happy campers

Nothing like giving yourself a weekend of doing nothing but loafing, eating, drinking and otherwise goofing off with one of your best friends. So it was this weekend when me and T-Bone met up at Sleeper State Park in Caseville for some quasi-camping and full-on chilling. I cut out of work Friday a few hours early and took M-53 straight up to the tip of Michigan’s Thumb. I loaded up the cooler with ice and booze, the car with gas and my pockets with loot before I hit camp just after 5. We chilled, got a fire started and had dinner of turkey brats on the tripod over the fire.

Yeah, they were that good. The campground was so-so. Our site was small and they were kind of shoehorned in close to other campers, but it wasn't too bad. I’ve definitely had better. The big draw to Sleeper is the beach across the street. It’s huge and sandy, and sits on a Great Lake so it’s hard to bitch. What wasn’t hard to bitch about was the heat. It was, as Matt D. says, hotter than two rats fucking in a sweatsock. It did cool down a little Friday night. We walked over the beach and wolfed down a tasty bottle of wine that Tom made.

We headed back to camp for a night of drinking, bullshitting and wood-burning. Got up Saturday and headed to town for some breakfast, spending the rest of day driving around and playing putt-putt. We would later jump in Lake Huron for probably the most exilhirating hour of 2006. That water was cold but it hit the spot. This guy was camping across the path from us.

Tooling around the Thumb, we saw some marginally interesting things

… chief among them, this son of a gun. Now, THIS is a car. I keep warning Kerry that I’m going to one day come home with something like this. And I’m not kidding.

I love Lincolns. Those, and the 98s are probably my two favorite “long rides.” They’re like living rooms on wheels, but I’ve also dug their logos and symbols.

Sometimes it is especially delightful to sit around your campsite, thinking of nothing/everything, waiting only for day to turn to night, and to look up and see something like this

Perspective, baby. Eat that shit up like Skittles.

After swimming, we tried in vain to find the Tigers-Cubs game playing on a TV in any one of the many area bars. After the fourth bar, we determined nobody was carrying it up there so we watched some of the U.S. Open, played pool and drank some beer. We headed back to camp for a dinner of buffalo steaks and baked potatoes, assorted “snacks,” and some A.M. baseball on the Freeplay. Tom fucking killed me in Yahtzee. I went to bed shortly thereafter, shamed in my defeat. It was a good weekend.