Getting Drunk in the Woods

Warning: my parents are not going to like this post.

Now, with that settled, allow me to illustrate the afternoon/evening where I got the most intoxicated I’ve ever been – off of three (sort of largish) glasses of red wine. This photo is of me looking for sticks in the woods to feed our fire with. I apparently wandered rather farther from camp than I intended but I don’t think DF and FF would have let me do anything too badly stupid. Also, I think I was dancing in this photo:

Liz in the Woods

We’d gone hiking earlier in the afternoon (perhaps another post to come on this…perhaps not, we’ll see) and had settled around our rather pathetic fire playing a card game (phase 10, for those who are interested in the details) which I was winning rather handily (if I do say so myself…) until we uncorked a bottle of wine. I don’t love red wine but it does tend to affect me really strongly, so I stopped caring about the icky taste after about three sips. At which point I got overly interested in our meagre little fire, absolutely determined to make it a roaring fire like I was sure any guy could do without even trying. Girl Power!

It was at this time that the picture above was taken (and I think I’d consumed at least a full glass of wine at this point, too). I also think FF walked up to the bathrooms at some point and I managed to get completely covered in ash poking around in the fire while closely observed by DF (a nurse on the burn unit, so I felt quite safe). I never quite succeeded in getting the fire stoked to a level that would have made a caveman proud, but I hear that (before it started raining for the second night in a row) it eventually got going quite well. I don’t remember. I was drunk.

I would like to disclaim here that I have never really been drunk before. [UPDATE: I have been reminded that this is not exactly my first drunken experience. I stand by my statement that I’ve not been this drunk before, but perhaps I have had a run in with a screwdriver or two in the past… oops…] Being that I am 26 and I only just got drunk for the first time (and I might say the last time, but I seriously doubt it is… my friends all really like red wine… I don’t get it), I’m in pretty good shape. The reason I add this here is because I get a lot stupider in this post going forward. Somehow, I had two more glasses of wine…

I think at some point before dinner we finished Phase 10 (I lost, imagine that), so while FF (at least I remember it mostly being her) cooked our steaks for our dinner (which should have tasted MUCH better considering how much I paid for them… but I wasn’t exactly in a state of mind to appreciate the fine flavors of beef at that moment anyway) I rolled around in the dirt. Yes, that’s right. I rolled around outside of our tent because I actually couldn’t stand up anymore. How pathetic! Three glasses of wine and I’m a blithering idiot. 

The girls propped me up on a log and handed me my steak, which they’d kindly cut in half for me. I decided that there was no need to dirty anymore silverware, so I ate my steak with my hands. Now I was beginning to make the cavemen proud. Especially when I dropped part of the steak on the ground, picked it up, was too blurry-eyed to see any dirt on it, and ate it anyway.

Then it started raining – God’s way of sobering me up. I don’t remember exactly how we got all of our stuff inside our cars or the tent, but we managed it, and I felt a LOT better once we turned in for the evening. In fact, I think I was the last one to fall asleep out of the three of us. But it was pretty good fun (though I am fairly certain I apologized to DF and FF no less than a hundred times each, during and after my intoxication) and thankfully they only took a couple of really incriminating photos of me. Those are some good friends, those girls!

 

Getting Wet in the Woods

I went camping this weekend with Dear and Funky Friends and overall, had quite a good time. I even put together the tent all by myself before anyone else arrived!

The Tent I Assembled Alone!

Of course then it started to rain, which was an exceptional bummer. Especially since my phone chose that precise moment to die and I hadn’t given very explicit directions to DF and FF on how to get to the park. Not to mention that my car was also blocked in by the trucks and SUVs of other campers, so I couldn’t drive anywhere to find a phone with which I could call them… so, in the middle of a rather bad thunderstorm, I walked up to the front of the campgrounds. Keep in mind: I don’t have a raincoat or an umbrella with me, either (where was my brain when I was packing??). By the time I make it out of the gate (which is on a timer to close at 7:30pm – meaning it’s also getting dark out), I’m completely soaked. I mean completely. And my friends take about 15 minutes longer than I would have predicted to arrive, so I post myself by the big sign announcing the entrance to Chewacla State Park and wait.

It’s at this point that a very nice young lady stops to ask if I’d like to have her umbrella or if I need a ride. Well, no, I definitely didn’t need a ride and I was a little frightened to use an umbrella with all of the lightening going on, so I turned her down as politely as I could, though I’m sure she thought I was ridiculously foolish. She drove away. Five minutes later, she was back, insisting that I get into her car.

“I was sure that I’d read in tomorrow’s paper about a woman dying outside of Chewacla and I’d never forgive myself,” she told me as I dripped onto her leather seats. She introduced me to her three year old son, then assured me that she wasn’t a serial killer. I’m surprised she didn’t ask me if I was.

I borrowed her phone and called Funky, letting her know my situation and telling her better how to get to the park. It wasn’t l0ng before they pulled up and rescued me from my rather uncomfortable situation, thankfully bearing Wendy’s for dinner. There was definitely not going to be any fire that night, as the rain continued well into the early hours of the morning.

I’m not sure how we managed to unload our cars into the tent, but we did it! I’m quite proud of us for sticking it out in the rain and the storm (despite fervent text messages telling us of hail and tornadoes) and the tent I’d put together held out incredibly well. We stayed dry (except for me, I never managed to dry out at all this weekend…) and had an awesome time. There are many a tale I could relay here, but I’ll get around to more when I have pictures to help illustrate the stories. The one above was taken with my cell phone just prior to it’s crapping out on me, so I depended on Funky and Dear to keep a photographic record of our fun times.

More to come!               :::::::::::Liz departs with a Boyscout salute and a smile:::::::::::