On pitching tents.

Get your mind out of the gutter, this is about CAMPING...honestly.

I've had a lot of company lately. More on that later. My dear friend from Japan came and visited me for a couple of weeks and a few days into her trip she and I thought it would be so fun to go beach camping. With my two year old. Nevermind the fact that she had NEVER been camping before in her life and the last time I had been anything that even remotely resembled camping was when I was fifteen. My mom and dad are real crunchy folks, they like to backpack. As in rough it in the wilderness with only as much as you can carry...in your backpack.

Well it just so happened that I was smack in the prime of my teenage angst/rebellion phase, not to mention I had myself a cute little dish of a boyfriend, so they made me go with them. As in, I had my own backpack, and I was expected to carry things, like pots and pans...in my backpack.

I started my period with a vengance the very morning we were leaving. This was a two day trip. Lovely. I begged to stay home, but nope, no such luck. They knew better. (which in retrospect was probably a good thing) Period or no period, I was going. Period. (sorry had to throw that one in there, just way too easy)

So, not only was I hiking 4 miles up a mountain to a patch of dirt just so that I could sleep on the ground and hang my food up in trees so bears did not come into my tent and try to eat me....but I was also packing a ziploc bag so that I could keep any of my menstral evidence sealed up (which I also had to hang in a tree) because the scent of my blood would attract bears and they would try to eat me.

How's that for a lovely mental image?

Moving along.

So my friend and I...we wanted to beach camp. I called and reserved us a sweet campsite right on the beach at one of the most beautiful camp grounds in Hawaii, it's gated and specifically for military, so completely safe. We loaded up with everything. And I mean everything. And away we went. Two naive little suburban girls.

Oh, Lordy.

The first night into our two night trip (anybody else noticing a pattern here?!) It was about midnight and we were snuggled deep in the throngs of our air mattress, in our tent that we had so proudly pitched ourselves, when we noticed that people were walking awfully close to our tent....and even more annoying their flashlights were shining right through the nylon walls into our faces. I felt like my eyeballs were glowing like a raccoon's whenever you pass it with your headlights on. This went on ALL night long...I was getting increasingly annoyed, didn't these people sleep?! I mean what was going on all night long that had every single darned camper taking flash-lit strolls right by our heads???

I found out the next morning around 6:00 am when the wind blew the entire front half of our tent up off the ground. The only thing holding us down was us, on the air matress. I went outside, morning lips, crazy hair and all, to hammer our tent stakes back into the ground. I took a look around the area where we had pitched our tent............

We had pitched our lovely tent right smack dab in the middle of the path to the bathrooms. I can only imagine what those campers were thinking, shuffling to the bathroom to take a midnight pee, when all of the sudden their flashlight illuminates our bright yellow tent right in front of them, and most assuredly my sillouette raising up in annoyence to peep through the mesh window to see who on earth was walking by our tent this time?!

"Hey, look at me! I'm a big ole dork" I promise that's not a toupee going askew in this picture...it was just REALLY windy that day.