Camping at Last

Walter and I finally were able to get out of town, if only for one night. We went over to Farragut State Park in Idaho again and it was wonderful. I felt so relaxed and the weather was wonderful. After we got there and sort of got things settled we headed down to the lake. The water is down so we were able to walk out on a nice sandy beach where we sat for at least an hour and watched a sailboat. It was sunny but the wind was blowing pretty hard. We also watched some kids fishing from the beach and it was hysterical because they seemed to have a two minute attention span with the fishing. They ended up playing with rocks and rolling around in the sand.

Snowberry is the only campground open at the moment and you have to pay the hook-up fee whether you use it or not, so I took along a big orange extension cord, a space heater, and a table lamp. It was brilliant!!!! The tent was nice a warm and I had plenty of light to read by, which is good since I stayed awake until 2:00 am reading. Before we went to bed we of course had a fire and the moon was nice and bright.

I have been thinking a lot about my experience at Fishtrap Lake and that guy going through my stuff. This kind of thing has never really happened to me before. So now I am kind of reevaluating my choices. I did not actually feel afraid, just weirded out and I think that if I would have stayed there the rest of the night I would have gotten paranoid. So, after thinking on things and talking to my sister who thinks I am an idiot anyway, I think that I might start camping at campground in areas where I want to hike, and just sort of base camp rather than backpack. It would give me the opportunity to get out on the trail alone, yet not get me stuck somewhere overnight with some freakoid. At Fishtrap, it would have been easy to leave and walk out even in the dark. That is not always the case. I have had little opportunity to get out overnight the past two summers because of the dogs, but that has changed. I was looking forward to several backpacking trips this summer and maybe I will reconsider. There are places that I think are just fine, specifically places that are not so easy to get to, where only pretty serious people go, if at all. Often times I have been places and no one else was there for the whole weekend. There are also places where there are frequently quite a few people, such as Upper Priest Lake. I suppose that taking two dogs with me would also be a good idea. And heck, maybe I could think about taking another human with me sometime! Now there is a thought!

Pictures: Walter with the wind in his face; the cool sailboat; Walter chillin' after breakfast; my table "lantern."