metrocake

This past weekend, we had The Camping Trip That Wasn’t. One of my friends from high school organized a camping trip. We were headed for a campground in upstate New York, six adults and my friend’s three-year-old, and everyone was quite stoked. It would have been my first “real” camping trip (my only other camp experience involved Girl Souts, my troop leader’s backyard, and spraining my ankle by tripping on a tent peg) so I was all bouncy and asking R fun questions like, “Hey, how do you pee in the woods? Do you need to bring toilet paper and a baggie?” R was an Eagle Scout, so he’d know, right?!

We were all meeting up Friday night: three of us were coming from Long Island, and the other three from Manhattan. R and I had even purchased a tent, sleeping bags, and a lantern for the event — we were prepared, baby — so we were blissfully determined to be blissfully ignorant and ignore the weather, which was calling for some rain showers.

Late Friday afternoon, however, we got the call: “Major rain and thunderstorms all weekend. We’re switching to Plan B. Abandon your tents!” “Plan B” involved our friend’s mother’s “getaway” cabin in the Poconos — very rustic, on the border of a huge state park, but not quite the “roughing it” weekend we’d envisioned. However, we had a thunderstorm and monsoon-level rain within three hours after we’d arrived, so we knew we’d made the right decision. It pretty much stayed that way all weekend — we didn’t even get to see the park. It was still fun, though, as we all got to reconnect and chat. We cooked, we drank, we played poker and Trivial Pursuit. Thanks to R and L.L. Bean, we even made ice cream. It was all good — and thank heavens for the getaway cabin, for which we were all eternally grateful, and happily dry. (And if any of the fab six are reading this, massive hugs! Don’t forget “Connect Fo’!”)

I still don’t know how you pee in the woods, though. >:/ Maybe next year!