Camping at Henry Coe

You guys would not believe the number of photos I have to share with you. No, seriously! You wouldn't believe it! After all my talk about creating vs. curating, I need to get my little creating rear in gear and start catching up with these blog posts. I wonder if I'll ever post those New York trip photos I keep mentioning... who wants to start taking bets? Instead of going in chronological order and becoming even more behind, I'm going to try to alternate this photo-palooza: some recent events, some less-so. Today is a recent one (yay!) from only a couple of weeks ago (boo, still not that recent.)

One of my best friends from law school, Miss Camille, had a camping trip birthday this year (as she did last year, and possibly the year before that, though I honestly can't remember. Oh, no, I remember - it was not a camping trip. But I still won't be telling you what that celebration looked like. It was perchance a wee bit rowdy!)

           

We went to Henry Coe State Park near Morgan Hill (when I first heard we were camping out there, I thought to myself, "Where, on the golf course?") and, let me tell you, it was beautiful. After a 30 minute meandering drive through carsick-inducing windy roads, the campsite appears, and we had a 180 degree view of the mountain ranges around the Bay Area. There are times when I don't really want to be outdoors, and then there are times when I almost can't believe how majestic and awe-inspiring our natural landscapes are.

Oh yeah, and apparently we went there in the midst of Tarantula mating season.

Click through to see more pictures (including arty nature photos and my attempts to photograph the starry night sky.)

Let me clarify re: the gigantic spiders - we weren't surrounded by them, at least not that we could see. Maybe there were a lot in their little burrows, but we only had two real sightings. Evan spotted one on the road (from 50 feet away! Ick.) while driving up to the camp grounds, and we all saw this one on the way to the bathroom in the morning. Camille stood guard while Monica ran down to get Evan & me and to grab our cameras.

Yes, we're a little bit city, we get amazed at seeing spiders the size of our hands. OUR HANDS, PEOPLE! And we were there in the middle of their mating season, so it's probably pretty lucky we didn't see more. And we didn't see this one until the next morning, so we didn't really spend too much time thinking about how all the little holes around our tents were probably burrows. EW.

(Immediately upon my return to internet I did research on the buggers and they're actually very non-confrontational. They'll take like 8 different steps to make sure you leave them alone before they really try to bite you or anything. And even then, I guess they're not poisonous to humans? They do carry allergens though, and apparently many people can have a severe allergic reaction to their bites, which can cause big medical problems. So don't try to get bitten or anything just because their venom isn't that bad for us. STILL STAY AWAY from the GIANT SPIDERS.)

Back to the story!

We pitched tents, we relaxed, we ate healthful natural meals...

Then, I tried taking pictures of stars:

That, my friends, is what happens when your hands wiggle.

Night turned into day, and we spent the morning and early afternoon relaxing in our surroundings (playing Sour Apples and making coffee as shown above.)

Sadly, the trip had to come to an end, and I returned home to civilization. I do love me some camping though - hopefully next summer I'll get to go on a longer trip!

Do you have any good camping stories, like a tarantula run-in?

ps - Debbie, I'm posting the dinner pics on Thursday!