My camping adventure started on Friday, October 14. DB got ready all the camping gear for me when I’m at work. When I got home, he loaded them up in the car for me. I brought 2 single oversize sleeping bags, tent, stuff for setting up the tent, 2 coolers, rugs, charcaol, lighter fluid, towels, change of clothes, pots and pans, some food, water and i cannot remember anymore!
Drove to my friend’s place, unloaded my car into hers. Seriously, the next time, we are taking two cars. We stopped to get some sandwiches at the Vietnamese restaurant and we started our journey. It takes about an hour from St. Paul to Stillwater.
This is our camp site at William O’Brien State Park in Stillwater. Picture taken the day we left:
We arrived at the park grounds and registered at the park office. We got our permit, paid for it, bought a bundle of fire wood and got to our camp site around 7-ish. Its was pitch black. First thing we did was set up the tent and our sleeping bags. Two rookies working in the dark with just flash lights. Should have just turn on the car head lights and we would have done a quicker job. Since it was our first time, we weren’t that equipped. We didn’t bring or buy any good fire wood. We bought one small pack from the park office. The wood were cheap fly wood that are good for starting a fire.
Our pathetic fire we started with the cheap wood.
We stayed up for a while in front of the fire, ate the sandwiches we bought on our way in, set up the propane stove to boil water for our Milo and crawled into bed. Yes, we practically crawled in since the tent is only for 2 persons. It was a damn cold night with the wind blowing at a good speed!! The worse thing was we didn’t put the top of the tent (rain cover) on, so we had a good draft coming in. I seriously didn’t know coz the last i went camping, it was not put on!
And this is what it looks like without the cover. We had dew inside the tent!!!
And basically this is what it all looks like the next morning since we could not see a thing without much light.
After we had our breakfast of muffins, tea and Milo, we went out shopping at Walmart for a proper propone stove, loads of water, munchies, and grapes. We then stopped over at Menards hoping to buy firewood but they didn’t have any. We then drove to Cub Foods which was across the street for good firewood. Yes, good ones like oak will burn much longer. The bundle of wood were mixture of oak and birch. We bought 4 bundles. Next we saw a sign for rummage sale at the high school. Crazy us we went in and spent about 2+ hours.
Our loot!
THere are 2 single sleeping bags, a blanket, bags, sweat shirts, pants, books, and soft toys (for my friend’s school stuff)
On our way back, I had to stop at Starbucks for coffee….need my coffee for the day. Once we got back to camp, my friend started setting up the new stove and cook some comfort food of rice and stir fry.
While she was cooking, I re-do our sleeping quaters. I put the 2 sleeping bags and the rugs I brought under our current sleeping bags so it’s not so hard on our bones! Next, I prepped the fire pit so we could start the fire later in the evening, however, we rookies didn’t bring a lighter or proper matches to start the fire or stove.
Get this, this was how we lit the stove: pulled out a lousy floppy match (those matches you get from hotels or bars), lit up the cigarette lighter, lit up the match and the other person has to turn on the knob on the stove so the person holding on to the lit up match could light up the stove!!! OMG!!! We were so pathetic. We had a good laugh at ourselves though.
So we lit up the stove but my friend accidentally lost the fire on one side of the stove, not once, but several times. We rolled up some newspaper lit it up and started the other side and my friend ran over to the fire pit and dump the lighted newspaper. Hence the fire going in the pit:
The munchies we bought at Walmart:
After we stuffed ourselves with rice and stir fry veggies with sotong balls (heaven!) we had to go for a walk along the river to walk off the rice! 
Too bad we came at the end of fall, most of the trees are botak! There were hardly any colors to see.
After the walk, we started our fire and feeding our stomachs again with the munchies, grapes, tom yum noodles and more noodles.
Since none of us had a DSLR, we tried our best to get a good picture of the fire, but these are what we were able to come up with….which spells P A T H E T I C.
And it rained on us that night. We had to scrambled to put the top on, again, in the dark with flash lights! Shortly after we had our feast of “siew yeh”, we got ready for bed and
Oh and I forgot, there’s free wifi at the park! My friend was able to watch her Korean dramas. Crazy indeed. We are not exactly in the wilderness.
The next morning, we woke up and made our breakfast of hash browns, eggs and tom yum noodles and down it with tea, coffee and Milo! We were pigs. Remember seeing the two bikes hooked up to my friend’s car? We wanted to go biking after our dinner last night but I opted to walk, plus the trail were all gravel. We thought on Sunday morning after we woke up, we could go for a bike ride. Yeah right, I woke up at 8:30, and my friend at 9. By the time we had our breakfast and cleaned up, it was time to pack up even though check out time is 4 p.m. I wanted to get home around 2 to get ready for work the next day.
We finally left the camp site and out of the park at 11:20 a.m. Got back to my friend’s place and unloaded her car and loaded up mine. We were getting ready to go to IKEA to get a desk for herself around 1:30-ish, she accidentally locked her house and car keys in her apartment, plus she has no spare keys. My handbag and her cellphone are sitting in her car. I have my cellphone so we called and left a text message for her landlord. Her landlord called at 1:36 and said he will come by within the hour.
To kill time, we went for coffee around the block. Came back, we BS a little, took pictures, BS more and I was getting grumpy coz i was very tired – eyes closing and yawning till my jaw was about to lock. I looked at the time which was 2:46 and told my friend I’m going home without my bag. She said she will drop my bag off when the landlord shows up and after her shower.
Good thing I left coz her landlord texted my phone saying he is running 20 minutes late and the time he texted was 3:20 and I was already home in the garage unloading my stuff. I even went out to toss the frisbee for Chase for about 20 minutes, no call from my friend. When i was half way on my walk with Ranger, at 4:15, my friend call saying she just got into her apartment!!! Good call on my own.
All in all, it was a good adventure. We weren’t that prepared but still a good experience. All my other times of camping were well equiped but i never lifted a finger to do anything. Hence, the rookieness I’m calling myself.
Need the motivation to jump start the engines. Will have to sleep on the idea of working PT.
