Our regular fishing trips start out at 5:00am, but with a mother and five teen age boys, we found 8:00am to be a more reasonable departure time. The first stop was for breakfast in Oakdale at (naturally) the Oakdale cafe. Lake Don Pedro is only 30 minutes or so out of Oakdale, so we were setting up camp by noon. The granddads, Jim and I, set up the base camp, which includes the kitchen and cook areas. The boys and Jamie set up there camp adjacent to, but at a comfortable distance from ours.
Setting up the old guys sleeping area was very easy as last year we purchased some folding Camptime Roll-O-Cots that are custom made for the pickup truck bed. With the side windows up and good sleeping pads, we were very well set up.
The heat at Don Pedro was in the 100's when we arrived, and took a lot out of me. I could barely breathe and had to constantly rest. When we went to launch the boat around 1:00pm, we stopped the store and bought a six-pack. I took one for the boat and found out later that Jim had finished the carton before he got back to the camp!
The boys are maturing and don't spend much time in camp. There is the lure of the camp stores and the young ladies who hang out there and the swimming lagoon or the lake itself. The surface temperature was in the high 70's.
Jim and I do all the cooking, specializing in large portions of everything. Friday night's dinner was catfish, pork and beans, and and salad. Saturday night was chicken, hashbrowns and salad, and Sunday night was new york steaks, leftover hashbrowns cooked with onions and bell peppers and salad. Jim and I shared a salmon steak because we don't eat red meat and Jamie had a Barco burger because she's a vegetarian.
Every evening the boys came up with some kind of gooey dessert based on marshmallows and Hershey bars. One evening, one of the boys, who has Puerto Rican ancestors, made "banana boats." He slit open the banana skin and inserted some Hershey bar sections then placed the banana on the grate until the chocolate melted.
For entertainment we had our boombox and MP3 players. I think the boys were really surprised when I pulled mine out and even more surprised when they heard the music on my playlist! We tend to favor the pop music of the 50's and 60's, but I also have a respectable selection of Rock and Latin music.
One phenomenon that we experience regularly on these extended (4-day) weekend jaunts, is how quiet it gets on Sunday night after everyone (but us) has left for home. On Sunday night we were all gathered up at the boy's camp sight, having smores and chatting when out the dark came two smokey rangers with flashlights. They said they could hear us up at the Camp Store and we were disturbing the other campers! We mildly complained that there wasn't anyone to disturb and they said we weren't the only ones. They pointed down the hill to where Jim and I were set up (we had left the radio playing low) and said with the confidence that only career law enforcement officers can muster up, when we get through with you we're going to go down and shut them up too! I sheepishly informed them that "them" was also us and trudged down to the camp to shut off the radio.
We relearned an old lesson the hard way. Don't stand up when the boat is moving unless you have something to hang on to. We were docking the boat on the last day and Jim was standing up with the anchor in his hand. I had already dropped the kedge (the anchor that holds the stern off the shore), but dropped it too soon. The nose started to drift and without thinking I put on some power to bring the nose around. Jim wasn't ready (neither was I apparently) and fell into the boat and on the anchor. Fortunately he did not hit anything vital, like an artery, but unfortunately we did not have a first aid kit in the boat. He got a pretty significant gash, that we were able to treat when we got up to the camp. Another plus/minus was when he fell Jim busted my oldest boat seat. As a result I had to buy a new one, and now they all match!
No comments:
Post a Comment