Thursday

Last Thursday after we enjoyed an early morning beach walk and brunch at our favorite Coronado spot, Clayton’s Coffee Shop, we drove out to Lake Jennings to go camping for the night as a little anniversary getaway.  We arrived to find our campsite perched high above the Lake with beautiful views in every direction, and we both knew right away that it was going to be the perfect little 10 year honeymoon.

renewing our wedding vows earlier that morning

And then it pretty much immediately hit us, it was hot…really hot.  So we decided that we should try and set up camp as quickly as possible, and then relax away the rest of the afternoon.  And so we did – tent, cooking supplies, firewood, table and chairs – we got everything set up and ready to go.  There was only one problem, there was absolutely no shade as far as the eye could see.

So we did what any normal person would do and we sat in our car.  Yep, we had been at our campsite all of one hour and we were both way overheated, so we sat in our car.  We spent the next few hours talking to our families, talking with each other, and laughing a lot about the fact that we came camping to enjoy nature, but we were sitting in our car because it was too hot to sit outside.

the view from our campsite

And then it happened…our marshmallows melted.  It was so hot that our bag of marshmallows melted into one giant bag of marshmallow sauce.  Ryan quickly hopped out of the car to make sure that nothing else that we wouldn’t want melting was in the sun, and that’s when this happened – the glue on the sole of his sneaker had melted in the heat and the sole of his shoe fell off.  It was so hot that his shoe literally unglued itself and fell apart.

Well at this point we were both laughing hysterically; but then the cogs started turning…at what time could we feasibly build a fire to cook our dinner?  It was already 4:30 p.m., it was still close to 90°, and there was absolutely no sign of the sun setting any time soon.  So we agreed on giving ourselves until 5:30 p.m. to see if the heat would break enough to start a fire and get dinner going.

As the hour passed, the sun kept hot and steady as ever, but we had another surprise in store for us.  From our tiny spot of shade that our car was now providing us, we noticed ants, ants everywhere.  Tons and tons of tiny little ants crawling all over our tent.

we toasted to 10 beautiful years together and all of our adventures, especially this one

And so with our melted marshmallows, melted shoes, 90° heat and now ant-filled tent, we decided to cut our losses and call it a night.  We packed up our camp, drove home, turned on the air conditioning and enjoyed our campfire dinner in the comforts of our apartment.

So maybe we aren’t cut out for hot weather camping, but it was still the perfect day and a perfect celebration of our anniversary.  We laughed pretty much all afternoon, we enjoyed the peace and quiet of being out of the city; but most of all, we enjoyed the adventure together.  There’s no place I’d rather be – sun, melted food, ants and all.