Cindy Waicukauski, who will forever be Cindy Pease to me, convinced me to go camping the night I was going to be in Southern Illnois on my way back home. That sounded like a nice alternative from sharing a hotel room with Bonnie Dog. And after all the news about murders and heart attacks, I was ready to get away from it all.
On the way to the three possible camping sites, she drove me through the Southern Illinois University campus to survey the storm damage that had occured in May. Something like an inland hurricane, a derecho, hit Carbondale and took out about 5000 trees. Here's some information on this particular storm from NOAA--turns out it was a very unusual storm but quite damaging in tems of property damage:
We ended up staying at the Little Grassy site but we did check out several places. The one we decided on had a nice view of the lake, a level spot for the tent and a nice big firepit. We tied Bonnie up to the picnic table and got started on the tent.
Pretty soon we were all set--sleeping gear was in place, dinner stuff was ready and the most important thing was ready for the fire once we got it going...
With that storm in May we had our pick of downed limbs. Cindy saved me from getting into poisin ivy several times (she was the girl scout, I was the 4-Her!!!!) and we actually found all sizes of kindling and two really big tree parts that we could burn over time in the bonfire. Here we have it just started...
This brought back many memories for us of camping out when we were kids out at Rock Cut State Park. Of course, we didn't have a box of wine then...so it was even more mellow now. We called Jodie to kind of rub in what we were up to and of course to find out if she had talked to Tammy yet. I fizzled out way before the fire did after getting up at 5 a.m., so Bonnie and I hit the tent while Cindy made sure the fire was burned down.
In the morning, Bonnie was up with the sun to listen for anything that might happen across the campsite. Spotting the deer by the side of the road when we pulled in the day before was on her mind I think. Here she is sitting on top of me to be able to see out the tent windows. I am still trying to sleep.
I spent most of the morning with Cindy as she didn't have to work until noon. We tore down the campsite and then headed back to her apartment to get showers. I was on the road about 11:30 and had clear sailing down to Atlanta. We made it to our usual stopping place about 10 pm before we collapsed into the hotel bed. The next day the trip down to Orlando was a piece of cake. It is so nice to be HOME!
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