[Evil] Mother Nature

We’re off tomorrow to the Black Hills for a little R & R and camping with Ray’s extended family, so this will be my last blog till I’m back next week.

It’ll be a challenge camping with Yogi (time for a puppy backpack?), but we’re looking forward to it. We’re also lucky to have family members coming from SD, TN, MN, and MD, so it’s quite a gathering of Remundites. Then Ray and Yogi will come back, and I’ll stay out there to for even more R & R with women friends for our annual Wimmin’s Campout.

The Wimmin’s Campouts have been fairly comedic in the recent past. We’re usually a group of 3-5. Our intention is always relaxation and camaraderie, but you know what they say about the road to hell…

In 2003, for example, we camped in Ponca, NE, in a little state park cabin. We sat by an evening fire listening to the beautiful, plaintive song of the whippoorwill. Several hours later, in the wee hours of the morning, we were four women desperately searching for a slingshot to silence the hideous bird’s obsessive, non-stop trilling. In the morning, Millie came screaming out of the shower, dog-sized cockroaches hot on her heels. You can go to http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dc2smmtm_0dwjm9mcp to read an amusing story about our adventures.

In 2004 we camped in Yankton, SD. There were six of us, we had an official mascot—a rubber rat we named Bonnie Rat—and we dealt nightly with a troop of marauding raccoons whose hostile midnight takeovers of our screenhouse (their initial aim was marshmallows) included noisy raccoon bickering. In 2006, we were back in Yankton, and the day we set up camp, the mercury climbed to a record-setting 108. It was all we could do to remain motionless until dark, when the temp dropped to a lovely 90+. After a sleepless night, we slid out of our tents on our own Wet Bananas of sweat, packed up, and went home to the AC. Last year, we cancelled due to bad knees, remodeling projects, moving, and the persistent, traumatic memories of the year before.

This year, Ray and I will be camping in cabins with the Remunds (thanks to Ray’s sister). The Wimmin’s Campout will be higher up in the Hills, also in a cabin (thanks to Dora). We had hoped to do some tent camping, too, but juggled schedules & plans got in our way. And although we’re all a little disappointed that we won’t have our amazing Wimmin’s tent city this year, perhaps the story of this year’s camping experience will be more about family, friendship & mirth, and less about Nature sending us home whiny, dehydrated, sleep-deprived, and with our prehensile tails tucked.