Em N Ru: Camping at Baker Bay

Friday June 19

The lake house was fun, but it was soon time for the next adventure. I had reserved my favorite campsite at Baker Bay, #41 for four nights, Friday the 19^th till Tuesday the 23^rd. We spent Thursday packing, cleaning, washing, shopping, and then Ru had his last piano lesson for the summer, and I had madrigal rehearsal. Salem Madrigal Singers have a gig next Saturday the 27^th at the World Beat Festival in Salem, so we were working on our set. Its only 30 minutes which is a blessing because the forecast is for 95 degree scorching sunshine.

Friday morning we woke up... not rearing to go. I laid in bed till nearly nine, enjoying the feeling of home, and dreading all the work to do. Eventually though, I got hungry and dragged myself downstairs. I had my usual protein smoothie, made Ru some pancakes, and we got to packing. I had left most of our stuff in the car from the coast trip, so we just unloaded, rearranged, repacked, and got on our way. Almost. There was the stop at Natural Grocers for lettuce, then the stop at Trader Joe's for ginger snaps, candy, and mixed nuts. Then gas and ice. Finally though we hit the road and headed south. One more stop at mom's house to get the old windsurfer board (to paddle around on) and the sea doo to pull behind the motorboat.

Max volunteered to bring the windsurfer and sea doo out for us, but the windsurfer couldn't be hauled with the truck because of its immense size and tendency to become airborne, so he just brought us out the sea doo. (its like an inner tube wrapped in cloth).

So we got to Baker Bay at about 1pm, and Ru and I had camp set up really fast. We are a good team and putting the tents up was pretty simple. Ru decided that this year he gets his own tent. This was fine with me. We pumped up the air mattresses and tried not to be annoyed by the campers next door.

About our neighbors, my first though was that they were some sort of religious group, from the looks of things they had a zillion kids, brand new bright shiny SUV's, jacked up four wheel drive vans, and they had brought what looked like padded church chairs to sit around the fire. The teens were making jokes about guns so perhaps they were a militant group? Preppers using up old supplies? At least 20 chairs around the fire so I had a pretty good idea of what we would be in for that night. My suspicions were confirmed by the camp host that said that a church youth group had booked 5 camp sites by the water. The only place to put our tents were about 50 feet from them.

After a rousting from the camp leader “Ok everybody lets go down to the beach and play a game. Be ready to get wet” they were all gone and it was quiet for the next three hours.

Jodi showed up, then left again, she had forgotten some important things. We set up her giant tent in about 10 minutes. She brought an air mattress AND a foam pad. Now that is luxury!

Ru beat me at a game of Yahtzee, We snacked for a while then made sandwiches, we basically just hung around camp for a while before the boredom set in. I suggested a hike and Ru readily agreed so we took the trail from the campground headed east. We got as far as the cove when we ran into both poison oak and mosquitoes and despite Ruben's urging I insisted we go back. I can handle mosquitoes OR poison oak, but both was just too much to ask after a long day of getting ready to do very little.

We got back to camp, and I cooked us fajitas for dinner, Jodi showed up just as I was finishing. We sat around a while eating and thinking about lighting the campfire but we had very little wood and didn't want to run out just when it got dark.

The camp next door was in full kumbaya mode complete with a hellfire and brimstone sermon which seemed a little extreme for a group of kids, but who am I to judge. Some adorable blond girl was singing her heart out for Jesus accompanied by someone who knew some cords on the guitar but for some reason could only strum downward.

We went over to the boat and got it unbuttoned and ready to go tomorrow, used the bathroom and headed back to camp. The sun had set and Ruben the Fireman got the blaze going. I threw in a packet of “Mystic Fire” that I had ordered on Amazon and the flames turned all sorts of colors. Ruben got bored after the fire burned down and went to bed. Jodi was tired and went to bed. I stayed up waiting for the camp next door to quiet down, (they had moved on to pop music and were singing Bon Jovi) and watched the fire turn to embers. I finally broke up the fire, washed up, put in my earplugs and immediately fell asleep.