The Dolphin In Deerskin: Return of the Campers

Last weekend I led a group of 12 (13? I can't recall) of my closest friends in my hometown into the wild to camp. The amount of planning that actually went into it for me absolutely blew my mind, it was such a huge ordeal compared to the 3-4 person trips I have done a few times before.
To imagine the curve here, pretend you just squished an ant. Like a boss. Maybe you are an evil sadistic monster like I was when I was young, and you like to make elaborate death traps for them. I would go into more detail, but I'd probably end up on some kind of PETA watch list.
Anyways, the point is you got the whole god complex going on that you have everything in control, again, like a boss. And then you stroll around the edge of the house and WHAM- you get hit by the giant bugs from the old Goosebumps books.
Yup, I just made a Goosebumps reference. I don't know if I should feel cool because of the early 90's reference that half the kids today wouldn't understand. Or scared to death because those books that I grew up with are pushing towards twenty-effing-years old.

Average Goosebumps Demographic nowadays Wiki

So yeah, for every one hour actually spent enjoying the trip there was probably 3 hours of work in the preceding weeks. But it was good experience, and everything went very well, in the right perspective. I'm quickly becoming a regular expedition leader after the 3 trips I have had this summer. The rest of my summer is going to be chaos as well. Next weekend I am visiting friends in NYC and LI, and then a few days later going to Binghamton again. The next two weekends are taken visiting people in Connecticut and Keuka Lake, and then it will be the last weekend before I return to university. And somehow in that time I am going camping 3 more times, and taking at least two day hiking trips as well. I mean, its only a matter of time before Mountain Madness calls me up to work with them on the spring Chomolungma push.

Anyways, the rest of this post is going to be a semi organized picture dump. This time around, I didn't even take my camera out of the bag. On the earlier trip I made sure to take plenty of pictures, and then it turned out that everyone else on the trip each took enough pictures to qualify as a Pratt portfolio. I figured that this time around, with four times as many doe eyed campers taking pictures of the 'cute little mushrooms' that I would be swimming in a pool of artsy dramatic closeups of invasive flowers and teen angst fueled duck faces. (8.7)


"The twigs' fragile and jumbled existence represent the weakness and uncertainty of life as a metaphor for bones in the human body, complimented by the blood red of the berries. The spikes of the pine tree are representative of barbed wire containing the human spirit."

And yes, as the 8.7 rating on the sarcasm meter indicates, that is an extreme exaggeration. Thankfully my friends are not that bad, and for the most part my exposure to that is limited to trips to the zoo, ie: SUNY Albany.
Ohhh rival SUNY burn suck it.
But nooooo. I literally dreaded looking at my facebook when I got home from work that night, but only two people put up pictures, so my choices to rip off was limited.
We camped at Cascade Lake, by Eagle Bay NY. It was about a two mile hike in to the campsite. This picture is Kevin and Courtney, with me in the distance on the way out actually.


Jaimie and Sid,

Now remember all the planning I said went into this? Everything was coming together well as of maybe 4 days before the trip, and I posted as such on facebook:

Well of course the universe took this as a challenge that I hadn't been annoyed enough that week. Two days before we are leaving Court ~~announces~~ randomly tells like two people and waits for it to Telephone Game its way back to me that she works on saturday, and wants to know what we are going to do about it.
What.


Tyler

Thus begins the decline from perfectly structured plan to get us all there safe and accounted for. Its not long before there are 6 or 7 different cars with no direction whatsoever, people asking endless questions because everyone is lost, and in the confusion one person even ended up in North Dakota. (10)
Eventually, the Super Awesome Totally Foolproof plan is to have Court drive herself up through unfamiliar, you're-gonna-get-butt-raped-by-hicks roads, at night. And then have her boyfriend Kevin hike 2 miles out on unfamiliar, you're gonna-get-butt-raped-by-bears trails to meet her.
Now is when I put my Wilderness First Aid Certified boot down and say I won't let them do that because it sounds like a fucking background story for a cheap B list horror movie where they get lost and the trees eat them.

Take your pick

To which she logically replies, "Oh you don't want me to go, is that it."
Yes, Court. Me getting everyone together to tell you, along with everyone else, two months ago to get these days off so we could all go, and keeping everyone fully informed as everything developed, and then working for two days to find a semi-non insane way to get you there after you fucked everyone's plans up last minute, it was all a diabolical scheme in collaboration with your work to humiliate you and not allow you to go.
Eventually she says her mom is going to take her up even if I won't. Which resolves the issue for me. I was not going to give my blessing to an idea I know is bad and be responsible if something went wrong. But hey, if your own mother is willing to help you take unnecessary risks with your and others' lives, then I guess my mom just doesn't really love me as much.


Overplayed indie album art fail, having it legitimately be spontaneous win

At the end of the day, I enter the prestigious company of her shit list for trying to do the right thing, and she ultimately meets us up there without any problems.
Oh wait, except for the part where Kevin and I were supposed to go out together to meet her but instead he just fucking takes off running down the trail while I am setting up tents. It's called the buddy system for a reason. I have to go chasing after him and eventually catch up, as he is coming back from a wrong turn down some other random trail. WOW. That wasn't exactly the kind of thing that was worrying me about the plan in the first place or anything. So that marks the 2nd and 3rd time hiking/running the trail to the car for me. Kevin and I then swim across the lake when we get back, accompanied by Kait.
Kait is my awkwardly defined ex girlfriend, as our history together since actually breaking up last summer is way too much to get into. Maybe one day, but I really don't know how to summarize it quickly, so for the purposes of this post she will henceforth just be known as Awkward Girl, or AG for short.


Home sweet home, with AG at right

AG, Bri, Sid, Jaimie, and Joe

We made pasta and chili for dinner, and I must say it came out good. The old house wives advice says to make stew out of all your leftovers, but I would rather say that for chili. The nights before the trip I went around walmart looking at different items saying, 'Could this be thrown in a chili?'


Indeed you are source

Hmm..well we will see if anyone notices. source

We ended up with a wild concoction of spices, tomatos, potatos, corn, rice, different beans, onions, beef, and whatever was on the stick I used as a ladle.

Stewing up some crack......flavored chili

Kevin, me, Dana, Josh

Throughout the rest of the evening, Larry was working on a secret project, and I spent most of my time helping him, but that's going to be a separate post.Eventually someone jokingly said we should smores. And then someone else not so jokingly agreed. At this point I resolved to see how many times I could go down the trail in one day so I decided to run down the trail and hopefully get back before dark. AG went with me, because she actually UNDERSTANDS the buddy system.
We got out to the car just as it was getting dark, and the first thing inside the door of the store is a display of grahams, marshmallows and chocolate. Yeah, we know EXACTLY why you're here. But we shook things up by also getting some Saranac sodas, which ended up probably being the best decision of the trip, because they are delicious.
The hike back to camp in the dark (5th time btw) was cool, as I have never done any signifigant hiking in total darkness before. There were tons of frogs in the area, and at one point AG nonchalantly puts her bottle down, and a perfectly sized frog HOPS DIRECTLY INTO THE BOTTLE and then she just picks it back up and keeps walking like nothing happened. She barely even acknowledges it, 'Oh look I caught a frog.' while I am freaking out and pronouncing her the frog princess. Eventually we named it Sidney Cascade or something.


Dinner

Helping Larry set up his tent

Later that night we randomly went skinny dipping. That was a cool thing to scratch off the ol' list. It always amazes me how easy it is to actually do the things you say you want to once you take the initiative and do it. That pretty much sums up why AG and I have gone back and forth with each other the past year more times then Brett Favre has retired, we have a good amount of common weird interests and goals and at this point have a unique blend of comfortableness/not giving a shit anymore about the situation to do them.

Bri and Larry

Dana, Larry, me and Tyler's head

Kevin Joe and Bri

At some point Kevin lost Josh's car keys. We never found them. His dad had to drive out the next morning to deliver a fresh set of keys, but it ended up being okay because he joined us for ice cream.