Patoka Lake!

We went camping this weekend! Crazy you say? Too cold you say? HA! We laugh in the face of cold, we dance on the grave of rainy. Maybe we are a little crazy. BUT we went anyway. We packed up and headed down to Patoka Lake on Thursday. On the way Jason surprised me and we stopped at Oliver Winery. It was beautiful! I got to sample much and my favorite by far was the mulled hard cider. It was so good, I got Jason to try some and even he liked it. I also likes a white wine that started with a T , and sounded French. No matter what I type as my guess of the name, I’ll be wrong, and I know it. So, yeah. We ended up getting a bottle of the hard cider, some mulling spices, and a bottle of blackberry wine that would make a great sauce. Mmmmmm. Then we drove on and on and on until we realized that AAA had no idea where we were really going and relied on maps. We should have just skipped the AAA. No offense AAA, but you have been out-done with google maps, easily.

This is our actual campsite:

Finally, we arrived at the right place, and found that we had the entire campsite to ourselves. We promptly picked the best site, it was on the lake and beautiful, and set everything up. I’d say, before bed, it was the nicest night weather wise we had there. It was warm enough, we had a little fire with the wood we could find nearby and we were so full from lunch we didn’t eat any dinner. We didn’t have to pay to get into the park, there was no-one at the gate. We probably didn’t even really have to pay for camping, but we put in our little envelope. When we went to deposit that envelope, we saw two deer. One was at the gatehouse to the campgrounds. The other was a little farther down the road, and when it saw us, it froze. Like, well, a deer in the headlights. Jason Turned the lights off, and it took off, but the front feet ran in place for a few paces before the back feet figured out that it was time to go too. They were both pretty.

We were glad we had put the rain fly on the night before because in the middle of Thursday night, it started to pour. A lot. I had fixed the tent where it had ripped before, but that didn’t stop a seam with a pocket from dripping on our heads, and water getting in a gap in the door zipper. We survived however, and after it stopped pouring in the morning, we made a trip to the “camp store” to get wood. They were closed for the season. Blech. So we went to the visitor’s center, and they told us to go to the gas station just outside the park. Well, we have a ton of wood at home and hadn’t brought any because of the emerald ash borer. If we’d known that this was going to be the way it turned out we would have just brought wood with us.

The visitor’s center was interesting. I don’t usually like taxidermy. It’s just creepy in general. But all of the stuff there had been very carefully and seemingly tenderly done. It all looked extremely lifelike. It was interesting, plus from 8-4 every day there was a modern restroom contrary to the pit toilets at the campground. We got wood, got back to the campsite, and almost instantly after I got the fire going again, the skies opened up and soaked us again. We gave up, went back into the tent and went to sleep. We woke up because something was burning our faces. Wait, it was the sun!!!!! YAY

The rest of the day was beautiful. Jason and I each caught a large mouth bass. That night we had hot dogs and marshmallows, which was very different from the way we usually cook when we’re camping, but still good.

It sprinkled just a little that night and was amazingly clear the next morning. Jason went out on the Tube and had a good time. I fixed us some delicious breakfast and I started a book, which I’ll review when I’m done. For lunch we made pita pizzas on the propane grill, and they were great too! A downy woodpecker came and hung out with us for a while, and made us think that it must really hurt to be a woodpecker. Once again, we weren’t hungry for dinner, so we had some roasted nuts and marshmallows. Mmmmmm. The first batch got a little too done, but the second turned out just right. They were spicy, and tasted like chex mix without the chex.

The STARS! They were amazing. There were so many that I couldn’t really see constellations. It was really nice to look at them and the lake even reflected some. It was really amazing.

The next morning we got up and packed up and headed home. We booked a hotel for first anniversary too, I’ll tell more about that soon too. The par was HUGE and we saw some cool stuff. Lots of reason to go back!!!