Birthday Camping at Meade Lake

Today (Sunday) is Daniel's birthday, and for his birthday weekend we decided to go camping out at Meade Lake.  It was SO BEAUTIFUL -- it's just this little people-made lake out in the middle of nowhere. It's surrounded by gorgeous trees in fall colors, and it's basically like a tiny piece of Minnesota lurking in the middle of all this corn and cattle. Awesomeness.

We got out there around lunchtime yesterday. Daniel fired up the little stove and I set about figuring out our tent (I still remember how to assemble one!). It was super windy -- nearly blew away the tent once I put it together and before I staked it down! But once we got settled, it was SOOOOO NICE. It was great just to be able to relax and enjoy each other's company with nothing pressing to worry about except whether to nap or go on a walk. (Pressure's on! haha.)

Then some funny things happened. We had planned to arrive in time for a late breakfast, so we brought WAY too much food... and we ended up just having pigs in a blanket for supper instead of our fancy (and healthier) fish-and-veggie-kabobs dinner that we had planned. Then we sat by the fire and chatted and prayed and sang until dark... at which point we realized that it was getting a bit cold and we still hadn't really packed up the food or anything. So we started on that (in the dark, with flashlights) and when we were almost finished we heard some rustling nearby. We shined our lights in that direction and saw -- AN ARMADILLO!!! It was SO FUNNY -- at first I thought it was a possum, but then I saw its little accordion body. I named it Artie. It was just tromping through the leaves, munching on I don't even know what, like it hadn't a care in the world. We started to sort of follow it around, and it ducked through a little culvert tunnel. We got close enough for me to see its cute little ears, and then we took one step too many and it BOLTED! Those things are like little BULLETS, they run so fast! Anyway, we finally got stuff packed up and we decided we wanted to try wrapping potatoes in aluminum foil and cooking them in the coals overnight. So we buried them and went to sleep, setting our alarm for 6:00 so we'd have time to cook breakfast and pack up before church.

It was pretty cold last night -- mid-thirties, I think -- and we discovered that our tent is a much better summer tent than a winter tent, although we combated the cold sufficiently with our blankets, extra socks, and lots of hugs. We finally fell into a good sleep (after some sleep and tossing and turning) at about 2:30am... only to wake up to sunshine and the realization that the alarm had not gone off and it was 7:50 (we needed to be at church, more than a half hour drive, by 9:00). AHHHHHHHH!! So we rolled right out of bed and immediately started breaking camp and stuffing things in the car (which, I forgot to mention, was half-full with compressed cardboard boxes that we've been meaning to take down to recycling but haven't yet). We pretty much got things ready to go when I remembered about the potatoes. I went to dig them out... and I noticed three funny impressions in the ashes... and when I poked a stick around, there was nothing there... and when I walked back towards the tent to tell Daniel, I saw some crumpled aluminum foil. Whoops. Well, I guess Artie at least got a nice hot meal out of our chasing adventures!

Yum, yum, yum... thanks for breakfast!

We booked it back home, ate pop-tarts in the car, and ended up making it to church exactly on time (we almost beat the pianist!). Overall, it was a super fun (and occasionally horribly funny) little outing at the lake. We are excited to go back for attempt number two! =)

Hope you all have had a lovely weekend, and hope you are enjoying the fall colors where you are, whatever stage they're at! (Feel free to call and sing to Daniel -- he loves the happy birthday song!)

Peace out!
~Rebekah