The Blueridge Trip
We went camping at Blueridge over the weekend. It’s generally quiet, out of the way and not too far to drive to. We’ve got a new trailer cargo rack that we used a couple of weeks ago at Dead Horse and it worked very well. We had to take care of some stuff at Juvenile Court and then we were ready to head out.
Everything was going well until we were almost to Happy Jack Lodge when i noticed an “exploding cloud” in the side view mirror. “We lost something,” I tell my wife. I started pulling over as a Forest Service truck pulled in behind us. My wife and I got out and walked to the rear of the van to look at the hitch storage. Part of the bungie style web had snapped, releasing several items from their snug space. I could smell the burnt plastic and aluminum from one of our folding chairs that had apparently been dragging behind us for a while.
The Forest Service guys walked toward us, “I was trying to flash my lights at you. This started about two miles back. Most of your stuff is there on the horizon.”
I’m pretty sure that I thanked them and they climbed back into the government truck and started it back up. (Saving gas while they talked to us)
At the top of the hill, visible in the late afternoon sun was one of our storage containers. The one that held the majority of our dry food as well as a couple of rolls of toilet paper - part of that white cloud that I had seen. We quickly yanked the remaining storage container from the back of the van, crammed things in on top of the kids. Re-secured the remaining items and drove to the scene of the “release”. We looked around and found a few items that we were able to recover immediately. A roll of toilet paper (30 feet or so was wrapped into the branches of a tree - we left that) a box of cookies, a jar of pickles that didn’t make it, strewn for hundreds of feet.
My wife starting walking back up the road while I drove slowly along trying to see anything else littering the sides of the road. M walked along crossing the road often to see if there was anything left. After somewhere around three or four miles we decided that we had everything that we were going to recover; somewhere around a quarter of the dry stuff. Also lost was a small folding table and a sleeping roll - my wife claims to have seen possible remnants of the table broken up along the road, but there was no sign of the sleeping roll. After taking stock of what we had left we decided to continue our mini vacation.
The campground was nearly full when we pulled in - the last time we camped at Blueridge we had the place almost to ourselves, but this was a Friday and daytime temperatures for the weekend were forecast in the 80s. Driving around the loop we saw a couple of spaces near the front but decided to go all the way around the loop to see if there were any others. As we neared the beginning of the loop - the end of the current loop - I noticed an almost hidden camp site and my wife jumped out to check it out. She gave me two thumbs up and I parked the van.
We set up camp: the kids with their seven man tent and us with our little two (four?) man tent. The cold groceries were intact so we made dinner and decided to run to the small store five miles down the road in the morning after breakfast (the coffee had been saved as well). The store is stocked fairly well and - as I noticed on a second trip on Sunday - it is dutifully restocked even before checking out. Peanut butter, spam and a few other essentials went into our basket. And then we drove back to camp.
We bought a four person Coleman boat just before heading out from Flag. Saturday was the time to inflate it. Our plan was to load the boat up with our stuff and head out across the reservoir so that we could have a spot to ourselves. We parked close to the dam - it’s up a rough road that cost us a tire last Fourth of July - and hiked down to the point where we’ve been several times before. This time, the water level appeared to be six to eight feet higher than our previous trips and someone else had staked out the spot. After looking around a little we decided on a launch point for our boat. There weren’t too many floating logs that had to be pushed out of the way and the hike wasn’t too bad although we did have to climb down and pass all of our stuff down. Looking at our crew and all of the stuff we decided on what we thought was the best plan. We would have to make multiple trips to get all of us and all of our stuff over to the other side.
At first we thought that canoe style paddling would be the best way to get across the lake, but that proved to be quite a bit of work. Instead I put the oars in the holders for the rest of the day. After three 15 minute trips across I was ready to relax. The kids all jumped in the water, rowed around in the boat (with an adult, of course) J wouldn’t jump off the rock that jutted out three feet above the water and instead rode around on a float. The way he straddled it the headrest was forced up into the air like a huge inflated “wiener”.
At the end of the day (around 2:15pm) we started the process of transporting us and our stuff back. The first trip was me and A. I climbed out of the boat as it approached shore and grabbed the picnic basket sitting in the bottom of the boat to place it out of the way so we could grab it. When I turned back around, A, who had been holding onto a small rock to hold the boat against shore had decided to hold onto a stick instead. The stick was floating and the boat began to do the same. I started telling A to row back to shore. Of course, she managed to do exactly the opposite of what I was telling her, rowing directly into the log flow. I could see M across the lake watching - her hands on her hips. Finally, I shed my shirt, hat, and glasses and jumped in the water to haul the boat back to shore. The other two trips were uneventful.
Sunday morning we got up too early and had breakfast before heading down to the lake. Looking around we decided that it would be quieter on the lake, quite a few of the other campers were packing up and would not be there.
I had to drive to the store for more ice, water, sodas and to hopefully buy some tie down straps to make our trip home uneventful. We had the boat on the top of the van, secured with bungies. When we hit the main roadway it started to slide and I had to pull over immediately. I had the two older girls with me and as I removed the boat from the top I told them we would just put it in the van and pretend we didn’t know that it was gone. The look on my wife’s face was too much for me and the girls. We busted out laughing as I told her the boat was deflated in the back of the van.
When it was finally time to play we drove only to the boat ramp parking lot and found a small slippery trail down to the water. The water’s edge wasn’t completely secluded, but it had a nice slope into the water and there was shade. We swam and boated and even 6 year old K took a turn on the oars of the boat. I rowed the older kids over to a rock that we could jump off of on the other side of the lake. All but J took a jump. At the end of the day we were all tired and ready to wrap up our trip.
Monday morning was hot even before 7am. Once we got breakfast out of the way we started tearing down camp. Tearing down for us is a process that involves yelling at the kids about what they’re doing or not doing and generally a minor level of frustration that usually ends with everything packed. I secured a strap over the top of the first row of coolers and proceeded to attach the remaining straps to the stow rack. I didn’t like how it was secured at first and reworked the straps. Nothing appeared to move. Then it was time to load the kids and drive the hour and a half or so back home.
Nothing fell off.
Once home we unloaded the van putting away stuff that needed to go into the fridge and took turns in the shower. We then relaxed by watching The Diving Bell and the Butterfly a depressing/inspiring film about Jean-Dominique Bauby’s struggle to express himself -and write a book - when all he can do is blink a single eyelid. It’s definitely a movie that invokes Schiavo discussions, but I digress. We all lived through the camping trip and I even got a hand made father’s day card from my oldest. Never-the-less, it’s good to be home.
