Yesterday, Reggie was having a bad day so I took him to Father’s Office for a beer and burger to cheer him up. The bar serves its baggie of fries in a miniature shopping cart about 7 inches high. I said, “Hey, do the shopping cart.” He proceeded to do the shopping cart while pushing that little cart across the table, pantomiming putting the baby in the front seat, putting grocieries in the basket, having the cart roll away as he chased it, and my favorite, picking up the 20 lb. bag of dog food and trying to jam it under the basket. Of course, I’ve neglected my camera these days and didn’t have enough juice left to capture the moment.
To recap the happenings of my life since I last abused Reggie with degrading photo shoots, we took a camping trip up to Sequoia National Forest, meeting up with RV Rampage. They were driving down from Yosemite in Day 2 of rampaging, and we were driving up for our 24 hours of Pansy Outdooring. We figured we would get up at 4am and hit Lake Isabella to fish. We got lost on what was supposed to be a 2 hour drive and ended up getting there sometime around 10am, only to find that there’s been some killer algae in the water that’s mysteriously killing fish, so even if we caught anything, we wouldn’t be able to eat it. Now keep in mind, this was our 3rd get up at the buttcrack of dawn and go fishing trip, starting by an impulse buy of fishing rods. To date, over 70 hours logged, and we have yet to catch a single fish. I’m convinced that we’re either really, really bad fisherpeople, or there are no fish in Southern California.
As night fell, we headed over to the camping site only to find that the RV Rampage had not arrived. We set up our tent but had counted on the RV to come bearing supplies, so by the time it was pitch black, we realized we would probably need to build a fire. We had to drive up the street to a grove to pick firewood in the dark. Driving back on the dark, deserted mountain road, I said to Reggie, wouldn’t it be creepy if we were sitting here in silence and all of a sudden, we heard someone in the backseat say, “hello.”
Creepy.
We drove down the hill, almost running out of gas, finally finding a general store that had no actual food outside of candy bars and chips. Miserable, we contemplated if it was possible the RV Rampage had suffered a terrible accident as they were hours late, and it was scary to think about because there was no cellphone reception up in the mountains so we had no way of checking to see if they were alright.
Luckily, by the time we got back, the RV had arrived. The kids told a harrowing tale of having their tire blown out by a jutting rock and a non-working bathroom, but honestly, there is no better feeling than being out in the woods, in front of a raging fire with good friends and wondering what else we can cook in a packet of foil.