Date: Sunday, August 23, 2015
Weather: Sunny and calm. High of 79 degrees Farenheit.
Distance: ~3 miles strolling around camp
Hooray, travel day finally arrived! After months of talking about it, we were really headed out on a camping trip!
I awoke after nine hours of sleep with itchy eyes, a runny nose, and tons of sneezing. My month of guiding or perhaps the flight home from Newfoundland finally caught up to me. I ate some breakfast, downed several cups of coffee, took a couple of DayQuil, and felt mostly ready to tackle the day.
I packed up our perishables in a cooler while Kellie packed gear in her car. When Liz pulled into the driveway at 9, we were good to go. Maura, Anna, and Sadie planned their road trip activities (friendship bracelets! Mary Poppins! books!), who was sitting with whom in which car. Their energy was contagious.
One of the beauties of spending time with old friends is even though you haven’t had a proper conversation in months, you can dive headlong into a topic without having to explain all of the back story when you do find yourself on a five-hour car ride. Between bathroom breaks, a picnic lunch on the side of the road where we realized my cold may actually be ragweed allergies (oh hey Benadryl, you’re working way better than DayQuil!), and career conversations set to the soundtrack of back seat giggles, we arrived in Tupper Lake.
We stopped at the grocery store for water, firewood, and an antihistamine that wouldn’t knock me out. On our way back out to the cars, we ran into a Wild Women Expeditions client who had been on one of my canoe trips earlier in the month. Small world! We had less than half an hour to go to get to our campsite and everyone felt anxious to spend time outside of the car.
To get to Rollins Pond State Campground, we had to drive through Fish Creek Campground. I remembered from my research that these campsites tended to be right on top of one another with little privacy. A handful of red pines separated each site and we could see straight down the line of sites as well as right to the lake.
The forest changed as we headed into the Rollins Pond portion of the park. Campsites were secluded, separated by plenty of shrubby understory and a mix of deciduous and coniferous trees. Our site was located at the end, with no direct line of sight down to the water. As we pulled in, the girls hopped out and immediately found a lovely little trail down to the water and through the woods.
While they stretched their legs and explored, we set up tents, arranged the picnic table for ease of kitchen and dining use, and then joined them in a little exploring.
When we came back to the campsite, we laid out a few rules: no shoes in the tents, no smelly things to attract chipmunks or other animals in the tents, always close the tent door when coming and going, and always let an adult know where you’re going. They bought in and were pretty good about all four rules for the whole trip.
We kept dinner simple with pesto pasta and chicken and peas, went for an after dinner walk and garbage run, marveled at the lack of noise (seriously, no frogs, crickets, insects to sing us to sleep?), and settled into our tents to read and get a good night’s sleep.
For the rest of the trip report, click here.
Kate Monahan Outdoors 