Mountain Man in the Making

Chris openly wishes he was a hard core mountain man but his suburban upbringing turned him into a softie before he could develop the callouses necessary for wilderness survival. So we enjoy the luxuries of an i-phone, car, and air conditioning daily, but whenever we go camping, my wanna be mountain man comes out of hiding. He grows out his beard, walks around with a hunting knife clipped to his skinny jeans, and justifies spending all of our hard earned money on mosquito repellent candles and portable propane cook tops (not true mountain man form in my opinion). So this past weekend before I buckled down and started work again, we packed our gear and headed to the mountains with Dan and Jen for a final hurrah. 

We spent the trip eating all of the delicious campfire foods you can't cook in an oven, revisited a competitive game of Kanasta throughout various points in the day (Chris and I were victorious), explored neighboring lakes and streams, and spent the nights warding off gargantuan daddy long legs that were attracted to our lanterns. It was like Arachnophobia. The spindly things were crawling all over us, over crowding the ground, and sneaking into our tents. Naturally my nightmares were tangled with webs and spun with spider babies. 

We did make friends out of the nice bugs though. 

We brought Snoopy and he received lots of praise for walking through the creek. Big accomplishment for a dog that's more domesticated than me. 

We went fishing for crawdads. 

It was a big success. 

And in the unlikely event that the men would have to defend the women, they held target practice. 

And shot pine-cones. 

Dan won. I guess it's lucky we didn't encounter a bear because I would have been lunch while Jen would have watched from behind the safety of her slingshot champion husband. 

It doesn't get any better than dutch oven dinner. 

With Chris overseeing the campfire, it's a miracle we didn't burn down the greater part of northern Arizona. Smokey the Bear would not have been pleased. Look at Chris' face--even he was amazed at the extent of the damage he could have caused.