My Home Away from Home

The weather turned absolutely fantastic, a bit cooler and less humid, with bright sunshine, blue skies, and the occasional puffy white cloud. I had been keeping an eye on the forecast, and I had scheduled Monday as a vacation day, so that my husband and I could go out on another overnight backpacking adventure.

So we packed up our gear on Sunday morning and were on our merry way. This time, we remembered our chairs, hooray! We had a quick hot breakfast at McDonald's, and by early afternoon, we had settled into one of our favorite backpack sites in Sproul, the same place we visited last weekend, just because it is so quiet and peaceful there.

I immediately set my tent up, as that was really the only "work" that remained yet in my day. In this photo, you can see my campsite, featuring my old stand-by Kelty pack on the left, and my tent and chair on the right. There on my chair was the book I was reading (yes, there's always a book), and hanging from the chair arm was my camera bag (within arm's reach, of course).

We do not celebrate the occasion of 9/11, but we did remember the events of this day respectfully. You may notice a blue frisbee on the ground to the right of my chair, where a Tiny Tiger (the same one as in this earlier blip) was showing his respects via the display of a small American flag (long may it wave o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave); I've included a close-up in the extras.

The evenings are growing dark much earlier now, and you would want to have your tent set up by 8 pm at the latest. When dusk fell, we lit a small LED lantern, which we hung from a nearby tree. It was very cheery and encouraging, and provided a lovely atmosphere.

For the evening's major entertainment, we played one of my favorite CDs ever on the iPod - Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band Live at Madison Square Garden in 2000, which runs to about 2 and a half hours long.

As Nils Lofgren jammed his heart out on the guitar for one of my all-time favorites, Youngstown, I played along on air guitar. And as night fell, I danced and sang along happily, with no stage but the woods, no spotlight but the shafts of moonlight that shone down on my face through the trees.

The soundtrack: Springsteen and Crew (with NILS!!!!), Youngstown, from Live at Madison Square Gardens. This is the best version of this song that is available anywhere. Turn it up and jam along, you'll be glad you did!  :-)