Ants in the pants

As promised, here's an update of this past weekend.

Went to Kings Canyon with my friend's church from down south on a camping trip. I think i spent nearly 24 hrs in the car this weekend. Granted, i wasn't driving the whole time, but that's a really long time to be stuck in a cramped space. But I digress. Kings Canyon Nation park is somewhat east of fresno, and it's just an amazing place and in my opinion, better than yosemite. Blasphemy you might claim, but hang on a sec. Don't you get your drawers all up in a twist just yet. It's not necessarily better in terms of scenery. It doesn't have the great majestic sites like Half Dome or Yosemite falls, but it does have one major advantage over the better known park. Lack of people. There's basically no one there. Granted, it's not exactly the easiest place to drive to (a good hr half of that drive is all windy roads) and it's stuck out in the middle of nowhere, but the views and the peaceful serenity of the place is unmatched.

But in any case, this was the first time in a long time that I actually went camping in tents and roughed it out. I think the last time I did tent camping was back in high school. Dang, it's been a long time. There's something about roughing it with a bunch of people that makes it that much more fun, and builds stronger bonds. Friendships through misery is probably a more apt name for this phenomenon. So about 35 people went on this camping trip. I don't know how me managed to shove that many people into about 6 tents, but we didn't have anybody sleeping out in the open, although we did have one or two primadonna's sleeping in the cars.

For the next 3 days, we did the normal camping activities. We swam in the river, hiked a few trails, built campfires and made smores, the usual things. But I don't ever remember eating so well on a camping trip before. The food itself wasn't exactly gourmet or anything fantastic, but I think camping just makes food taste better. Probably has something to do with having your mouth coated in dirt all day.

But all in all, i had a great time and i'm really glad i went. Just being away from civilization for a few days is really freshing. No cell phones. No e-mail. No computers. No tv. No microwaves. No nothing. It's funny how much we rely on these things every day. You ever notice that if you don't have access to these things during your normal daily routine, you feel something's lacking? It's like you need to have these things constantly at your fingertips, even if all you're going to do it hit refresh in your inbox and wait for the non-existent e-mails to show up. Or open up cnn or some news site and wait for the next major global catastrophe so you can quickly im your friends who are sitting in their apts doing the exact same thing. It's amazing how quickly we get attached to these "technological wonders". It's like an addiction. But when you're out in the woods, sitting amongst nature and God's creation/s, it's truely amazing how quickly you forget your dependence on these things. All of sudden, you're more concerned if a bear is going to show up and ravage your campsite, how mosquitos can find that one little spot of skin that you forgot to put bug repellent on, how many stars you can see in the night sky, and the sound of silence at night. No cars. No sirens. No drone of highway noise or tootin' of train horns. Nothing. Nada. Just peaceful serenity. Yup. Silence while you look up into the stars. And the sound of snoring of your friend sleeping next to you keeping you up, while ants manage to find a way into your tent and eat you alive.

Camping's great. I need to do this more often.