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I've slapped together a photo album of our BADASS Thanksgiving Camping Trip to Big Sur over on facebook, Big Sur Camping Trip The pictures are loosely chronological, and Sushu---who has been a Lakitu in the past---appears in several of them.
We set up camp Saturday morning, then had a picnic lunch on a bench overlooking the rocky coast. We were all so absorbed in sandwich and scenery bliss that we didn't get any pictures. We were looking forward to hanging out around a campfire, but the fire danger for the park was too high to allow anything other than camp stoves. Despite our lack of wood-fueled fire, we still made s'mores. In a way, toasting marshmallows on forks over a tiny chemical flame on the picnic table was more memorable. Our camping diet was loaded with sausages, of the beer brat and breakfast variety, supplemented with canned veggies, grapes, and clementines. During the afternoon, after brief catnaps and a foray down to the ocean, we ventured down to nearby Lucia to explore a cliffside meadow and pick up some sweets, including my first taste of the famous Its-It.
After dark, we took advantage of our position on the coast over the mountains and away from city lights to have Jono give us a crash course in astronomy. We watched Venus rise, admired the Milky Way, picked out fall constellations like Pegasus and Taurus, Sushu showed us the Cow Herd grazing by the Milky Way, and we even spotted a meteor or two streaking across the sky over the mountains. When it got too chilly, we blanketed up and taught Sushu and Jono how to play Euchre. (My favorite section is about the Ten Commandments of Euchre.) Girls vs boys, and we girls lost both games, but we were having too much fun to care. Euchre has quirky rules, with out-of-order trump, keeping score on the pips of cards from the unused portion of the deck, but they took to it quickly. In traditional Euchre, the Jack of the trump suit is called the 'right bower' and the Jack of the same color suit is the 'left bower.' In Sushu-Jono Euchre, the right became "Jack Bower" and then they introduced "Scott Bower" as his honorary-trump brother. Our hand-cranked lantern kept needing to be cranked, leading to several puns and sexual innuendos, and combined with the amusing challenges of playing in the dark, on top of blankets, and dealing with mittens on, we had tons of fun despite the cold*.
Sunday morning, the dawn came but there was no real sun until midmorning when it finally spilled over the mountains. We made another trip down to the rocky shore, and Jono wowed us with his explanation of the tides. I discovered there were tons of saltwater snails living among the rocks and Jono and Jeremy discovered that high tide creates big waves close to shore and that these waves get you very wet and salty. I tried a scrambled egg, but my heart still belongs to tamagoyaki. We struck camp soon after breakfast, but before we visited the shore again, and we were on the road again before lunch. Jeremy got terribly car sick on the twisty Highway 1, and we put him shotgun and he managed not to die. Surprisingly, I was doing fine, but that probably because I was riding bitch (best seat for car sickness, other than driver).
We arrived back in Santa Cruz and had an awesome lunch at the Saturn Cafe---I'm totally getting the Stuffed French Toast next time---after which, we HAD to turn Jono lose at our local gamestore. I browsed the RPG books looking for interesting titles, but I've had better luck finding awesome academic books about roleplaying on amazon. (Like UofC sociologist Gary Alan Fine's study of fantasy role playing games, Shared Fantasy: Role Playing Games as Social Worlds. Also, Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media, which is coming in the mail. This second book contains three tabletop rpgs: John Tynes's Puppetland, Greg Costikyan's Bestial Acts, and James Wallis's The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen, and I'm hoping that one of them will prove promising enough to suggest to me and Jono's gaming group.
* I am aware that low 50s is not cold by Midwestern standards. I am aware that November camping trips in the Midwest only happen if you enjoy a slow death in a snowbank due to hypothermia. I do have memories of Winter---the real one, not the diet Winter that masquerades as a real season in California---but I'll concern myself with them once we arrive in Detroit and I have to figure out what to do about a REAL winter coat.
We set up camp Saturday morning, then had a picnic lunch on a bench overlooking the rocky coast. We were all so absorbed in sandwich and scenery bliss that we didn't get any pictures. We were looking forward to hanging out around a campfire, but the fire danger for the park was too high to allow anything other than camp stoves. Despite our lack of wood-fueled fire, we still made s'mores. In a way, toasting marshmallows on forks over a tiny chemical flame on the picnic table was more memorable. Our camping diet was loaded with sausages, of the beer brat and breakfast variety, supplemented with canned veggies, grapes, and clementines. During the afternoon, after brief catnaps and a foray down to the ocean, we ventured down to nearby Lucia to explore a cliffside meadow and pick up some sweets, including my first taste of the famous Its-It.
After dark, we took advantage of our position on the coast over the mountains and away from city lights to have Jono give us a crash course in astronomy. We watched Venus rise, admired the Milky Way, picked out fall constellations like Pegasus and Taurus, Sushu showed us the Cow Herd grazing by the Milky Way, and we even spotted a meteor or two streaking across the sky over the mountains. When it got too chilly, we blanketed up and taught Sushu and Jono how to play Euchre. (My favorite section is about the Ten Commandments of Euchre.) Girls vs boys, and we girls lost both games, but we were having too much fun to care. Euchre has quirky rules, with out-of-order trump, keeping score on the pips of cards from the unused portion of the deck, but they took to it quickly. In traditional Euchre, the Jack of the trump suit is called the 'right bower' and the Jack of the same color suit is the 'left bower.' In Sushu-Jono Euchre, the right became "Jack Bower" and then they introduced "Scott Bower" as his honorary-trump brother. Our hand-cranked lantern kept needing to be cranked, leading to several puns and sexual innuendos, and combined with the amusing challenges of playing in the dark, on top of blankets, and dealing with mittens on, we had tons of fun despite the cold*.
Sunday morning, the dawn came but there was no real sun until midmorning when it finally spilled over the mountains. We made another trip down to the rocky shore, and Jono wowed us with his explanation of the tides. I discovered there were tons of saltwater snails living among the rocks and Jono and Jeremy discovered that high tide creates big waves close to shore and that these waves get you very wet and salty. I tried a scrambled egg, but my heart still belongs to tamagoyaki. We struck camp soon after breakfast, but before we visited the shore again, and we were on the road again before lunch. Jeremy got terribly car sick on the twisty Highway 1, and we put him shotgun and he managed not to die. Surprisingly, I was doing fine, but that probably because I was riding bitch (best seat for car sickness, other than driver).
We arrived back in Santa Cruz and had an awesome lunch at the Saturn Cafe---I'm totally getting the Stuffed French Toast next time---after which, we HAD to turn Jono lose at our local gamestore. I browsed the RPG books looking for interesting titles, but I've had better luck finding awesome academic books about roleplaying on amazon. (Like UofC sociologist Gary Alan Fine's study of fantasy role playing games, Shared Fantasy: Role Playing Games as Social Worlds. Also, Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media, which is coming in the mail. This second book contains three tabletop rpgs: John Tynes's Puppetland, Greg Costikyan's Bestial Acts, and James Wallis's The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen, and I'm hoping that one of them will prove promising enough to suggest to me and Jono's gaming group.
* I am aware that low 50s is not cold by Midwestern standards. I am aware that November camping trips in the Midwest only happen if you enjoy a slow death in a snowbank due to hypothermia. I do have memories of Winter---the real one, not the diet Winter that masquerades as a real season in California---but I'll concern myself with them once we arrive in Detroit and I have to figure out what to do about a REAL winter coat.
