Those of you who've been paying (an undue amount of?) attention, may recall that Cliffs of the Neuse State Park is the place where Rick "popped the question in 2014. If you remember that, you might (reasonably) assume that our next camping trip there (which would provide not only an opportunity to re-create the most romantic moment of my life, but also to check out the new "full hookup" RV sites), would have been one we chose to do on our own.
With sexy, romantic stuff planned.
Ad a blog post that required lots of "censored" words and phrases and photos.
Something extremely sentimental.
Something H O T.
Nah. Too obvious. Too predictable. Too... mushy.
Instead, we invited one of my very Best Girlfriends and her 8-year-old-scientist/philosopher-of-a-kid to join us. She, in turn, invited another of my favorite girlfriends to come along.
These two ladies bring me lots of joy and hilarity and I don't make a good enough effort to see them as much as I'd like to. And the aforementioned kid is practically a freak of nature, due to her excellence, and her genius, and her well-developed senses of humor and wonder!
And the husband! OMFG. he was indulgent, hilarious, patient, understanding, endlessly entertaining, and heat-warmingly supportive of the idea that his wife really needed this kind of time with her girlfriends. He is truly a jewel!
Lily, the 8-year-old prodigy in attendance, loved hearing stories. Any story. This kid isn't picky. So, on the first night, right around bedtime, I googled, "Funny bedtime stories for kids" and I found a gem about a chick named Lottie and her encounter with a 'fabulous whale." I won't give away all of the details here, but suffice t to say that,
and
were both key parts of the plot!
There was a lot of laughing that night!
We ate various meats "in armor" and we had a Dutch-oven-in-the-campfire chicken dish that was disturbingly grayish-green, but also incredibly delicious. We breakfasted on our standard bag omelettes one morning, which paled in comparison to my friend's sexy-ass crescent ring, a meal one would expect to find (and pay $50 for) at a fancy, boutique hotel.
We told ghost stories, we hiked, we left painted rocks for the next campers to find, and we did some group-effort Mad Libs, one of which produced the phrase: "clapping your butt."
What more could we have asked for?