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I love/hate this wagon.

It was, admittedly, not the best camping trip I've ever taken. But despite people being unnecessarily tense in the beginning, I was pretty damn excited to be going out somewhere. After following some questionable directions and almost missing an exciting turn, we made it to Lost Maples.

Which was actually a pretty nice place.

The trail to the campsite wasn't difficult or particularly long and the creek that weaved across it was a welcome change from the usual sight of bicyclists weaving across sidewalks in front of you. There were some cliff faces that ran along the length of the trail and, really for the first time in a while that I can remember, I could hear the birds chirping and singing in the trees around us and the frogs making frog noises down by the pond. Even though we were dragging an absurdly heavy wagon and a deluxe wooden edition of Scrabble and too many things in general and camping completely surrounded by other people, it was nice to finally be getting out into nature.

Of course, by the time we finished moving things between the cars and the camp site it was getting dark and we had to start making dinner.

There just wasn't enough time to explore there, which sucks. I wanted to set off down some other trails and go explore the rest of the park but nobody wanted to do it at night and when some people went up the giant hill behind us, I was already pretty tired from everything else.

The next morning we went to Enchanted Rock and were much smarter about what we brought with us, and only had to make one trip. It seemed like things were going much better, albeit a bit rushed. We climbed up the rock, didn't really take a second to enjoy being there, and went straight through the cave. Which is always fun. Trying to bring people through something like that, I mean. It was still fun when we came out in the rain and tried to navigate the steep face down. There were some spots where I actually felt pretty uncomfortable, and I like to consider myself a pretty adventuring guy.

The rain never stopped and it made dinner actually pretty miserable, but somewhere under all of that misery I was still having fun. It was how adventures were supposed to be. Unpredictable. The adventure was how you responded to terrible things happening. Like thunderstorms.

And now I'm home, unpacked, clean, and exhausted. The only thing is that I don't feel like I just took a nice camping trip. I feel like I just ran around and stressed out for a couple of days in the woods and came home. We got to the parks, set up camp, ate, slept, and went home. Where was the part where we sat down and relaxed? There really wasn't a point in the trip where I felt like taking pictures of anything, which kind of sucks because that's never happened before. I don't know. It feels like I just missed out on the whole purpose of the trip I just took. I'm still wound up and itching for some kind of adventure and relaxing nature time. And now it doesn't sound like we're going to take anymore camping trips.

That's not exactly news I like to hear.

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