Camping report
iaian7 » blog John Einselen, 8.10.06Though not as successful as most had hoped, the camping adventure was… adventuresome. Arriving in the Red River Gorge area of Mid-East Kentucky around sunset, we discovered every single camp area occupied. Since the assassination of various campers in an attempt to take their spot is generally frowned upon, we had to take other courses of action.
Namely, drive another half hour in the dark trying to find a private camp ground we could park at. Somehow we didn’t get there till about 10:30pm, seeing as it took from 7:30 to 10:00 to scour the previous area for possible vacancies. Either that, or we passed through a couple folds in the time continuum.
While the private camp area wasn’t nearly good enough for those more picky about camping, me being the less discerning person of the party, was perfectly happy. Though it was more expensive. It took some convincing, but the only other options were sleeping in the cars, or driving all the way back to the Cincinnati area.
Setting up a completely new tent at midnight isn’t as bad as one might expect. We had a glorious full moon, the temperature was low, but not too low, and I ended up turning on my car lights, which seemed to suffice for area lighting. That, and we had quite a few flashlights. As a side note, Columbia brand tents are all sorts of colour blind. The very greenish deep blue-gray pole was called “navy,” even though there were other poles clearly coloured a rich navy, and the tent fabric, which was supposed to match the afore mentioned singular pole, was clearly the same colour as the latter subjects. This caused much confusion, perhaps baited with the fear of putting it up wrong. Fears put aside, it wen’t up quite well, and certainly a lot easier than I remember from my childhood; trying to stake poles on either end before the tent collapsed on everyone involved!
Sleeping in is fun… though camping isn’t conducive to great vertebrae alignment. Sadly, we had no fire, but just skipped breakfast (alas, no tea!), and went on to lunch. The rest of the day we spent hiking in Red River Gorge, and then driving home late. A very beautiful area, we climbed all sorts of cliff ledges and various leafy embankments. Very high… very, very high up.
Hopefully I’ll get a few photos posted shortly!
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