Halloween and Camping

So, I've been away for awhile...with good reason! In addition to work keeping us super busy, our social calendar has also been full. I'll start with the weekend of Halloween, October 31-November 2. I dressed up in a 80's prom dress I'd got at a Fayetteville yard sale...one trash bag full of clothes for $5...this dress included....a wild deal! I always wanted to wear it but never had the occasion...Halloween was the perfect excuse and I got to wear my dress at work all day. I loved that!

After work that night, Josh and I went to Walmart to buy Halloween candy. Josh said that people in his office said that they always had tons of trick-or-treaters, so we had better be prepared. Well, this was our first Halloween as homeowners and we went all out. We figured what we didn't hand out, we could return to Walmart.

Around 7, the doorbell rang and I gave a little ninja boy 3 pieces of candy (he was probably 2 or 3 years old, he didn't say a word, and his mom was at the end of the driveway trying to prompt him to say, "Trick or Treat." He opened his pillowcase for the candy and left as I waved to his mom.

About 15 minutes later, we could hear people outside, so Josh opened the door and no one was there but we could see kids walking down the street. The kids went to other houses but not ours. I said Josh must have scared the kids away! That, or because our house wasn't decorated people didn't come by...we did have our lights on though.

Later that night, on the local news, we heard pedophiles/registered sex offenders are not allowed to decorate their houses for Halloween....uh, next year we WILL be decorating and hoping for more kiddos to drop by...we still haven't got around to returning ALL the Halloween candy yet either.

We also started loading up the car on Halloween night, because we were driving to Joshua Tree National Park the following day to go camping with Ryan and Lisa. Ryan is our friend from high school who currently lives in San Diego with Lisa, his girlfriend of two years.

On Saturday morning, Josh and I finished loading up the car and we were headed out by 9:30. It was about a 5 hour drive to Joshua Tree...or so we thought. As it turned out, when we reached the park, and went into the information center to see where the campsite that Ryan and Lisa had reserved for us was located, it was an additional 2 hour drive north!!!

You should have seen Josh interacting with the park ranger as she took out the park map to explain our location to us. The first time she told Josh that our campsite was 2 hours away, he was like, "2 hours?!?!" Yes. Then, as we were leaving, Josh asked if it was a 2 hour drive to the campsite. I told him, no matter how many times you ask, it will still be 2 hours away!

We drove through the park, driving past some large boulders that reminded me of the Flintstones as there were RVs parked next to the rocks.

We finally reached the campsite and met with Ryan and Lisa. It was my first time in seeing Ryan since our wedding 4 years ago and my first time to meet Lisa. Everything was easy going and not awkward. I really love when that happens with people. It's just natural and not weird.

We set up our tent and ate some snacks before realizing we'd need more firewood and items for making smores. As I mentioned on facebook, Ryan and Lisa don't shop at Walmart, so when Lisa and I made a run for supplies, we stopped at a small Mexican grocery store to get firewood, marshmellows, and graham crackers.

Personally, I cannot understand the concept of not shopping at Walmart because it has questionable employment practices and uses outsourcing. I mean, who's to say that the mom and pop store you're shopping at doesn't use similar tactics in order to save money? But, I still shopped at the local store. It begs the question though, when one is in a similar situation, who should bend to accomodate the other person? Why was I willing to go to the local shop but Lisa didn't go to Walmart? Was it determined by the driver, who, in this case was Lisa? Just a thought.

After the shopping excursion, we roasted hot dogs and the infamous smores were not that great and went mostly uneaten. The hot dogs, however, were fabulous. We played Whoonu and Taboo in our tent. Oh my goodness, I had some BIG BELLY LAUGHS that night. It was so much fun and I hope we can make some Phoenix friends in order to play games and laugh like that again.

Just to remember, and some of you may find this totally inappropriate, but man I laughed so hard I just don't want to forget. Throughout the night the wind had blown so hard (and even rained lightly) that Ryan and Lisa had accidently knocked over two cans of soda in the tent at different times...getting our pillow soaking wet and the blankets wet, etc. The second time it happened, as I put the used, wet towel to dry on the picnic table outside the tent, I could hear Lisa saying, oh, I'm so sorry you guys, etc. I popped my head into the tent and said, "That's okay, I just took a dump in your tent, so we're even."

To end the night, we played Taboo. Ryan and I were on a team. We were down by 10 points, or 5 cards, and we had to get all the points to win.

The first word for the final round that Ryan pulled up was "Mistake." Ryan gave me the clue, "We cannot make a ...." AND HE GOT BUZZED by Josh for using the word "MAKE." It was just a pefect way to end a losing game! I hope the funniness of that story translates in the blog and it's not one of those, "you had to be there" moments.

Despite my fears of staying in a campsite that was so close to other sites (I hate noise), I think we ended up being the last to go to bed that night around 1:30 or 2 am. You should have seen the stars that night. The stars were amazing in their clarity even though we weren't too far from a town (one of the plusses-firewood and supplies-and minuses-it felt like we were cheating "camping" so close to civilization). The only time stars were clearer was when we camped in the Australian Outback....I don't even think the stars in Palmerston North were as abundant as we were right in the middle of town there.

As Josh and I lay in the tent, I was very snug and comfortable laying on the air mattress in my sleeping bag, the wind began to kick up even more. I could not sleep with the flapping noises of the tent, so eventually, I went to sleep in the car, sleeping on the driver's side because the seat leaned back further. A couple of hours later, Josh joined me and made me scooch over to the passenger's side....thanks!

Around 8 am, everyone was awake and although we'd brought things to make breakfast, we just took down camp and drove into town to eat at a restaurant there. The food took forever to arrive but we had a good chat and when we did eat our food, it was great.

When we left, Ryan gave us a great compliment by saying that we were still the same down-to-earth people he remembered and Lisa said that we were the best of Ryan's friends that she's met. I did my happy dance in the middle of the parking lot when I heard that :)

As we left Joshua Tree a different way than we arrived, we saw some awesome mountains and it all made sense why it had been so freaking windy at night as we saw the massive windmills generating energy. The final picture below is of a mountain we saw during our long drive back home. Just to end - I love Phoenix.