Camping and 4-Wheeling

My cousin Erika invited me on an AWESOME trip. While talking to her on the phone and getting the details we both realized that neither of us really knew where we were going. All we knew was that it involved 4-wheeling and camping....so we were in!

We met some of Erika's guy friends at a parking lot and they drove us "out west" as Erika would describe the location. I believe it was called something like "50th mile" or close to that.

When we got there it was beautiful. It was in the middle of the desert. The mountains surrounded the area and the sun was just beginning to set. Venus was emerging in the sky. And the temperature was dropping quickly.

We didn't even wait for chairs to be set out. We just huddled around the little caveman fire one of the guys made. ha ha.

I was all excited to go 4-wheeling. But there was a small kink in my plan...one of the boys had brought a Dutch Oven and was planning on making cherry cobbler. (Very homemake-y. Ha ha.)

The cobbler ended up taking over two hours to cook. We entertained ourselves in the meantime with a sack of saw dust that had been stashed as a potential boredom reliever. Have you ever played with saw dust and fire before? I have. It can be really fun, but when you mix in the 'boys' factor....it gets a little....dangerous? ha ha.


When you put saw dust into a flame the fire travels straight up the dust cloud. It looks like a mini-explosion, but there is no sound. It's a fun trick, but when there is wind and people walking in the path of the flame....

In the words of a teacher "touch your nose when you can see the man in the flames".....after that there was a little bit of a rivalry between those two.

After Zak saying, "I think it will be done in another 15 minutes," a million times, the cobbler was FINALLY finished. I hate 'cherry' cobbler, but I was hungry, so it was pretty good.

I didn't realize how cold it had gotten until I took a short bathroom break. We were still going 4 wheeling, even though it was 12:30 am. I instantly put on as many layers as I could so I could have fun instead of freeze the whole time. I had at least four layers on and I was still cold.

It took a little while to get everything together, but we ended up having the perfect amount of 4-wheelers. I had ridden to the convenient port-o-potty with Tucker...so in my opinion he was the only safe driver. I basically had to fight Erika for him. HA HA. Obviously I won.

The objective of the ride that night seemed to be to hold on and cut of anyone that was trying to pass us. Pretty sure we won, but we did have some close calls. I personally got assaulted by a tree. Nature was obviously trying to make me tougher....it didn't work.

They showed us old mine shafts and told us crazy stories about how people have ridden into them on accident and then fallen 80+ feet to their death! They (whoever 'they' are) have since put re-bar across the 20 feet wide opening so there won't be anymore mishaps. However, it was pretty freaky to come from a trail into the woods and suddenly be driving over a gaping hole in the ground. Scary scale = 8.5.

We stayed out until 3:00 am riding those 4-wheelers. I don't remember the last time I had so much fun (not true...but it was really fun...ha ha).