So all the interns have been busy with all these great events going on over the last couple of weeks and from what I hear they did a great job! Me, on the other hand, instead of battling large crowds at the Maloof Money Cup I was battling Mother Nature. This past weekend I once again returned home to Michigan for a much anticipated camping trip with my family and their friends from high school that I grew up with. This is a camping trip that we’ve done the same weekend for the last 20 years and this year I took on the role of planning the activities. And it turned out fantastic. I planned out and organized our ‘Camping Olympics’ which involved everyone splitting up into teams and competing against one another in Corn Hole, Ladder Ball, a putting contest and then they proceeded to play Yatzee or Spoons. Which if you have never played Spoons I suggest you make sure you have health insurance beforehand because it gets intense. I’m not going to lie, I was caught a few times jumping and screaming bloody murder across the picnic table in search for the last spoon.
Then after dinner the teams also competed in a Jiffy-Pop Pop-Off and then Camping Taboo which I had created that incorporated all the themes, activities, places, adventures or things having to do with our camping trips of the last 20 years. With some assistance of my mother we came up with the fantastic theme of ‘Foiled again!’ This means that on Saturday night (when we do our big group dinner with all 40 of us!!) everyone had to cook their food in tin foil. But to make things more entertaining and slightly ridiculous, everyone was required to make an accessory of tin foil and wear it to dinner! It was fantastic to see everyone’s creativity and geeky side come out in full swing! Here are just a few pictures for your viewing pleasure.
So as we are sitting there in all of our tin foil glory, my dad proceeds to inform us all of this monstrous storm that is cross Wisconsin and should be reaching us within a few hours. So imagine if you will 40 people sitting in the middle of the woods covered in tin foil with a severe thunderstorm on the horizon. In any normal situation, you would think that these people might get up, seek shelter and remove the tin foil from the tops of their heads… nope. We finish dinner, refill our adult beverages and gather our chairs around the bonfire to continue with the festivities… a Jiffy-Pop Pop-Off!! Which sadly enough I did not capture on video but it was hilarious. There was jumping, dancing, singing, and lots of shaking done in, around, and over the fire. While comical, I do believe that we had mistakenly preformed a native Indian rain dance and brought on the rain sooner than expected. But the rain did not stop us, once it let up a little and we made sure our fire was still blazin’ we returned to the fire for round two of the contest only to be rained out again. And again you would think that after a second time being caught in the rain that any normal person might just simply retire to their camper or tent if you are a real camper seeing as how it was already approaching midnight. (Sidenote: for those of you that no me or my family, we have never made any claims to being normal or anywhere near it.) So we return to the fire for a third and then forth time to finally view clear skies till about 3:30 am, when either the early morning hours or the adult beverages have taken everyone captive. Luckily just in time, for nearly an hour later the mother of all storms comes rolling through! Don’t get me wrong, I love me a good thunderstorm and miss them seeing as though San Diego does not see much of them, but I do not suggest enjoying or watching a storm from inside a very small tent, with very thin walls, and very low to the ground! Let’s just say that Dana did not get much sleep that night for fear of floating away from the monsoon that seemed to happening out doors or the deafening thunder that made the ground feel as though we had pitched our tent on the rail road tracks with a high speed train barreling down it, never mind the lightning that light up the campground to intensely and frequently that I seriously contemplated putting my sunglasses on so I might be able to go back to sleep! After about an hour I was finally able to go back to bed and get a couple more hours of sleep before we had to pack everything up, which was still soaking wet. But I wouldn’t have changed a single moment! I miss Michigan and the amazing light flickering, wall shaking, tent flooding thunderstorms that happen only in Northern Michigan. I love camping!!














