentennial State Park outside of Columbia with a small contingent of cub scouts, including my sons Joey and Chimo. The park is a wonderful diversion for anyone living in cental South Carolina. It is also close to my heart because CCC workers helped build the place. It is not as striking as the upstate parks, or as fun as some of the coastal ones, but it is nice. The weather was glorious though, a surprise considering earlier warnings of rain all weekend.
We hauled our tent out to the primitive camping area, which was well maintained and clean. We were the only campers in that area. The only downside was the distance from toilet facilities, about 250 yards or so, the pathway to which was poorly marked, especially for someone trying to find their way at night. It took but minutes to establish our camp.
The boys (there were five in all) hiked and did some nature study. They looked for animal tracks. We cooked hotdogs and smores. Chimo is in blue and Joey in brown, to the left of the picture, while they were smoking their weiners. Mostly they just played "army" with popguns one of the boys provided. Of course, there were the usual skirmishes of personalities, but overall it wasn’t too bad. Paul cooked up a delightful french toast breakfast on Sunday morn.
I was a tad uncomfortable and worn out, having been ill just about all week long, but I didn't want the boys to miss what may be their only chance to camp this spring, so I got myself up and going. Why the fates decided to saddle me with a full-blown colitis attack this weekend, however, I cannot say; the long-distance trek to the facilities became a major test, which I failed on one excursion, but I will leave it at that. And then my mattress kept deflating during the night, which is hard for someone my size to deal with, sleeping on the hard ground. Every so often I would pump it back up and try to fall asleep before it completely collapsed (about a half hour). Surprisingly I wasn’t all that sore the next day, and managed to get enough sleep to function on Sunday. It was a bit noisier than I would have liked, because the sound of high-speed traffic seemed to float in from either Two Notch or the highway. There was some wild police chase, that included helicopters, for a portion of the evening.
We hauled our tent out to the primitive camping area, which was well maintained and clean. We were the only campers in that area. The only downside was the distance from toilet facilities, about 250 yards or so, the pathway to which was poorly marked, especially for someone trying to find their way at night. It took but minutes to establish our camp.
The boys (there were five in all) hiked and did some nature study. They looked for animal tracks. We cooked hotdogs and smores. Chimo is in blue and Joey in brown, to the left of the picture, while they were smoking their weiners. Mostly they just played "army" with popguns one of the boys provided. Of course, there were the usual skirmishes of personalities, but overall it wasn’t too bad. Paul cooked up a delightful french toast breakfast on Sunday morn.
I was a tad uncomfortable and worn out, having been ill just about all week long, but I didn't want the boys to miss what may be their only chance to camp this spring, so I got myself up and going. Why the fates decided to saddle me with a full-blown colitis attack this weekend, however, I cannot say; the long-distance trek to the facilities became a major test, which I failed on one excursion, but I will leave it at that. And then my mattress kept deflating during the night, which is hard for someone my size to deal with, sleeping on the hard ground. Every so often I would pump it back up and try to fall asleep before it completely collapsed (about a half hour). Surprisingly I wasn’t all that sore the next day, and managed to get enough sleep to function on Sunday. It was a bit noisier than I would have liked, because the sound of high-speed traffic seemed to float in from either Two Notch or the highway. There was some wild police chase, that included helicopters, for a portion of the evening.
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