Weekend Intelligence: Campfire Rule

It had been several years since the last time I'd been camping and fishing, but I finally broke that this weekend. While we didn't really catch much of anything, Colin and I had a great time up at Pace Bend. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights.

It didn't take much to get the Vue packed up and readied early Saturday morning. Colin was up at the crack of dawn, and very excited to get going. We had spent much of the past week cleaning the garage, packing clothes and gear for the trip and staging everything we'd need in the newly-cleaned garage. The day before the trip, D decided she didn't want to go, so it was just going to be Colin and I, which made it a father-son trip of the sort we'd never had before.

After a quick breakfast at Whataburger, we struck out north. It took almost two hours to reach the park. This was going to be great: setup camp, maybe some mid-afternoon fishing and brews... This is when I looked behind me and started to wonder where the fishing poles were. -.-; In the craziness that was trying to get everything else ready, I had forgotten to pack them! We took a small detour into a nearby town to visit their local Target store. Colin got one of those slingshot fishing pole launcher hooberwhatsits, so he was arguably happier than if we had brought his boring old neon green one that was mine when I was his age. A quick stop for lunch and we were back on the trail.

We met up with Didi (one of D's friends from HS) who had been there since the night before. She was there with her guy and had put the word out for several of their friends to stop in. After getting the massive tent set up and the gear moved into it, we packed a few beers and hit the shores. Didi was really the only one who caught anything - a handful of brim and a baby wide-mouth bass. The rest of us got a few hits on the line, but nothing to pull in. It was all good though, as Colin had a blast and the rest of us had a reason to drink. ;)

When we got back, a few more people had showed up, and we decided to get the campfire started. We cooked hot dogs and s'mores, sat, drank and BS'ed well into the late evening hours. Haven't had relaxation on that level in quite a while. After it was dark, we decided to stumble down to the shore one more time to try to catch catfish. No catfish, but the cliff side rocks bit me good as I lost my footing in a break in the rocks and dashed my shin on them. I'm sure the SoCo had nothing to do with it.

When we got back to camp, we watched the fire slowly die out before calling it a night. We started to dispose of burnable trash in the fire, when Colin asked what could and couldn't be thrown in. I gave him the simple rundown of the campfire burnables rule:

• If it burns, burn it.
• If you're not sure that it burns, burn it anyway.
• If you know it doesn't burn, throw it away.

And we wondered why we had a pretty green sheen on all the hot dogs. :P

Well, the weekend is now over, and I'm glad we had a good time together. Colin can't wait for the next time we go out camping, and who knows? Maybe we'll even be able to convince his mom to come with.