Lost Maples Camping

Greg is 33 years old and has never been on a real camping trip!

No, sleeping in a tent in your school buddy's back yard in the London burbs definitely does not count. (He actually tried arguing this with me.) How is this possible you might ask? Because Greg is a city boy through-and-through.

Well, it was high time to throw him into the deep end. When our friends Mark & Brianna reserved a campsite at Lost Maple State Park and invited us to come along, I jumped at it. Greg didn't seem too excited to commune with nature, but he didn't fight me too much either.

Here's my shumma sporting a loaded pack.


Don't feel too bad for him. He schlepped around all the light stuff - sleeping bags, pillows, dried food. I didn't want to scar him right away. But he looks like a natural, right.

We found a site at the back of the park to pitch our tents. Since it was getting dark, we decided to take it easy, play some cards, talk politics and gossip, all that good stuff until it was time for beerbrauts and s'mores. Camping, in our opinion, is the perfect excuse for consuming mass quantities of crap! And we did!


We snuggled into our fluffy sleeping bags for the night. The next morning, we set off on a 2.5 mile loop hike before taking down the tents and finishing the rest of the West trail.

Me, Mark & Brianna on the trail

Me near an opening at our campsite

Greg and the pond

It seems that my bad camping luck is still haunting me. I was stung by both a bee and a nasty, little ant, which was actually much more painful. Plus, when we finally made it back to the car, we discovered a dead, flat tire. We had to drive all the way back to Austin on a doughnut tire at under 50 miles per hour. Very frustrating for a lead-footed road-rager like me.

But it was a great week-end. And this trip has revitalized my long, lost love of camping, and I hope this will be the first of many trips to come.