it was 25 degrees when we woke up…

There were a ton of reasons not to go camping this weekend: It’s November. It’s cold. It takes too much effort. Most of the parks are closed. We don’t have any camping gear… and on and on. However, we went anyway because we’re trying not to let dumb excuses stop us from doing things. We also thought of and focused on the one reason to go: it would be fun. So, last minute, we borrowed some gear, found an open campsite and packed up the jeep. We went to Dingmans Ferry, a weird name for a campsite by the Delaware Water Gap. Since we were practically the only ones there, we got to pick our own site! We picked lucky number 113, a prime river front spot. At our site, Davey  found a rope and repelled down the hill to find more logs for our fire. He’s so strong 🙂

Then we went for a hike. And saw a pretty waterfall.

Here’s home sweet home!

And here’s what we woke up to the next morning:

Frost!!! Even the cornfield behind our campsite was frosted! Oh and the evening before, there was a bear in that cornfield. It’s kind of weird to have a cornfield next to a campsite, if you ask me. Cornfields creep me out. They remind me of the movie Signs. But thank God no aliens or bears came out of the corn.

The cold wasn’t so bad once we got a fire going. And the chilly weather made for pretty fog on the river! 

The cold also wasn’t so bad because I had ice water in my nalgene the next morning! But I held it over the fire to melt it because I don’t like ice in my water. It hurts my teeth. But it was still cool.

We got up at 6:30 while it was still dark out because we were so cold and wanted to make a fire. Then we remembered it was daylight savings and so we actually got up at 5:30. So much for sleeping in and enjoying the extra hour! We like to think we got an extra hour of fire 🙂
Ok. I know this next picture probably looks really weird. But I’m just roasting a biscuit. Davey wanted biscuits and gravy for breakfast and I tried to cook the biscuits on a rock like an Indian woman, but they just kept getting burnt, so we put it on a sick like a marshmallow and it worked great!

And Davey got his gravy.

He was one happy camper 😉

Fuled by buttery biscuits and stick-to-your-ribs sausage gravy, we set out to hike the AT, which is something we’ve both always wanted to do.

So, was this trip worth it, you ask? YES! We’re so glad that we didn’t let a bunch of potential negative reasons stop us from doing something fun!

How about you? Is there something you’ve been wanting to do, but instead of doing it, you’re focusing on all of  the reasons why you shouldn’t do it or why it wouldn’t work out? I challenge you, think of one good reason–just one– and focus on that. Then just do like NIKE and do it! You’ll be glad you did!