Camping in Devil Grass

We went camping way back when and I never posted the pictures.  Troy assured me that this was a very nice campsite, suitable for first-time campers.  Famous last words.

Tristan slept under the stars.  We went with the Akeys, scouts and experienced campers.  Another family was supposed to meet us the next day, and in fact, this whole trip came about because they asked us to take them camping.  Of course we are evangelical about camping and got right on it.  The walls and old roads run everywhere.  Someone built a flagstone terrace here way back when.  That did not stop it from being overgrown with this grass that was the bane of this trip.

That is the car to the right, with hayfields behind.  The campsite is to the left, which meant we had to go down the gorge, across a rivulet overgrown with more vicious weeds, and back up the other side.  

Troy was here in WINTER before, with a scout group and it was perfect.

Ah, how beautiful, how peaceful.

Really, really beautiful and peaceful.

We do it right whenever possible, with bacon and eggs.

 Troy was trying out a new alcohol burner.  It is the size of an espresso cup inside the thing with holes.

He sent ME off to find 90% alcohol at the liquor store.  I was scolded by not one but two twenty-somethings about how only young people drink that to forget everything about what they are doing.  First the clerk at the store told me, and then when I forgot it at the cafe, the waiter, who had kept it for me on the counter, tsk-tsked, shook his head and said, “Es gasolina.”  I said, “Exactly so.”  The stove worked great, by the way.

Thunder, Australian Cattle Dog, my favorite dog that is not my own, is 100% at home on the prairie.

This is why the grass is so awful.  It has a barbed point like an arrowhead and a twisted tail that works it’s way into everything.  They poke you through your clothes and you have to reach inside to get them out.  The tails twisted into Cuddles’ fur and drove the heads into his skin.  I had to shave him and pick the heads out with tweezers.

Weird wall in the middle of nowhere that I think was natural.  

Troy saw a deer bounding away and I said, Let’s go look for traces.  He is a lucky man.  Patches of earth were completely dug up, which he recognized instantly as the work of pigs.  I was busy trying to think why people might do such a thing, just wantonly tearing up the hillside.

Troy had a massive allergy attack, the kind where you sneeze so much your chest hurts.  So, after a nice morning cooling off in the river, we called it quits and cancelled with the other friends.

But we couldn’t let those s’mores go to waste.

I’m not coming out even for s’mores.