CAMPING
Life is fun.
Personally for me, camping makes life even more fun. Just the thought of braving the wild, making your own food, sleeping under the stars (in the freezing cold), showers (?), and resembles-a-tree toilette. What could be better? Well probably a lot of things…but that’s not the point.
Growing up in the States, we who camp are spoiled. Camp sites come with water on site, hot showers, regular toilettes, electricity, one set price, and possibly a TV if you brought your satellite.
Then you move to
Recently I went camping with about 8 buddies of mine. Being in
After driving for 6 hours to Les Gorges (Map Quest said it would take 4 hours…), incredibly fed up with the French national “road” system, I was expecting to arrive at a nice “state” park with park rangers in Khaki ready to bathe my feet.
Oh, was I in for a surprise. In French, ‘camping ground’ basically means “open field with or without, depending on how nice we are, maybe a bathroom.” After passing several campgrounds that fit that description, my first reaction of laughter soon died on my lips. Even though, I still wanted to laugh as we pulled up to our campground. The sign read, “Camping a la Ferme”, or “Camping at the Farm” (rabbit trail -- for how much the French hate English words being used as every-day words they have failed to translate ‘camping’). Haha. In the distance I could see a shepherd with his flock of 4 sheep…
The “farmer” I guess, came out and a little too eagerly offered us a site. Considering we were the only ones there, I could see why. But because we didn’t feel like sitting another hour in our cars, we accepted.
Then we took a look around at our surroundings.
The field was situated on the side of a small hill. The campground took up the bottom half of the hillside. In the middle of the campground, much to our relief, was a bathroom (ok, so we live in
Our site was on the higher side of the campground. It was probably the nicest site in the place, considering you got a nice view of the whole campground and the surrounding scenery from it…including the mermaid…
After convincing ourselves that it wasn’t all that bad, (and it really turned out to be an awesome campground) we began to unload the cars and set up camp. Our tents, a big 6 person and small 2 person, were up in about 10 minutes. Next, we threw our sleeping bags and bag-packs into the tent and then piled back into the cars. Our destination?
Les Gorges du Verdon.
Les Gorges were about a 10-15 minute drive from our campground. L personally have never seen the
Next, we took a short walk to a look-out point at the top of the canyon. From it we could see about a half-mile of the canyon before it turned the corner. After the look-out, we took a short walk along the edge of the canyon. For me it was very sensational to stand on the edge of a canyon and look several hundred feet down at the river, slowly creeping on.
At about
Out of all the camp cooking I have had, the meal we had that night was exceptional…scrupulous as I like to put it.
What was the meal?!?!
HOBO STEW
Yea, so you have probably heard of it, but I am telling you, if I lived back in the day, I would have been a hobo because these guys ate good!
Basically you take several sheets of aluminum foil and lay them out, one on top of each other. Next you put all your favorite veggies, chopped finely, several hamburger patties, your fav spices and some butter onto the foil. Afterwards, wrap it up nicely – making sure there are no holes or openings. Finally, place it on the coals for about 30 minutes.
And afterwards, woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooowwww!!!
The hamburger patties have soaked up all the veggies juices and spices and vice versa with the veggies and hamburger juices. Hot, tasty and plenty of it --- couldn’t get better. Truly, truly amazing!
After spending about 3 hours around the campfire telling crazy guy stories, those that I won’t go into detail here, we crashed into our tents. Oh, it was so cold and uncomfortable! I had 2 sleeping bags, a good pad, my long-johns, and several long-sleeved shirts and yet I was still cold and uncomfortable. Never the less I still got some good sleep, considering the long ride earlier that day.
THE HIKE
The next morning we got up (yes seriously, I know it amazing, we actually got up…), ate some breakfast, several of us fried ourselves in the shower (but oh so refreshing!!), packed a lunch, and jumped back into the cars. It took us about 15 minutes to get to the top of the trail head we had picked out. It was about
From walking through California-like forests, to Amazon rain jungles, to beside the
Rabbit trail--- that night we had ravioli from the can, heated up over the fire. Yea, a big step backwards from Hobo Stew. Needless to say I had to visit the squatty-potties that night as well. I won though…and I also wore more clothes and grabbed an extra pad which made the night absolutely 100% better!
The next day we grabbed some breakfast, packed a lunch, basked in the showers, and took down camp. And here is another funny thing about French campgrounds---we go to pay, expecting the guy to say, you know, “well it is 20 euros a night to stay here.” Instead he goes, “uh, you will need to pay the following—4 euros a car, 5 euros a tent, 4 euros a person, and 5 euros a night.” So after 30 minutes of rounding up and rounding down and consulting the calculator we came up with the price. Just one of those things that the French are notorious for – “why make it easy when you can make it difficult?”
After that we crammed into the cars. We hadn’t done any shopping or picked up any new stuff yet all of our stuff seemed to have multiplied somehow. We were headed to Les Gorges encore. We were going to attempt another hike. This one was about 5 hours long and in the opposite direction that we had gone the day before. The first hour was spent getting to the bottom of the canyon where the 2 trails split. Here we ate lunch and then 3 of us continued on, me included. This trail had a narrower trail, with nothing between you and 100 feet to death. Thus it was by far more exciting and just as beautiful (God having blessed us with 3 days of perfect weather)! We had to cross the river twice, usually I am fine with that, but this was a little hairy. Brian, the guy who got this trip together and also scouted out the trails, said that this passage across several rocks to the other side was a piece of cake. We, me and Seb, only realized too late that Brian is a rock climbing pro and thus everything is a piece of cake. But, thankfully, we kept ourselves out the cold, fast, very blue river, though not before asking Brian what he had been thinking! J Halfway through the hike we happened across a cave and were crazy enough to go spelunking. It was a very interesting cave, always going up at a steady incline and very, very muddy. Once we got to the top or were it was to hard to continue we turned around, only to realize that because of the mud we would be sliding down and out if we weren’t very careful. Anyways somewhat muddy we emerged from the cave. There were 2 other hikers that happened to pass by as we popped out, but they passed by as if seeing
Sadly, unlike the day before’s hike, we had to go back the way we came to get to the cars and our 6 buddies. So at about
The torture, that I about didn’t survive, was the 6+ hour ride back that night. I was hungry, tired, sore, and very frustrated again with the lack of direction or creativity of the French road “system”. However, we made up for it by pulling into the KFC in
Enjoy today because Life is fun.
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