Tag Archives: ed vankast

LIVE

buzzkill

fair warning

Wandered the canyon socializing today.

Sam, our friend from Jefferson City, has arrived and set up his campsite near to “the gang’s”.

Sam works for the department of conservation and is the “uber-outdoorsman”. He’s great to go on hikes with. Sam is able to point at just about animal or insect along the way and call out it’s latin name and regurgitate factoids about it’s eating habits.

broken ankle

The evening was the big costume party and contest.

xenohomo‘s squash styling won first place.

Silly costumes abounded and the mulled wine warmed our tummies.

We were starting to loosen up and get into the groove of the party when news came over our walkie-talkie that Karl, one of the members of our group, has tripped on a rock and broke his ankle.

We raced back to the campsite and stuck around until the ambulance came from the closest town. Total time for crisis management, 3 hours. A definite damper on the evening.

Yanked from party-mode, we returned to our campsite and spent the remainder of the evening reciting dumb movie dialouge over the walkie-talkies with Bouvier to entertain ourselves.

mojobear documented Karl’s break claiming it would be not-blog worthy.

LIVE

craft time

David Bouvier ed ponders the pumpkin

The rest of our gang has arrived. They weren’t able to get a cabin so they’ve set up a tent site on the other side of the canyon.

Ed, obviously, has brought every cooking gadget known to man and has configured half of their site into a commercial kitchen. The Four-burner, incredibly hight BTU cooking grill looked somehow appropriate on the picnic table they snagged and drug into their site to serve as a workstation.

In the following days, Ed will make some incredible meals.

Part of the activities for the Driller Bear’s run is a Haloween Costume and jack-o-lantern carving contest. We nab our pumpkins and go to the dining pavilion and get cracking. There’s this funky “craft-time” feeling to the activity that sets off memories of enduring different day camps as a child.

For a fun activity, the guys get awfully consumed by the task at hand. We’re all ferociously competitive.

We decide that “carving pumpkins” sounds too arcane and coin the term “Squash Styling”.

Bouvier, the designated “cub scout mom” of our group, tends the fire and holds court. Between giggling and recounting stories, he barks placement orders for the carved pumpkins which we placed in the woods around their campsite.

The other campers are starting to refer to us as “the over-the-top nuts from St. Louis”.

I still haven’t touched my laptop.. I still couldn’t not not-blog.