I do believe that this is perhaps the
best ARFCOM Activity I have yet to attend. Of course I haven't been to many and I'm sure I would love to attend others in our state, especially a Build Party, but this was a much needed trip!
Jeff (jjrockbush) and I arrived at camp around 2:30 PM. It was a long but smooth drive from Port Charlotte as Jeff posted several times on ARFCOM and we talked about a full gambit of topics, everything from me wanting to make a spoof poster of Brokeback Mountain to Jeff saying that I'm a crazy driver.
Friday we met everyone who were going to be camping that night and the rest of the weekend and we setup camp fairly quickly. Getting a fire going that night was a bit frustrating but
after some help from the 5-year old Twins from Georgia (I'm being literal here) the fire started up. After awhile we got our Tin Foil dinners in there and the night was well underway!
I had a nice thick Rib Eye, Ryan (White_Horse) had some Venison w/ vegetables, and Jeff (jjrockbush) had some kind of stewing beef mixture thingy. You'll have to ask him what he had cuz I was focussed on my Rib Eye which was tasting really nice at the moment. During this
Ryan had finally convinced me that Dead Dear actually does taste good and it's not like sucking on nasty sweaty socks! An hour or so later we did S'mores and just joked around telling stories of whatever. Did you know that I smacked a Pit Bull in the face w/ a Bible on my mission in Las Vegas? LOL
Friday night sleeping was slightly chilly but was nice! I got a good bit of comments the following morning about my snoring sounding like a wild animal in the forest but it's nothing that I'm not used to hearing from my wife for the past 6-years.
Saturday morning brought a very small sprinkle and the rest of the day was overcast and damp but no more rain. After breakfast,
range time started slightly after 9:00 AM which went to about 1:00. Lunch was served and a good time was had by all at the range. Afterwards a good bunch of us headed over to Wal-Mart to pick up some other supplies and food that we wanted to junk on at camp and headed back to camp. The plan was to head over to the Olustee Battlefield but not to speak for everyone else,
but I was feeling "lazy" so I just sat in the chair and stared off into space. Quite a bit of the other guys did the same.
Saturday late afternoon and evening brought stronger winds off of the lake while the whole crew drank down some "pond water" made by Anheuser Busch (not I of course), cracked jokes, made fun of movies (I think that's what they were doing) and did some more S'mores. Steve threw a flaming marshmellow into the Lake that everyone found amusing since the flames kept going and after awhile we all headed off to bed.
Around 12-midnight the rain came down hard and didn't let up for a few hours as the temperature dropped rapidly. I was woken up due to the noise but I eventually fell asleep. Part way through the storm
I heard the roar of the jeep that Kyle (Jonas) and Ben (Cuda) came in and listened to it eventually roar off into the night. Come morning those buggers were no where to be found and their campsite was empty! LOL Sorry you guys got flooded out!
Sunday Morning was pretty much a lazy one. Breakfast, cleaning up, packing up, etc. My van needed a Jump from Brandon (Sapper22) due to charging all of the crap that I had (laptop, camcorder, cell phone). We headed over to the FDCC which turned out to be a blast. Jeff and I finally got out of Lake City and on the road home just a few minutes before 5:00 PM.
The whole weekend was a memorable one in my opinion and I look forward to doing something like this again! It was great meeting everyone and just "getting away" from my reality.
Here's some pics!
Click
here for a High Resolution copy of the picture above.
More pics to follow!