...You have read most of these threads right? This place is basically for venting, pop culture references and roasting each other. That's what I've learned.

I don't think you read the "misquote" that he threw in there.

So here's a recap of my weekend.

My friend K and his uncle T (they’re both about my age) bought an early 2000s Toyota Sequoia to take on hunting and fishing trips. He also bought a new inflatable boat (https://www.boatstogo.com/12-mars-in...ats-psm365.asp). We plan a trip for this past weekend, leaving early Friday morning and coming back Sunday. K says the Sequoia is so big, I won't need to bring my truck, everything will fit, and we'll put my boat (https://classicaccessories.com/fishi...o-pontoon-boat) on the roof.

My daughter is having car trouble, and since I won't be using the truck this weekend, I offer it to her.

The plan is for T to drive the Seq to K's house around 3:00 am Friday morning, load up, and then drive to my house around 3:30 am. My wife has an online writing class coming up on Friday that has one of the writers from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. She hates spoilers. The latest episode won't broadcast until midnight our time, so she says we're waking up at 2:30 to watch the show. I figure I'm not driving, so that should be fine, and I'll be totally awake to load my stuff when the crew gets to my house.

Around 3:30 I get the call, but it's not good. The Seq is full; I need to take my truck. That's not going to work as 1. I don't have my truck, and 2. I have about 3 hours of sleep - I won't be able to do the 4 hour drive to the lake. A brief discussion ends with "We'll make this work", and they head to my house. After 45 minutes of unpacking and repacking and deciding what is not essential, we leave.

As we're approaching Ely (the town closest to the lake and the campground) an engine warning light pops up on the Seq. So we spend the next 90 minutes in Ely dealing with that. I also buy a new jacket because I am addicted to jackets, and I am addicted to clearance sections. K buys air mattress, because he forgot his. We finally get it to where they're comfortable to keep driving, and head for the campground, just a few miles east of town. We go to the campsite we want (Elk Flat Campground)...and it's still closed for the winter. So we head deeper into the Cave Lake area and their campgrounds are still open. We choose a spot and set up camp.

My new tent (https://www.coreequipment.com/collec...ant-cabin-tent) is up in about 3 minutes (plus another couple of minutes to pound in the stakes). That was fantastic. I get all my stuff in my tent - cushion mat on the ground, covered with a moving blanket, and an extra high twin air mattress - I'm living like a king. Everything is set up so we head down to Comins lake.

The west side of Comins lake has an area where you can fish from the shore, while the rest of the lake is pretty much surrounded by reeds. The best fishing is in the east on a boat. Hence, why we brought our boats. We unload mine from the roof, and they unload theirs from the back of the Seq and begin to put it together. We each have little electric motors for our boat, so we head out on the water in style. From the launch, we are heading east. Coincidentally, the wind is blowing from west to east.

The wind SUCKS. It is evil. It is too much. I get to the spot we want to go to, and it blows my hat into the water. I spend about 15 minutes before I get it back. Then I have to get back to our spot. I go to drop the anchor...and the line is super tangled and janked. I totally should have checked it before we left, but I forgot. So as I'm messing with that, I am blown far away from them. The lake isn't that deep, so after awhile I just cut off about a 20 foot clear section of the rope, and reattach it to the anchor. Then begin the trip to get back to our spot. I drop anchor and cast. I pause to catch my breath. I realize I'm moving. The wind is so strong it's pulling me with the anchor. So I reel in, and pick a spot beside some tall reeds which gives me some wind break, and drop anchor. This time it holds. My friends come by in their boat. They also are being pulled by the wind. They're going back farther west to try to find a calmer spot. I cast for the second time that day. I then grab my second rod to cast that...and see that the line is all janked up. I should have checked that before we left, but I didn't. So, a bit exhausted, I decide to just eat my sandwich.

I finish my sandwich, and look around to see where my friends are. I can't see them anywhere. I figure they got tired of the wind, and headed back to the launch. It was roughly 5 minutes to get from the launch to our spot, but the return trip took about 30 minutes. I was fighting the wind and the waves the whole time, and I couldn't go too fast because if I did the boat would start hopping on the waves and I would get splashed all over. I get back to the launch and see they're already deflating their boat. T caught 2 fish, one was a keeper. K caught 2, too, but neither were keepers. A miserable time on the lake.

We get loaded back up and head to camp. We finish the night by eating Venison tenderloin, and it was DELICIOUS. Possibly the best venison I've ever eaten. I crack open a Jack Daniels lemonade and we hang out by the fire. The night ends very well.

Time for bed. The weather report said it would drop to the low 30s. No problem. My sleeping bag and I can handle that. I wake up in the middle of the night shivering. What the hell! Well, it dropped into the low 20s (maybe even the teens). I spend the rest of the night drifting in and out of sleep trying to stay warm. Around 5 am K and T get in the Seq and start it up, trying to warm up with the vehicle. I join them. We decide that rather than cook breakfast, we would drive into Ely to get a breakfast burrito, and see how the wind is at the lake. I need to put something in the back of the Seq, so I go to open the latch and it just clicks. Great. It's broken. That means the only way to get something in or out of the back of the Seq is either through the back window, or through the side doors. A huge inconvenience, especially with their boat bundled up back there. We head to town, grab burritos, and spend the morning trying to fix the latch. Youtube videos didn't help and in the end we decide we will rent a small UHaul trailer and tow our stuff back. For about $60, it's the easiest and least stressful solution.

We call the local UHaul place, and try to get a quote. The guy can't really answer us because he has to look stuff up, and he's currently out on a tow job. He tells us he'll be at his place in about 30 minutes. We drive over to his store (which appears to be a towing company that also rents UHauls), and wait. He gets there and we find out that the rental is a minimum of two days, so we should just grab it now (Saturday) and we can turn it in Sunday when we return to Vegas. Great plan, except...the UHaul vendor website is down, and he can't process the rental. He normally opens around noon on Sunday, but tells us he'll come in anytime Sunday morning to help us out. We make a plan to meet him at 8am.

To prepare for the coming night, where it’s supposed to be colder, we go to a sporting goods store and buy army style wool blankets. Thin but heavy. I get two, one for below my sleeping bag and one for the top. A wool sandwich is guaranteed to keep me warm. K also talks to a lady at the store about returning his mattress, because it deflated while he was sleeping, leaving him on the cold ground.

We then head to Comins, and decide to fish from the shore. When it’s not windy, it’s a beautiful day. When it is windy, and the clouds cover the sun, it is miserable. So cycling through lovely and horrible, we spend a few hours fishing. The fish in this part of the lake are evil. They swim in small groups about 4 or 5 feet from the shore just to taunt fishermen (and fisherwomen). They don’t take any bait, lure, pleas, nothing. K and T caught a few small non-keepers, while I caught 2 keepers. One of mine was actually one of the evil shore fish. It took my bait! A miracle. 18” and 2.3 lbs, the biggest of the trip. We get tired of the wind, and head back to camp.

After a lovely dinner of steak and asparagus, thanks to the fantastic cooking of K, we head to bed. I fall asleep confident in my wool sandwich. I wake up in the middle of the night in great pain. I have a migraine. It’s really bad. I drift in and out of sleep, and I don’t know if I was cold or warm because I was in so much pain. I’m hoping that when the boys get up to go get the UHaul, I can get their attention - that maybe one of them has pain reliever I can use. They rightly assume that I am sleeping, and go to get the UHaul without notifying me. I get up to go to the bathroom, and start dry heaving.

I spend the next hour and a half or so either curled up in a ball, or running to the bathroom dry heaving. I try to start packing my stuff, so I’m not holding anything up when they return with the UHaul, but just doing little things wipes me out. I manage to get most of my stuff packed up (which really wasn’t a lot), when they return. I get up to make a dry heave run to the bathroom, and just start puking on the campsite. I get to the bathroom, and continue puking for awhile. At this point, I am really worried about dehydration. I’ve been peeing a lot and now puking a lot, but not so much any water intake. I try sipping water, and it just triggers puking.

I get back to the camp, and I don’t see a UHaul. It appears that the website was still down, and he could not rent one to us. So, we’re doing this the hard way. And when I say “we”, I mean “them”. They were big-time friends, and got everything loaded while I lay in a fetal position in my tent. Then they took down and folded up my tent and got it put away.

The Seq loaded, and me in the back seat with a plastic bag at the ready to catch vomit, we leave. I pretty much doze most of the way home, but luckily no more throwing up.

We hit Vegas around 3:30 pm, and get me unloaded. We’re talking about checking out a lake we’ve never been to called Illipah Creek Reservoir, and I am ready right now for that trip.

What a roller coaster ride. Are you feeling better?

It's so much easier to make decisions when you don't really have to worry about how it affects you.

For Monday, I thought that the best thing to do is bring up this guy, George Motz, the burger scholar. Traveled the country looking for regional burgers and sharing the recipe on his videos. I haven't had a good burger in a long time so watching these always puts a smile on my face and a rumble in my tummy cause it looks so darn good.

https://youtu.be/WSM1tp4Qtpc

Yes. I am fully recovered. Thank you for inquiring.

That was a pretty thorough and amazingly uncomfortable read. After spending literal years in cumulative time camping/backpacking/living in tents, I don't care if I ever really do again, unless I am feeling really good, and the convenience level is high. Maybe if my kids want to do some real camping, I will. Otherwise, my nice warm comfy house...

I hope you are doing much better btw. Being sick hours from home suck suck SUCKS.

The wife and I are interested in taking the kids camping at some point when they are older. At this point with covid and everything going to a hotel is pretty much camping as far as I am concerned.

Heck since the little ones are so little, being able to sit in the basement and watch an episode of a TV is camping too.

Ah yes...camping at home with little kids. A classic that everyone loves.

You mean leave the kids at home and go camping, right?

Not if you're a rich suburban family that has robbers scouting the place out. That's how you get your house ruined.

Everybody's a doobie brother today, happy Earth Day!

G. Love & Special Sauce

The Toyes

Cypress Hill

Blues Traveler

Lionize

Human Rights

Shuvel

Nice & Smooth

Clutch

The Expendables