Geared up for Adventure

Miles today: don't know, we're out of cell service (update: 191)

Theme music: Ke$ha, NIN, Alice in Chains

Uneventful day today. We got out the door and went to Reeds Gap campground in PA, Julie's most favorite campground ever. It has only 14 sites, it's on the water, and it has hot showers. Fucking winner. 

Look at those mossy rocks behind our tent. 

Oh, and this is what our tent looks like with poles. Same campsite as last time, when we forgot the poles and slept in hammocks and the truck. 👍🏻 We left the rain fly off bc there was 0% chance of rain. <cue doom music>

There was surprisingly little traffic getting out of town on a holiday weekend. After we got north of Baltimore on the highway, we took secondary roads to Carlisle, PA. From there, Julie tried out her new gps. It's an adventure motorcycling gps. For adventurous people going on adventures. (Adventure motorcycling is combo highway & offroad, but there are a lot of suburban warriors who trick out their bikes and to only take them to Starbucks.) Anyway, my gps has an adventure button next to the "go" button. For the discerning adventurer. That takes you to adventure routing mode, complete with a slider to select your adventure level (1-4). I just went to take a picture of it for you and it really is called Garmin Adventurous Routing. Oh my god. 

So we went with Adventure Level 2 bc it was the right amount of time and included the road Julie wanted to make sure we went on. Well, it took us in circles around Carlisle. Like I'm not joking. It felt like the town would never end. So I was griping about it being more like Adventure Level 1, and Jaron asked if I just wanted to go back on the interstate. (No, that's Adventure Level 0 🙄) 

Btw, I'm not saying we don't fall in to the adventure-riding-to-Starbucks category. We definitely have bikes more capable than what we do with them. But we usually are able to take them camping at least 1/yr, which is why we got them. But the term "adventure" in motorcycling just seems like it's getting outta control. 

I didn't know about Garmin Adventurous Routing when I got this gps. But tomorrow we'll find out what Adventure Level 4 is. 

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Weeeelllll we got a little more adventure than we planned for later in the evening. We were chilling and reading in front of the fire after dinner and s'mores, and all the food and most personal items had been put away. I hear something with my spidey hearing and look at Jaron. I say, that's some weird sounding wind. It can't be rain, bc the forecast (and Jaron checks many sources) said 0% chance. We both look around in bewilderment and feel raindrops on our faces and make eye contact, speechless. We are kind of stunned for a second until Julie says "rain fly, stat" and we jump up. Jaron gets the rain fly from his luggage and Julie throws it over the tent, which already has a fine coating of mist on it, nooooo! 😱 We fumble with it for a bit and get it oriented correctly. Jaron starts hammering in stakes and Julie puts the rest of the things away. I noticed that the text on the rain fly was backwards bc it was inside out. Oh well.

Then we both grab our rain jackets & pants and fumble in to them. My little camp shoes aren't cutting it, so I put my motorcycle boots back on. Great time to find out that my rain pants don't fit over them. Julie tries to arrange her motorcycle gear and helmet so that it doesn't get wet inside. All in all it wasn't so bad since most of our things were already put away. Seems like this is a good time to pay $1 for a weather report from Garmin, too.

Julie has been putting off doing final nightly ablutions so decides that the bath house is a great place to be right now. I took my sweet time, thinking that this 0% rainstorm would pass quickly. But, I came back out to find that the rain got worse. The rain was going sideways and between that, my headlamp reflecting off of it, and my rain jacket hood I actually had a hard time finding my way back to our campsite and had to turn around a couple of times. 0% my ass.

Still no weather report, ugh. I hand things to Jaron from outside the tent and get my rain gear off and get in. I had put layers on bc it was getting chilly, and now I'm all hot and bothered from all of this running around.

Still no weather report! What the fuck!? It's been a solid half hour of rain now. It took like 10 the only other time I have used this service. Must be the shitty signal from all of the rain. We read for a bit and mutter about 0% until the Garmin beeps. It's been raining for about an hour now and well over 30 min since I woke up the Garmin hamsters. The long-awaited weather report is here! Now we can find out when this unexpected and unjust rainstorm will be over.