Me and my two best friends, Heather Orr and Isabella Bradbury. They took me on my first camping trip.
Most midwesterners go on their first camping adventure as children, usually with their families or as a part of girl/boy scouts. I however did not.
I went on my first camping trip last week, as a 21-year old adult, with my two best friends from high school. Which made for some very funny and awkward scenarios.
The first being how to set up a tent. One friend handed me the tent, all packed up, and told me to set it up. Needless to say I was lost from the start. I didn’t know there was a tarp supposed to go on the ground under the tent, nor how to put the frame into the fabric.
Luckily my friends were willing to help me. I also discovered setting up a tent is much easier than I thought it would be — nothing like the clichés you typically see in tv shows and movies where the main character’s tent falls apart right after they set it up.
Starting a fire, on the other hand, was much more difficult. I built a nice hearth out of three thick logs, put the fire starters in the center, and (after burning my thumb striking the match) lit the fire.
But I forgot the twigs and other small flammable things to keep the fire going until the big logs caught, so it didn’t burn very long. Then my logs fell. Then my friends took over.
I did manage to cook my first hot dog without burning it to a crisp. The marshmallows weren’t as successful. We made amazing smores with cinnamon crackers and Reces cups.
We talked for hours about life, catching up on what we missed since we last saw each other, until we had to pee. After discovering the port-o-potties next to our camp were gross, we ventured down the gravel path to an actual bathroom.
Halfway down the path, one friend looked up and stopped dead in her tracks and pointed up. Stars littered the sky on this perfectly clear night, like sequins on a classy black dress.
It’s also worth mentioning that when we got to the bathroom, both of my friends were really impressed with the showers. And those showers were nicer than the ones in my college dormitory. (I guess when you become an adult you get excited about things like showers?)
Sleeping in the tent was actually much easier than I thought it would be. Of course, we had air mattresses so I wasn’t completely on the ground. But — and you think I’d have known this because I’ve lived in Indy forever — it was really freaking cold during the night. One friend used her bath towel as a second blanket.
The following morning we went kayaking. I never kayaked or canoed before, so I fully expected to tip the boat, but I succeeded.
We were supposed to start kayaking at 11:45, but we had no idea what time to be there so we planned to show up an hour early. Then we left camp early because we had to stop to get ice for the coolers. Then when we got there we discovered we only had to check in ten minutes early.
This was after we showed up almost two hours early. Luckily, the kayaking place was super chill and not very busy, so a staff member let us start our trip at 11 a.m. instead of 11:45.
We kayaked seven miles down this beautiful river in Milltown, Indiana (which is near Corydon). My orange kayak was difficult to paddle at first, but once I got the hang of it was actually fairly easy to maneuver. Until my shoulders became sore, about halfway through the trip.
The water was calm but kept moving, so we cruised under summer-green canopies and through “family-friendly” rapids, as the kayaking place described it in its brochure. The brochure also said the trip would take 2-4 hours to complete, which was totally wrong because it took us nearly 4 and a half hours.
Exhausted, the three of us changed out of our bathing suits and decided to get ice cream. The closest ice cream place was about 30 minutes away, in Corydon.
I haven't really named the places we went to because I want to focus on the experience more than location, but let me tell you, the name of the ice cream place we went to was an experience in itself.
There’s a place in Corydon called Butt Drugs. It’s an old fashioned drugstore where you can pick up your prescription, buy locally-made alcohol, and get ice cream, among other things.
After watching one friend buy a shot glass that read “I love Butt Drugs,” I treated myself to a hot fudge “Buttshake” and we sat outside to enjoy the cool treat on that hot Thursday afternoon. We were too tired to explore other shops in the area, so we decided we’d come back tomorrow and went back to the campsite.
After napping on the way to the campsite, we lit a fire and my friends introduced me to a camp-food I had never heard of before: Pudgy Pies. This campsite-favorite is made by putting two pieces of bread in a camp-cooker, and stuffing it with really anything you want. We made pizza pies first, then apple pies.
We burnt the first pizza pie. It was a familiar situation of making the food, putting it in the fire and forgetting it was in there. The second pizza pie was only burnt on one side — apparently you have to flip them. After a few tries we finally figured out how long to cook them for.
When I burnt the apple pie, I just pulled the bread off and ate the filling, which tasted very similar to the fried apples dish you can get for breakfast at Cracker Barrel. My friend made me another one herself.
Shortly after we ate the apple pies and watched the sun set, exhaustion took over. We took showers — “This shower is amazing!” — where I discovered I left the travel size shampoo I purchased right before I left for the trip at my house. We passed a shampoo bottle back and forth underneath the three stalls we occupied.
It was still freezing, but much easier to sleep the second night. Especially when I forgot about the giant spider that was crawling on the outside of our tent.
The third and final day, we slept in, made the remaining hot dogs for breakfast, then packed up. Well, my friends packed up and I played on my phone at the picnic table. I did help disassemble the tent, simply by standing inside it so the wind didn’t blow it away. It collapsed on my head though, to which I made a high pitched “wah!” and my friends laughed. Don’t worry, I’m fine.
After learning it was much more difficult to put a tent away than to pitch it, putting the fire out with melted-ice water from the coolers and packing up the car — the car’s name is Snickelfritz, by the way, after a cat who purred very much like the car sounds when it runs — we ventured to Marengo cave to take a tour.
I purchased a snow globe to add to my collection (I’m up to 138 now) prior to descending into the cave. The tour guide told everyone to watch their heads, and my friends teased me about my height, as I’m barely five feet tall.
I had not been in a cave since I was in elementary school, on a class field trip in fourth grade. I had completely forgotten how amazing stalactites and stalagmites looked, like icicles dangling off the gutters of a house over its front porch. Except they were a yellowish color because of the minerals that formed them.
Following the tour, I needed a coffee to revive me from my sore, tiring adventure, so we drove back to Corydon to order drinks from the coffee shop across the street from Butt Drugs. I drank my typical vanilla bean latte, but one friend had a Blueberry Chai Latte, or “breakfast in a cup,” as she called it.
Of course, on the way we passed two cannons, both german-engineered, captured during World War I, according to the plaques that accompanied them. They were actually out of the way — my friend saw one cannon from across the park we had parked the car at, and darted over to it, “naruto-run” style.
After getting coffee, we walked around Corydon's historical district for a little bit. Too tired to continue walking, and with an hour and a half drive up to Indy, we went back to the car and drove home.
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