So... back to the story. We found a campsite and made ourselves at home. Lakeside, in the shade, fire pit, tent spot ON the lake--literally it's about 3 steps from our door. We haven't had rain since we set up the tent, but a few splatters of bird poop. Yeah, so it's pretty much the best campsite you could imagine. And the campground hosts are funny. Dale and Hannah (though Rebs finds 'Gloria' a more suitable name for her) are wonderful, keeping unwanted loiterers out, checking up on you every now and then. They're both semi-retired, I would guess in their early to mid 60s, have a camper and everything imaginable to go with it because they're here for 3 months. They get pretty upset when people try to use our site to get access to the water. We don't really mind that much, but they sure do.
Some fun facts: I've swam across the lake twice now, though the reeds are getting a bit tall now that the water level has gone down a few inches. There is a wonderful ice cream parlor we frequent often named "Tickleberry's". Rebs likes to say the name over and over. Our bodies are very tan. We lay on our spare air mattress in the water, using a piece of rope as a sort of lasso for the mattress and making an anchor to a rock. I successfully finished Born to Run in about a week. Very good book. We got lost... sort of... hiking out of the park one day.
It all started as a regular morning hiking in to climb. Rebs found what appeared to be a good area in the guidebook, but was about as far away as you can get from the parking lot. So we said we'd hike in and then work our way back. But the problem was, we couldn't find the trail that led there, at least not all the way. We'd go one way, then back another, unable to decipher where we were on the map. Eventually, Rebs found the right trail and we made it out there. Had the whole place to ourselves, that's for sure. By the time we got set up for our first climb of the day, it had already been over 2 hours. We got 2 routes in before stopping for lunch. Reassessing the day and our expectations, we decided to follow the trail around (it's a loop) to take a look at some of the areas we hadn't seen already. We made our way around and spent a couple hours hiking and looking at rock and setting up the hammock to rest for a bit.
When we decided to hike out was when it happened. There happen to be all these meandering side trails that go off in different directions all the time, I'm assuming are shortcuts to different cliffs because there is climbing all over the place. So if you don't know where you're going, it can get a little...interesting? So we took a wrong turn. No big deal. At least we were on a trail... which led to another trail... which led into some bramble bushes. And did I mention that it was getting later now, maybe 6:00. Rebs began to panic because we weren't seeing trail signs. We couldn't figure out where we were on the map, so therefore we must be lost, right? In my opinion, we weren't lost, only misplaced for the moment. (This is what I often tell Rebs when I can't find something) Lost is when something is gone for good. We were definitely not lost.
Soon, we began seeing trail signs, and an outhouse. After another 45 minutes, we were safe and sound at the car. No broken sandals this time, though we were both wearing flip flops, having not expected to hike a total of 5+ miles that day. That's what we estimated once we made it to the parking lot. We slept soundly that night, let me assure you.
