The camping/float trip blog

A group of friends went camping with us Friday and then we floated the Illinois River on Saturday. I've been excited about this trip for over a month and was really happy when Friday finally arrived. I went to Wal-Mart to buy all the food and then packed all of our camping gear into Mike's car. The plan was to have 3 people ride in our car with us, but I quickly realized that would not be happening...seeing how the trunk and the backseat were stuffed to the brim and I was holding in my lap Mike's guitar and some other miscellaneous items. Lucky for us, two of the three that were planning to ride with us called to say they were running 2 hours behind and would just meet us out there. Whew! Problem 1 solved.

When we got to our meeting destination we did a little rearranging to fit one more person in our car, and our 3 car caravan headed off to Tahlequah. Our car is the front of the lead and made light of the fact the other two cars were dragging behind us. We get about 10 minutes outside of Tahlequah (on Hwy 82, which has zero shoulder on it), and Mike delivers the bad news: "My car just died." Oh goody. Lucky for us, 25 feet ahead is a turn off, so he makes a hard left and puts it park. We have about an hour and a half left of daylight. The next 30-45 minutes played out like this:

Problem 2 became: What the heck is wrong with his car? (I gotta say, it was a little humorous to watch 5 guys hovered underneath the hood trying to "figure it out" while us gals chilled in the backseat.

Problem 3 quickly became: If we can't get his car fixed, how the heck are we going to get 12 people and all their gear into two cars to the campsite, which is still 30 minutes away?

Solution 2 was suggested: Call AAA. Problem. We don't have AAA. Next.
Solution 3: Call a wrecker. That will cost $200 or more. Next.
Solution 4: Peter take all the girls to the campsite and start setting up camp since we only have about 45 minutes of daylight left. The rest of the guys will go to AutoZone in town get a strap or chain so Brandon can pull Mike's car into town with his truck. Then AutoZone will run a diagnostic test on it to see what's wrong. Sounds good. Let's do that.

Problem 4: My cell phone gets no service at our campsite. How do I call the guys to give them an update and check on their status?

Solution 5: Use the campground's phone to make lots of long-distance calls. :)

Done. Now what? The part Mike needs won't arrive to AutoZone until 2 pm the next day.

Problem 5 surfaced: How do we get 5 guys back to camp (with all the gear from Mike's car) in a truck with only 2 seats that are currently filled with people and a bed that is jammed full of camping stuff?

Solution 6: The car that was running late was just arriving into Tahlequah, so they will stop by Autozone and pick up a load and the truck will carry the rest.

When they arrived at camp, I swear it looked like the cartoons where a load of characters were squished in a box, you remove the box and they are still holding the box shape. :) Quite humorous really.

So we camped. And played some volleyball. And laughed. A lot. Ate some dinner. Made jokes about not being able to keep our fire alive b/c the wood was wet. Played/sang some tunes around the no-fire. Laughed some more. Went to bed.

Woke up to float the river after breakfast. We had 3 rafts rented for 12 people. The plan was to float until 1:00ish then Mike and I would split from the group and high-tail it back to camp, run to Autozone, replace the part and head back to camp to pick up our group by the time they finished floating the river.

That didn't happen. Well, part of it did...up until the part where Mike replaces the part and we head back to camp. He goes to replace the part and viola! The timing belt had shredded. Sigh. Dollar signs flashed through my mind and I quickly saw the look of disgust and frustration on Mike's face. Poor guy. "It's just things Mike" I tried to reassure him. "It's just stuff that can be replaced. It could have been a lot worse."

So we call his folks to get a trailor and come get us and tow the car home. The rest of the group (most of it) went on home after they finished floating. A couple of them stayed to hang out with us. We ate dinner at Mazzio's and waited for Mike's parents to rescue us. When they finally arrived, we loaded the car, and drove 50 mph all.the.way.home. Took 2 hours. We got home at 10:00...and were very tired.

Mike has always hated camping. Now I'm not so sure I'll ever get him back out there to camp again. Needless to say, it was an adventuresome weekend. :)