White sands, white sands, white sands. Large white dunes, also a large white sun, which makes for an experience in heat and dehydration. Especially when the hydration of choice for the night is a twelve dollar bottle of tequila. We arrived at the park at about 4:30, parked our car around five and then arrived at our campsite at approximately 7. It took us about two hours to travel the 3/4s of a mile from the campground to the site due to the size of the shifting, ever shifting sands. Also, our complete ignorance of the signage led us immediately in the wrong direction.Eventually we found our specified inter-dune area (number 4) and collapsed. We could only lie still for so long though before the urge to throw the football across large, white sand dunes overcame us. Several spectacular diving catches were made before the sunset made us rest at the top of the tallest dune and watch the colors. The view in all directions was of peaks of sand and shadowed vales. Also of other scattered campers like ourselves, each at the top of their very own dune, but none closer than 1/2 a mile. Ant size. Isolation and communion, we waved, but they did not wave back.
We made camp and dinner. We walked the dunes under moonlight and got lost shouting "Jan! Jan! JAN! JAN!" only to be greeted with the angry retort of "Whaaaat?!" that led us to camp, but had Jan expecting us to tear him away from his book and sleeping bag to see some inane thing that seemed important to drunks. I finished the bottle of tequila and woke up much later, far away from the others, in a sleeping bag, but not a tent. I could not comprehend what I had done to be exiled from the tent. WHAT HAD I DONE?
Apparently, it was what I would not do. Mainly, when asked to please come inside the tent I refused and insisted that I liked sleeping where I was (which was on the sand, no sleeping bag, away from camp). Waking up was a bitch, too. It gets hot early in the desert, yo.
xoxo,
pbr
No comments:
Post a Comment