The Things I Do For Love...

...or rather, the sort of stupid things I do for love. Steve decided he wanted to go camping this weekend at Joshua Tree, as part of his pre-birthday festivities. I agreed, and also foolishly agreed to hiking at Joshua Tree. So off we went on Friday afternoon, driving 170 miles east of LA to Joshua Tree. 3 hours later, we arrive and Steve sets up the "mansion," our 6-man tent we got from my mom. The thing has only been used a few times, but Steve figured if we were car camping, we could bring out the big guns.

We had fire pit turkey burgers for dinner, along w/grilled potatoes. Steve's an excellent fire starter - he used to pride himself on his ability to create awesome fires in his Boy Scout troop. We also roasted marshmellows, and I made myself a couple of smores.

The bugs proved to be too much Friday night, so we moved the party inside the tent, where I fell asleep halfway through a Stella while watching Kate & Leopold on the portable DVD player. Didn't sleep too terribly bad, although we were both woken up @ 3am by a gigantic group of teenage/college-age boys who came in this giant pack to camp. It never would have occurred to me to drive out to Joshua Tree @ midnight to go camping...strange boys! The other random thing at the campsite was that our neighbors across the way were using a Light Saber as a flashlight...huh...

The next morning, Steve made Egg McClones for breakfast (that's what they called them @ school, and we always found that name amusing, so it has stuck). This was the hearty breakfast before we set out on the day's hike...in what was probably 95-100 degree weather. We started a smaller trail that linked up with the trail we wanted to hit to the Lost Palms Oasis. We found the Mastondon Mine, which was actively mined from 1934-1971. This is the best shot of me being happy all day long...

And it all went downhill from here, somewhat literally and somewhat figuratively. I'm not an athletic person; I'm not genetically pre-disposed, and any recessive athletic genes went to my brother. So a 3 mile hike is really all that I can handle without any repercussions. I should have remembered this - the 7 mile hike across Catalina with a 30lb. pack last year totally did me in (had to take a bus back to Two Harbors to get on the boat home). So at about 4.5 miles into the hike, I was utterly miserable. Not only was it scorching hot, its the dry, dry desert. My hands were starting to swell from the heat & altitude (3000 ft elevation doesn't seem like much, but when I spend the majority of my time at a 100 ft elevation, it makes a huge difference!). I was too miserable, and forgot to actually take a picture of my fat hands. I couldn't curl my fingers into my palms with an ache in my whole hand...not normal. Really hope this isn't what happens with preggo bloat, because I'm going to be one unhappy future preggo woman. Plus, I have bad knees, which is funny because I've never been active enough to warrant bad knees...maybe it was 9th grade basketball??? The only thing that went right during the hike was that we both remembered to use sun screen, so no sunburns. So my heat-bloated, thirsty, sweaty, slightly nauseated self decided that it was not a priority to actually make it to Lost Palms Oasis. Steve ran down the trail a bit to the top of the Lost Palms canyon, and agreed that it wasn't worth the trudge down there if I was already that miserable, because there was another 3.5 miles back to get off the trail. My knight in shining armor left me at the end of the trail, ran back to the campground, and rescued my mildly heat exhausted self at the trail end, which I referred to as my "Parking Lot Oasis." The parking lot proved to be amusing to my addled brain...the woman wearing a skirt with yellow knee socks (because that's got to be a GREAT outfit to hike the desert in)...the woman speaking German (only knew it was German because I recognized one key word: wasser, or water...remember to say the W as a V)...my knight screeching to a halt in the parking lot, A/C blasting...

Our good deed for the day came with the fact that we paid for Saturday night camping, decided to go home, and gave our spot to a couple that had just driven in. By 7pm, our stinky bodies were back in ocean-breeze cooled apartment, where I promptly showered, lathered on some Icy Hot on my stiff knees, and received some kitty love. The kitty love is the funny part; for some strange reason, Radar loves the pepto-bismal smell of Icy Hot, to the point where he licked my PJ pants in happiness. Syl, on the other hand, is repulsed by the smell, and didn't stick around long enough to even get a lot of pets.

So the lesson here is that the next time I let Steve drag me camping, I will NOT do more than a 3 mile hike if I intend to keep camping. So next year, when Steve goes up to Yosemite to do a pre-Alaska Chilkoot trail prep hike, I will NOT go hike Half Dome with him. Instead, I will conduct my own personal visit Yosemite by car hike.

Oh, and by the way...we never actually saw a Joshua Tree in the area of the park we were in...talk about a waste of a trip!