We went camping in the teardrop trailer! It was awesome!
The day didn't start well. I've been having angioedema, something I used to get maybe 15 years ago. It starts with part of my face swelling and doesn't slow down for a while until I'm almost unrecognizable. Click here for a good pop-up picture of Friday's alterno-Rachael. I'm thinking it's all a byproduct of last month's surgery, but it's scary (since last week my throat swelled) and I want to figure it out. I've been on an anti-inflammation diet for about a week now (no gluten, no dairy, no sugar, no caffeine — LE SIGH) and I'm feeling better physically although I still got the reaction (it seemed to come directly from stress — awesome).
Anyway.
I talked my way out of the hospital four or five hours later (they never want to release me until the swelling is gone, but my swelling lasts up to three days — NO CAN DO), and then we went camping. The day was not lost.
I made a camping dress out of some thrift store fabric. Rachael-as-Picnic-Table!
Dude. With the trailer, camping is so awesome. Lala had worked hard on pulling together the stuff we needed while I was in the ER (really, I just went in to get out of camping prep), so when I got home, we threw stuff in the station wagon, hooked up the trailer and got out of town. Well. Kind of.
It was a trial run, at Chabot Campground, which is literally less than 5 miles from our house as the crow flies, close enough to be comfortable for someone having an allergic reaction, but far off enough in the woods that it felt like we were far, far from home.
And you know how when you're camping, you get to your site and then you have to scramble around for an hour, putting up the tent (hopefully without fighting with your significant other about whether or not tent pegs are important), blowing up the air mattress (after finding replacement batteries for the pump), and making the bed? Afterward you're sweaty and tired and sick of camping already.
Fire reflected in the bedroom window.
With a teardrop trailer? We pulled up, unhitched (a matter of about a minute), and we were done. The bed was already cozily made with flannel sheets and our down camping comforter. The kitchen was ready in the back of the camper. I lit the fire while Lala opened a beer and thought about steak. We played some music (the nearest campers were far enough away that the accordion didn't bother them, a small miracle in itself). Some friends actually happened to be camping there also, so they came over and we all laughed at my face and we drank wine into the late hours, until we crawled off to bed which was SO COMFORTABLE.
In the morning, while I laughed at my six-year-old face, Lala made steak and eggs for breakfast. Oh, YUM.
I admired the view:
and spied on our closest neighbors (seen in the distance here):
Clean-up was swift and easy — we just threw our stuff in the camping boxes, and tossed them in the back of the car. We shut the doors on the trailer and hitched up and left. I can see us doing this a LOT this summer, and into the fall (when we have our best weather, in my opinion). Not a bad way to spend thirty bucks, I think.