The Theory of Camping (Part 4)
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Vegas it’s that you know what the future holds when by 7:00 a.m. it’s 80 degrees out. Out of all the things we bought at REI, an air mattress wasn’t one of them; so, contorted from a hard night’s sleep and gasping from the sweltering greenhouse effect of our tent, it must have looked like the birth of Frankenstein as I tried to escape out of our nylon dome.
Finally, I felt my luck starting to change as Richard unfolded a Coleman grill and announced he’d be cooking bacon and eggs for breakfast. (Bacon … what a delicacy.) I’m starting to believe I’m creating an unnatural association between Chad’s siblings and food. They always have us over for barbeques, dinner, or to watch UFC fights (after eating an obscene amount of food.) Luckily these instances always fall on weekends.
By 9:00 a.m. it was pretty evident we needed to find water in order to avoid perishing in the hot Utah sun. We followed the sound of the river and ended up in a nice little area deep enough to play in, but not deep enough to be swept to your death. (I guess death is everywhere in Utah.) I was applying waterproof sunscreen every 60 minutes, but after eight hours, all seven of us had a deep pink sheen. Particularly my feet, since applying sunscreen while standing in the water doesn’t do a whole heck of a lot for them.
Sunday morning we packed up camp and my weekend started to improve. Chad and I stopped at a small restaurant called “The Pioneer Lodge” and had the best breakfast I think I’ve ever had, served by the happiest guy I think I’ve ever seen. Afterward we walked next door to the famed elk petting zoo … or whatever. Basically you put $2.00 in a box and take a small bag of elk feed. And those animals know exactly what you’re up to when you walk over to that box. After emptying my bag of alfalfa pellets and thoroughly contracting “elk hand” (I don’t even know what they got all over me), I noticed a sign that read “Please don’t get too close to the buffalo -- they will charge the fence and HURT you.” A few steps further up was a lone buffalo, his head (which was half as big as me) hung low, standing quietly under a small, dry, branchless excuse for a tree.
“I think you’re just misunderstood, Mr. Buffalo. I’d be irritable too in this heat.”
Finally, homeward bound we were. I still hadn’t seen any polygamists, although I’d been looking all weekend. I did notice, however, the rather large square footage of most of the houses in the area as well as the segregated plots of land surrounded cozily by only three or four “neighbors”. You’d think polygamy would be much more popular in a city like Las Vegas, where each home has 10 immediate neighbors. Less land, more houses. No one would be the wiser … theoretically speaking.
Precocious entrepreneur, workaholic and a rabid perfectionist Crystal Starlight knows a thing or two about getting ahead at a young age. Email her at [email protected]