Musings and Camping

I don't have an essay today and don't really have much to say on gun rights. That's a problem with blogging on guns; no matter how many victories we win, and we do win some, there's always someone making emotional yawps and getting good press.

Gun control evokes the emotions--we have to do something about the violence and who needs something that kills anyway. I feel like I have said everything, made every argument, and dotted every "i" without doing any good.

So, instead of that, I'll blog a little about our weekend. Yosemite Sam, Cooper (the Ten Ring's Basset Hound mascot), and I went to Lake Umbagog State Park in northern New Hampshire. It's only a few miles from Errol, NH which is only a few miles from nowhere. We froze our asses off, to put it bluntly.

A thunderstorm crashed down on us Friday and night time temperatures were in the 40s with the wind coming off the lake. We stayed in a tent. Talk about cold. I woke up early Saturday morning with chattering teeth.

You see, I hate sleeping bags because they confine me too much. Maybe I have a few latent claustrophobia issues, who knows. So, I sleep on a cot with an open sleeping bag as a mattress and blankets for warmth. Somehow, I had kicked off the blankets. Talk about cold. I didn't know I could get that cold in the summer.

Saturday's day time was not much better, but it didn't rain. There we were, in late June, wearing jackets and long underwear like it was late October. Tell me why we live in New England again? Of course, Sunday dawned nice and warmed up to the 70s. It only did that because we were leaving.

We did get a lot of fresh air. All of us including Cooper managed to get some exercise. Time in the forest is worth some rain and freezing one's toes off. Saturday, I cooked a couple of rib eye steaks on an open fire and roasted potatoes in the coals. Something about a wood fire makes steaks even better. Needless to say, we didn't go into the forest unarmed, so I won't say it.

All in all, it was nice crawling into my own bed last night and not listening to the incessant whine of mosquitoes.