Cooking on a Stick

Waterfalls on the Hike

For weeks now, Allie has been dying to go camping, and finally, after attaining our very own tent and sleeping bags, we went for it! On possibly the busiest weekend of the summer to go camping: Fourth of July Weekend. It didn't even cross our minds that this would be a bad weekend to go (side note: Grumpus claims he knew it was a bad idea), but soon after leaving Medford we hit a block of traffic that kept with us for a good 80 miles. It's a good thing JR was driving, because Allie gets highly agitated in traffic.

Despite Mumpus' interest in camping, she didn't really plan out our adventure that well, and our first stop was set to be somewhere in Franconia Notch State Park. The park is a gorge that runs through two mountains and is split down the middle by I-93 (gotta love America -- let's put the highway in the middle of the most beautiful scenery). The park used to house the Old Man in the Mountain, but he fell down in 2003, so we decided not to check out the nothingness where the Old Man used to be.

Mumpus' favorite mossy stump

We chose a hike that followed a large stream up the slopes, which was beautiful. We both got pretty hot hiking so when we got back down we changed into our swim suits and went back to swim in the icy waterfall pools of the stream. It was COLD, but it felt great. Grumpus was the real tough and went all the way under. Mumpus just went in up to her shoulders.

It was getting late so we decided it was definitely time to get to our campsite. Since we didn't plan our adventure all that well, once we got to the campsite Mumpus had selected in the White Mountains National Forest, we discovered that there were no vacancies! It was terrible. We retraced our steps and headed back to a rustic looking campsite that had a few vacancies left. We took a site in the meadow, bought some firewood, and headed off to pitch our tent.

Mumpus did not want to buy firewood -- she wanted to collect it -- so after pitching the tent she headed into the woods to prove that spending $10 on wood was stupid. But, contrary to her expectations, there wasn't much good wood to be found -- and she had to cut branches off of live trees to get cooking sticks. Why did we need cooking sticks, you might ask. Well, the reason was that Mumpus had decided that we were going to cook our dinner over an open fire without any pots, pans, fire pokers or tongs.

Grumpus' self-portrait with the fire

Although we had a tent, sleeping bags, and even camping chairs (serving as our deck chairs), we did not yet have a camping stove, so Grumpus was put in charge of making the fire. After lots blowing, a little anxiety and some luck, he built a raging inferno -- which is great to look at, but not great to cook on, it turns out.

Mumpus thought that we could make do very well with some tinfoil, potatoes, onions, and sausages. We came up with some new rules for camp cooking:

1) If you use foil to cook food, use heavy-duty foil/multiple layers of foil
2) If you use foil to cook food, don't put the foiled food on top of a really, really hot fire. Instead, wait until there are useable coals
3) Corn burns really fast if you put it on the fire.
4) There is a high probability that food cooked on a stick will fall off the stick.

Trying to cook a sausage with a stick

In the end, we had a burnt, although edible dinner of sweet potato, onion and hot Italian sausage, liberally flavored with Trail Spice (code: dirt, sand and bits of grass). It's possible that dinner was only edible because we split a bottle of red wine, swigging from the bottle, and were pretty drunk by the end of dinner. We ended with several rounds of s'mores, perfectly cooked, and deliciously un-spiced.

The wine helped it down

The night was cool and lovely, and being in the meadow away from the drunk, guitar playing folks in the woods was nice. The stars came out but we fell asleep, being the lightweights that we are, until the sky began to lighten around 5 am. Then Mumpus, inspired by the loud bird song, decided it was time to get up, although it was a struggle for the next hour to actually get Grumpus to wake up.

Finally, tired of being harrassed, Grumpus woke up and we packed up the tent, and drove to get some coffee.

Beware of the bathroom!

It was the first coffee shop that ever scared Grumpus shitless (literally), but it did. The outside had a really cute sign with a bear, beaver and chipmunk drinking coffee, which served to mask the true nature of the place. It wasn't until Grumpus went into the bathroom that he saw the pictures. Of naked people -- many old, some young, none attractive -- doing strange things. Some were wind surfing, others were sculpting, and although I could not see their pieces, it was enough to weird me out and scare me shitless. I hated it.

We left the coffee shop and headed to find a hike somewhere, stopping on the way to play a round of mini-golf at Pirate's Cove. Then we hiked for an hour and ran into the ugliest dog in the world. It looked like a gremlin.

ARRRRRRRR!!!!!

We piled back into the car as it started to rain and headed to Mann Farms for lunch. Mumpus had bought a Groupon to Mann Farm months ago, in the winter, imagining it to be a real farm where we could pick fruit and eat homemade pie and fresh bread. We were both very disappointed to discover 1) they didn't serve lunch on the weekends, and 2) there was nothing for us to pick! Somehow we managed to spend the $50 groupon (we bought: chicken pot pie, gazpacho, zucchini bread, blueberry crumble pie, corn on the cob, blah blah lots of other stuff, and a honey stick).

What a face!

All in all, a great trip--- but next time we'll be a little less phumpy.