Camping trip - Day 1 (July 1)

This has taken a long time coming. I have been procratinating to blog about my camping trip but at last I have got down to write this. Harsh, my ever resourceful friend, informed me that some of his friends were planning on a camping trip and asked whether I would be interested. You bet I was but I was dilly-dallying since the trip was planned for Jul 1-3 and I and Dhaval were planning to move to our new apartment on the 1st. Well, we talked to our new landlord and he had no problem with us moving in a day or two earlier. So we moved on 29th June and I was all set for my camping trip.

The masterminds of this trip were Amol, Ranjana and Candice since they had prior experience of camping. The remaining enthusiasts were Chetan, Mukul, Amol's sister Vatsala who was vacationing in the US and ofcourse, Harsh and I. I had the luxury of just accompanying them for the trip without having to worry about buying or planning anything. All I had to do was buy a sleeping bag and a raincoat and pack my stuff.

So Harsh and Amol went together to rent the mini-van for our trip first thing in the morning of July 1st, a Saturday. We were supposed to leave around 9 am and so I got ready at the decided time. As things would have it, I didn't realize that we would be running on IST (Indian Stretchable Time). I reached Harsh's place at 10:30 and by the time the other guys reached it was past 11. We all got busy stuffing everything into the van (which turned out to be smaller than we imagined) and tying our sleeping bags to the top of our van. Here is a snap of Mukul after satisfactorily tying the sleeping bags.

So off we went, the seven of us, to Rochester which was on the way to our destination to pick up our 8th member, Candice. We were going to the Adirondacks mountain ranges which was around 350 miles to the north-east of Buffalo.

Only Amol and Harsh could drive the vehicle since only their names were enrolled in the contract. We reached Rochester in good time but got lost for sometime before we reached Candice's place (thanks to modern technology using cellphones and Candice guiding us by looking at an online map on her laptop). Candice had recently moved to Rochester for her internship and we all took a look at her apartment. Her roomie was an American and look at the number of pairs of shoes she has!!!

We hadn't had lunch till then and so after joining the highway, we halted at a service station for lunch but it was so crowded with tourists, that we decided to eat at the next service station which happened to be 40 miles further away. After lunch, our real trip started. The girls were sitting in the backside and they were constantly complaining that the seats were cramped and uncomfortable.

Whenever we made a halt, we would change seats, like we were playing musical chairs. After a lot of leg-pulling and bantering episodes, we finally reached Lake Placid indicating that we were pretty close to the Adirondacks. Vatsala took over as the navigator, a job she became adept at and hence I gave her the nickname 'GPS'. She was expertly guiding her brother but try as we may, we couldn't find the way to our intended stop. We were searching for a road to our right but when we eventually did find one it turned out to be a private property. After wandering around for some more time we reached the banks of a lake which was jam-packed with people who had come to watch pre-July 4 fireworks. We did not stay there but decided to look for a camping ground. Unlike in India, you cannot just set up a tent anywhere you want unless it is designated as a camping site. On our way, we could see the fireworks from a distance and it was really magnificent. We reached a camping ground but it seemed to be full. The guard there, a sweet old man, gave us directions to another camping ground and so we made our way back and again saw the fireworks at the exact same spot. We finally decided to fill petrol in our van and to replenish our stomach at a convenience store. We bought some muffins and a couple of cheese pizzas which we microwaved at the store and greedily consumed. We also asked for directions from an employee at the store. Despite the tiredness and the frustration, we found time to click some snaps.

After refuelling, we set of to search for a new camping ground. We drove a couple of miles and Harsh slowed down at a stretch since we thought that we were close to a camping ground. A car came behind us and Harsh signalled them to overtake us. To our horror, it turned that it was a cop and he flashed his lights. Harsh manouvered the vehicle to the right, switched off the vehicle and put the blinkers on. We all were discussing what to say. The cop walked toward our vehicle with his torch on and knocked on the window, Harsh rolled the window down and explained the problem to the officer. Meanwhile, another officer came to the passenger side with his torch and was visually scanning the whole vehicle and made a mental note of the number of passengers inside. The officer turned out to be very helpful and on seeing this, Vatsala started asking some questions too. The cop did have difficulty understanding her Mumbaiyya English but eventually he said that our best bet would be a site which was just 2 miles down the road. Thankfully, the cops let us go (our only conceivable fault was driving at 30 mph on a 55mph stretch). We managed to find the site and after locating the forest ranger we registered ourselves and he was gracious enough to give us a spot to set up our two tents. We parked our van such that it could throw light on the spot and we went about putting up our tent.

The tents were pretty easy to set up and was completely waterproof. As usual we had the enthusiasm of clicking more photographs and here is a view of the 2 tents.

Some more photographs:
We said our good-nights and went into our tents. There was absolutely no problem of mosquitoes or bugs and the ground was pretty flat too. I am a poor sleeper and I knew that I would have a tough time adjusting to these conditions. Turned out that I was right and had great difficulty sleeping. I could hear the thunder and the rain. The thunders were so loud that it felt like I was sitting in a theater with an excellent surround sound system. It was both scary and exciting at the same time to be in the midst of nature because you never know where the next lightning would strike.

Watch this space for the exciting details of day 2.