The Porkies

A few days after I got home, I went camping with my mom for a week in Porcupine Mountain State Park in Michigan. Not a ton to report here. We just went camping.




I suppose I should recommend this park to other people. It was actually really incredible. The campground we stayed at had nice (!) showers, plug-ins for electricity, and it was RIGHT on the lake, which was nice--wake up at sunrise, go watch the sun over the lake, come back for some coffee (made in a cookstove) and toasted bread with cheese and peri-peri sauce (toast made in the cookstove and 90% burnt). We absolutely did not need the cookstove. People had microwaves. In fact, it looked kind of weird. But it was also pretty great. I love our little cookstove.

There are campsites where you can "backpack in", meaning that you have to carry all your stuff with you (which I realize is how MOST people go camping). That way, you can stay in a grouping of pine trees on the lake and listen to the water all night, or you can camp on the mountain itself and wake up to a gigantic gorge full of trees. It is really pretty.




The other thing is that Porcupine Mountain State Park does not really maintain the trails throughout the camping season--I think maybe they do cleaning once a year, right in the very early spring. So by the time August rolls around, there are weeds, bushes, swamp grass, etc., EVERYWHERE. It can make some of the trails a bit difficult to hike, and another few of the trails have a lot of sharp rocks. And finally, of course you have the constant high-pitched whine of the mosquito in your ear. For some reason, they never bothered my mother, only me. I have tried FOREVER to figure this out. Is it body temperature? Smell? Amount of sweat? Heart rate? Skin color? I don't know. I guess it's not important, because most of these things I have no chance of changing. Might as well learn to live with the mosquitoes.

Another slightly sad thing: As you can see in the last photo above, after this camping trip, my camera kind of started to take a shit. The lens no longer properly attached to the body, and I was having to take it off and put it back on every time I wanted to take a picture, which was troublesome, but even worse: the light sensor seemed to be broken. Pretty much all the photos after this except for the ones with really excellent light are really, really grainy.

I just tried to start up my camera the other day because I heard about this solar storm that was happening and how we were supposed to be able to see the northern lights. I wanted to take a picture. But my camera wouldn't even turn on. Looks like it is dead for good. So... now I'm in the market for a new camera. Maybe a Canon this time. We'll see (if I can afford it).