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You Know Your a Redneck If...

Your camping trip turns out like mine. :)
I took my brothers on a 'Sibling Retreat' of sorts two weekends ago. We went camping in Bryce Canyon National Park for 4 days. It was great fun. We did, however, run into a few memorable stumbling blocks. Allow me to elaborate:

We brought hot dogs for dinner the first night. We had brought two camp stoves...but not the convenient kind with a cooking surface, just the kind with an open flame shooting out of the top - so we had no way to cook the hot dogs. Fortunately the fire pit had a piece of flat metal across one side so we stuck the stoves under the metal and cooked the dogs on there - thereby saving us from holding our hot dogs by one end while crisping the other end in the open flames...trying desperately to not lose digits to the fire.

While cooking our hot dogs I remembered all the things I had forgotten to bring:
- Flashlight, lantern, glow stick - anything lighted!
- Hot cocoa
- Utensils
- Plates
- Ketchup (don't worry...we hit up the fast food joints for some :))
- Cups of any kind
- Something to boil water for hot cocoa in

So the next morning, with our laundry list of things I had forgotten, we headed to the convenience store just outside the park where a pack of gum costs a year and a half salary, one toe and your first born child. We bought a can of pears...so we could eat them, wash it, and boil water 14 oz at a time in it. Next we picked up some hot cocoa packets. We snagged a few plastic utensils from the fast food section and we were on our way.
We got back to the campsite and realized, much to my dismay and my brothers amusement, that we STILL did not have any cups to drink the hot cocoa in. Nor did we have any light. And to top it off, we had killed the laptop battery watching our Veggie Tales the night before - so we were cold, cup-less, light-less, entertainment-less. But fear not! I was determined to have hot cocoa. We boiled the water in our little tin can and I took a plastic knife to my 6 oz juice box. Twenty-seven minutes later I had sawed the top off that juice box and was ready to make some hot cocoa! Then, of course, Matthew said 'oh, I have scissors. You could have used those!'...

Needless to say we bought souvenirs the third day. Want to guess what they were? You are correct - hot cocoa mugs! There were two very important things that came out of this camping trip: 1) I learned that camping, as basic as it seems, should really be reserved for people with more brain cells than me & 2) my brothers now have license to mock me for the rest of my life...to infinity and beyond!

Comments

Jessica said…
Ha ha! You are NOT a camper, are you?

And I was about to make fun of your dedication to getting some hot cocoa, but I would have done the same thing. It's the only way Scott can get me out of the tent into the cold when we go camping. ;)
Annette said…
Don't feel bad... it could have been worse! Well, maybe not by much. The best part is you will laugh over it for years to come, and your brothers will love remembering the effort you made to make it a nice trip.

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