Labor Day Weekend Camping

You gotta love 4-day weekends!  I'm sure you know by now that there are many things about the military that I love, but add to the list 3-day holiday weekends extended into 4-dayers!!  Before I launch into a narrative about my great camping trip, I just have to gloat about the great start to my  holiday weekend- an Airborne Op.  Although final manifest time was 0630 Thursday morning and I didn't actually get airborne until 1200 noon, I had one of the best jumps yet, on any platform, out of a UH-60 (Blackhawk)!  We had to wait around the DZ (drop zone) for about 5 hours for the fog to clear and the cloud ceiling to rise, but in the end, it was a spectacular day to jump out of a helicopter!!

Friday morning I met up with Jess and her husband Dano for the trek into Western NC to Brevard.  I'm embarrassed to say that I've been in NC for almost 4 years and this is the first camping trip I've gone on.  Oh well, better late than never!  The town of Brevard is just south of Asheville and is jam packed with great hiking and mountain biking trails leading to hundreds of waterfalls.  The trails were lush with greenery and mushrooms in an assortment of colors- white, purple, yellow and even orange!

Usually I shy away from tourist attraction areas over holiday weekends, but we made an exception on this trip and it worked out to our advantage.  Jess and Dano turned out to be very compatible traveling partners for me.  As Jess so accurately described us, we're solar powered- we sleep and wake with the sun.  It's great being at a point in my life where I no longer have to prove that I can party til the sun comes up.  Been there, done that.  Now I go to bed when I'm tired and I wake up when I'm done sleeping.  Being early birds certainly worked out to our advantage this weekend.  We were up with the sun, had coffee and breakfast around the campfire, and were hiking the trails long before the hoards of holiday sightseers where out and about.  By the time the afternoon showers rolled in, we were done hiking and were amusing ourselves with small town sites where the rain was no concern.  As if on cue, every afternoon, the water from above would trickle to a stop by the time we were ready to put food on the campfire for dinner.

At this point in the story, let me just dispel any visions of tasteless camping food you might be conjuring up.  In true Jess and Dano fashion, meals are a gourmet event, even if it involves a campfire and bug spray!  This pic is a fine example of how we "roughed" in when it came to mealtime.  In addition to the beef and veggie kabobs you see over the grill, there are cloves of fresh garlic and mushrooms simmering in the foil packet at the lower left of the pic.  Evening meals consisted of kabobs and mushrooms or Burgundy mushroom hamburgers and roasted corn on the cob accompanied by the ubiquitous Asheville area micro brew. 

Even in the outback, a feast is not complete without dessert.  Enter graham crackers, marshmellows and dark chocolate!  Setting the chocolate covered graham cracker over the grill while roasting the marshmellows was the key to running-down-your-arms smores!  Sooooo good :-) 

I came back to work today refreshed from the outdoor adventure.  A pleasant break from the usual need for a vacation from my vacations.  How can I possibly be anything but relaxed after a long weekend in nature with good friends?!