Clifftop 2009

Today we left for Clifftop. I planned diligently, squirreled things into a tidy heap for weeks, made food, made lists, made it the most organized trip ever. Got on the road two minutes ahead of schedule – just in time to get us there a few hours before dark when it would be nice & cool for setting up camp and finding friends, two minutes early EVEN after a mad half-hour search and rescue of Andy Floppinberg (and two worried phonecalls to places that she might have been left behind)…realized ten minutes from home that the only thing we’d forgotten was one of our camping lanterns …not a big deal. Picked up a couple of last minute things in town and Hazel was almost asleep, sure to remain that way for the whole two and a half hours of driving that lay ahead, banjos and fiddles comin’ through the ipod, killing time until the real things put me to sleep later this evening.

And then we hit traffic at construction and sat still for awhile. And then our air conditioner died. And then we hit more traffic at an accident, where we sat at a standstill for 45 minutes while sweat poured in buckets from my child’s head and she kicked me repeatedly and I actually YELLED at her (Mikey’s banjo & guitar get to ride shotgun). And then we heard a weird rattle under our hood and smelled something funny for about four and a half seconds, that may have been us or may have been the huge truck we were behind. And then we made calls for car advice. And then we stopped at an auto parts store to check our coolant (fine) and belts (fine) and figured we must just need freon in our AC (deal with it later) and decided to get on our way and just set up the bare minimum of camp in the dark and get totally settled in the morning. And then we needed to make an impossibly fast dinner stop and chose Taco Bell. Couldn’t find it (seriously? we’re 15 minutes from home), did a u-turn at a bank and stopped for some cash while we were there. Called friends to let them know we were on our way south, and that if something else happened traffic-wise we might not make it to the campground before they stopped letting new people in for the night – if so, knowing they have a group this week, a random tent in their yard in the morning would be us. Weird rattling noise started again as we idled in the bank parking lot, talking on the phone. Drove next door to a(nother) auto parts store. Employee and random customer and Mikey stare at the innards of our car for 15 minutes. Still nothing visibly wrong and it won’t make the rattling noise of course. Mikey is very mad. Hazel is SCREAMING. It has been three hours since we left home and we are only actually twenty minutes away. We should have set up camp an hour ago. Walt tells us to bring our car to his house so he can look at it. We do. The noise magically happens but nothing is going to fall off of it anytime soon, he says. We each drink a beer in his driveway. I get 27 bug bites, Hazel gets none. We go to Black Bear as a consolation prize (and since we’re saving the $30 we would have paid to camp tonight). Hazel freaks. We order our food to go. I hug an old friend I haven’t seen since 2006. I iphotograph a giant yellow moth laying eggs in the parking garage. We drive back home and unpack a single toothbrush, a binky and four beers.

Today we came home from Clifftop.

Try again tomorrow.