Evan Valentine, Stay-at-Home Dad

Camping trip turned out to be really good. Fortunate breaks in the weather (though we never saw the sun) and a good impromptu camp site made all of our other short-comings disappear. We kept the same fire going with wet wood and on-and-off rain for almost 40 hours, made coffee, and cooked italian sausages over the fire.

Fire Pit at the Site

We definitely did not make it to the shelter. We couldn't find the back way to get in that is "off the books." See, you're supposed to have a 3mi hike to get to the shelter, but someone knew about a place to park where you had a 1mi hike to the shelter. We just had too much stuff to hike 3mi up a mountain. The person who knew this secret location was not able to make it on the trip, so we had to wing it. Luckily we had tents and we didn't need the shelter. Because of the rainy weather, I just packed up Jaime's old Canon point-and-shoot, so I only took a few pictures. We were forced to burn a lot of old, rotten, wet wood, but it made for some cool smoke patterns in the logs. Several logs had the center rotted out, so the smoke could travel through the log and exit out of other holes that had no fire anywhere near them. We had fun with that because we are simple.

Smoking from Both Ends

I severely under-dressed the first night and only got 3-4 hours of sleep, but the second night, I was warm throughout the night and it was quite nice.

By the way, it appears that both Jaime and I have beaten our sicknesses without the baby getting sick. I guess it's true what they say:

When you have a contagious illness such as a cold, flu, or other mild virus, your baby was exposed to the illness before you even knew you were sick. Your milk will not transmit your illness to baby, but it does have antibodies in it that are specific to your illness (plus anything else you or baby have been exposed to) - they'll help prevent baby from getting sick, or if he does get sick, he'll probably not be as sick as you. -kellymom.com

Also, my wife and I currently manage the worst fantasy football team in history. It is no longer a matter of how many points we get beaten by, it's about the ratio of scores. This week we got beaten by a ratio of almost 5:2. At about 4pm yesterday we were getting beaten 10:1 (90 to 9). I also watched the Redskins lose to yet another no-win team this weekend. That's always nice.