29th
Living off the land(scape)
Ever since my mom and sister and I started about 8 years ago, I have loved camping. Now, sure, my kind of camping tends to include sleeping in a tent right next to the car and the bathrooms and the showers and the little store that sells firewood and postcards and snickers bars, but still… I love stumbling around in the dark with a flashlight and eating turkey sandwiches and things half-warm from the car or the campfire, and I love going to bed snuggled up in a mess of blankets with a slightly damp pillow and hearing the sound of RV motors running and fellow night-owl campers sitting by campfires laughing and getting drunk and talking talking talking, and I love waking up outside in the morning, chilly and fresh and slightly gritty.
So those things have happened, kind of, with the camping CMA and I have done on this trip, but there have also been some snafus. First of all, we are constantly freezing, as we brought only one blanket and a pillow each, and we are sleeping on top of weird things like bath towels and a yoga mat to protect us from the earth. And we never get to the site before it’s dark. But, DAMN, are we building character!
Last night we camped out on the way from L.A. to San Francisco sort of on the fly. It was evening and we were on this tiny, twisty highway up the side of a mountain, barely aware of the horrifying ocean cliff just past the shoulder of the road because a Harry Potter-esque fog obliterated everything in the entire world beyond a 30 ft. radius. So there we are, driving along at like 10 mph, and we see a road sign that says some horrible town name like Sharp Craggy Death Village or something. Fail.
So, to make a long story short (well, sort of short), we camped. We got like 5 freezing cold hours of sleep but we snuck out early without paying, so ha ha ha. Until CMA gets sent some huge fine or something, I guess.
–ShaNelleNelle
