I woke up, unpacked, found a towel, showered, and enjoyed some peace and quiet. Eventually, Justin came over, then Bailey. We started discussing the camping trip we were leaving for that night, and decided to go get supplies at HyVee. We got wine, water, beer, lentils, yogurt-covered almonds, and other necessities. We had so many liquids that Justin and I started leaving piles of our stuff around the store, so that we could come back and get them as we approached the check-out line. It was kind of funny. When we got back to Paul’s, Amber and Scott were already there. We consolidated our stuff, got bug spray and sleeping bags and whatnot, and headed off to Justin’s new place, which is in the basement of a house some distance from campus. It’s awesome - a three-story house with a hidden balcony in back that overlooks a little pond. The owners, sociologists that had gotten an assignment at another school, had entrusted the place to Justin in their absence for a very reasonable monthly rent. Here, we gathered up the last few things we needed, and headed out to the Rocky Fork Lakes Conservation area. Camping is technically illegal here. We arrived, then hauled all our gear out to the spot Justin had always wanted to camp at. We were a forty-five minute hike from concrete, cars, or anything manmade, and it felt great. The spot was an abandoned quarry that have been filled with water that was crystal clear. Justin threw in his pole, and caught a fish on the first cast. He caught about 6 more that night. Meanwhile, we set up our primitive camping site, hammock in the trees, got an area ready for a small embers fire, then we jumped in. The water was cool and so clear you could see at least ten feet down uninhibited. We swam for most of the day, and eventually Corley and her boyfriend, then Hunter, then finally Paul and Lucia and Emily showed up, and at one point we had about 11 people out there, although only 6 of us stayed the night. Two in a tent, two in a hammock, me in my sleeping bag, and Bailey in a sleeping bag until he couldn’t take it anymore and stumbled back to his car in the middle of the night. But I’m getting ahead of myself. We kept throwing beer cans out into the lake, and they’d float to the surface and we’d race to them and drink. Then Justin and Hunter started crushing them and letting them sink, then “penciling” down to get them by letting their legs fold on top of them and the gravity would take them down 15-20 feet. They’d let the can get just out of eyesight, then dive. Eventually, they did lose one can, and Justin was pretty upset about it but he got on anyway. A lot of us ended up skinny dipping as well, and then we were feeling really free. Eventually, we started a small fire, put it out to embers, and put a pot in it with some lentils and stewed tomatoes, and also we put a can of corn in the embers, and made a little hobo dinner that we had with a jug of wine. We swam some more at night, and eventually we all kind of made our way out of the woods or to sleeping bags where we fell asleep.
