Last week, we took our inaugural camping trip with our camper, and it was certainly an adventure!

I didn’t have high hopes when we drove up and this was the sign that greeted us.  It looks like a five-year-old made it.

The staff, however, was full of people who were very intelligent and also kind and accomodating.  They helped Joey get backed in and helped us when part of the trailer broke and I ended up inside sobbing and cussing about how we never should have taken on this debt and we need to drive right back home and sell it.  Yep, it was a little much.

I got over it.

Kit is my “camping buddy.”  She’s been with me on all of my camping trips, and she’s pretty badass since she’s both a kitteh and a skeleton.

I think Joey was glad to be done with the backing/set-up/poop-hose-maintenence/watching wife-spin-off-into-drama-oblivion.  Once he got settled down with some potato chips, he was pretty happy.

There were many good meals, including an excellent chili that our friends Chris and Christine made when they came up for one night.  She has all of the pictures.  Here, however, is the meal that we made on Sunday night.  Steaks and roasted corn over the fire.  It was, without a doubt, the second-best steak I’ve ever had in my life.  Joey did an excellent job.

On Monday, we went to Blowing Rock.  This was the view from the top observation deck.

yeah, me and the rock.  One of them, at least

And another campfire shot.

Additional things:

1. I’ve never made s’mores before. Christine made them and now I’m hooked.
2. I can cook ANYTHING in cast iron.  Freakin’ eh!
3. Always make sure you ask if the sewer hookup is ground level.  Ours wasn’t.  Joey had to run the dirty water down it one hose at a time and work it to the end of the hose.  Not fun when all that’s between you and some stinky poop is a few tenths of an inch of plastic.
4. Never cook bacon in cast iron inside.
5. There is no hook for the shower nozzel, so you have to use the want attachment, spray down, turn off the shower, soap up, rinse off, repeat.  Several times.  Shaving one’s legs is not in the cards.  I learned to embrace my inner-hippie.  But I still wore deoderant.
6. College move-in weekend is probably not the best time to go to Boone, NC.
7. Neighbors are great.  Our neighbors on the next site, Warren and Mary, helped us out a ton with first-time RV-ing questions, and we sat with them for two nights hanging out.  They were high school sweethearts and are turning 70 this year.  Such amazing people.
8. You have to turn sideways and put your butt in the shower to have enough room to use TP after you poop.
9. Towing a trailer up and down a mountain?  Scary as hell, but Joey did an excellent job.
10. I MISSED SHELLI so much.  We’re working on the modifications that we need to make so we can take her next time.

Oh, and on a side note, if you’re a reader of Daisy the Curly Cat, she had a little scare this morning with a link on her blogroll that got hacked, which caused her to be listed by Google as a site with potentially hazardous malware.  She found out what the problem was, removed the link, been cleared by Google, and all has been restored, so if you encountered the warning this morning, don’t fear, all is well, and you can go back to her site without any worries of big, scary monsters.

More to come.  Probably more rambly stuff.  But stuff.