You guys.  I just got back (well, 16 hours ago) from the best camping trip I have taken in ages.  At least a year.  Probably.  So, as I do, I’m gonna write about it and then share a bunch of mediocre photos with dumb captions, plus some videos with factually-challenged narration.

So this camping trip was a series of things almost going totally wrong but not quite.  I don’t wanna go on too long about it, but here’s the summary.  We wanted to go to Shenandoah National Park, which has a mix of reservable and non-reservable spots.  We figured that if we got there reasonably early (like ~4pm) we wouldn’t have a problem getting one of the non-res spots.  

Perhaps we're not the only ones who thought to go camping?

When we finally got to the park, we were informed that all the spots were taken and that had we wanted a spot, we’d needed to have gotten there by 8am. The ranger helpfully pointed us in the direction of the nearest alternate campsite, which turned out to be a sub-KOA style place. We needed to do better than that. Armed with three smart phones and an indominable desire to not have to return to DC in disgrace, we began contacting every park we could locate, check every camping related website, calling and leaving messages (?) and generally trying to avoid freaking out. Which we did, more or less.

Every campsite was full (shock!) but one woman suggested that Spruce Knob Lake was always the last to fill up and we should just try going there. There’s no phone or anything at this site, so our only hope was just to drive there and cross our fingers. Luckily, we still had cell-service, we were able to get directions.

View Larger Map

I was navigating, and I.. well, I may have told my friends that it was only an hour and a half away. Google says its two and a half. I think reality may have been closer to three. But it was our only hope. So we drive and we drive and eventually cross into West Virginia. (Being the awesome DJ that I am, I arrange to have “Country Roads” playing as we cross the border. Sigh…)

Eventually we get there, but it’s kinda sketchy cause the last twenty miles or so are on a gravelly, bendy, tiny, sorta-scary road. We get to the spot: hooray :). We do a loop around the campsite and find that none of the spots are actually available: yarooh :(. The ranger, who is super nice and admires the our tattoos and shows us his (which include a devil-baby, an anarchy symbol, and a lot of other thematically similar stuff) tells us there aren’t any spots, but if we come back tomorrow at noon, he can help us out. One of the camping groups had reserved two spots but was only using one of them to store a boat. Being the smart folks we are, we suggest that we just ask the people if we can have their second spot since they’re just parking a car there. The ranger thinks this is a fine idea, and even adds to our story that we’re nearly out of gas and hopelessly fragile city-folk who couldn’t possibly last the night on our own. The other people cautiously agree, though they seem weirdly convinced that this is somehow not in their favor. Oh well. We have a camping site! So we set up, commenced with the drinking of beers and counting of blessings, ate dinner, and hit the sack.

This is Friday. Saturday we have to spend awhile tracking down ice, more beer, and a payphone (nobody gets any cell service anywhere in WVA- apparently only US Cellular works there, which I think is really odd but whatever). We find a payphone and call our fourth person to let her know we’re not in Shenandoah but WVA at Spruce Knob Lake campground. And.. well, the rest is just a mix of hiking and making fires and watching fires and cooking, etc.



We did manage to get a flat tire in our rental car. But we had a donut in the back so we could fix it. But the jack was missing a piece for the crank, so we couldn’t. But we were able to use a leatherman instead, we we could fix it. Then we just had to worry about making it back to civilization on the donut (which we did!)



It rained a lot, but we dealt with it. There were a lot of bugs, but somehow I dealt with that. The hikes were nice- we saw the highest point in West VA. Spruce Knob. It’s a couple hundred feet shy of 5000. It was actually pretty cool. The height might not blow your mind, altitudinally, however the foggy valleys below were pretty awesome.


I couldn’t shake the idea that I should record videos in which I make up facts about whatever it is I’m looking at, which seemed funny at the time, but (as you’ll surely note) didn’t stand the test of time. Or any test, really. Sorry.

Ate delicious food, made some nice fires, drank Malort. Everything you look for in a good camping trip. We came home yesterday, stopped at a Cracker Barrel on the way home (I reasoned it was the only place we were dressed appropriately for- sorry Cracker Barrel, that’s what I think about you.)

My camera broke sometime on Sunday evening, so I don’t have pictures of the last day, which is a bummer because we went to a cool little swimming hole and saw some other neat things, but ooh well. If anyone has a pocket-sized digital camera they wanna get rid of, let me know.