Camping on the Mississippi

This past weekend was my camping weekend. I used to camp a little more often, maybe three or four times a year. But that has changed and now I only get in one camping trip. But it is my favorite camping trip. We camp out on an island in the Mississippi River near Trempealeau. Nate normally organizes this trip. This year we had Nate, Eric, Borky, Schoen, Jota, Tim, Bob, Ryan Miller, Doug, Ross and myself. We all felt bad for Nate, he organized the whole trip, but ended up getting whatever his son had and was sick nearly the entire weekend. Nate met Ryan and I at the boat launch Friday afternoon. When we got to the island, he just laid down to rest. Basically all of Friday night, and most of Saturday, Nate was either sleeping, puking or going to the can. Here we are taking advantage of Nate's illness and condition.We tried to get a couple of kites to fly Friday night, but all we managed to do was get them caught in the trees. Here is Ryan trying to get a kite out of a tree. Nice work by Ryan with a fairly athletic move of riding down the tree.


Here is Borky flexing after hitting a couple golf balls. Here is Doug taking a poke at a barge with a golf ball as it drove past. I don't think it was this barge, but Doug was able to hit another one with one of his drives. We also launched a couple potatoes at the barges, with a potato launcher but never really got very close. Saturday afternoon, to get some exercise I swam across the channel to the other side. Apparently Eric took a couple swings and nearly hit me as I swam across.
When we got to the island, we quickly noticed a hornet's nest in the tree. Friday night, Bob eventually climbed the tree, poured gas on the nest, then lit the nest on fire with a torch. Here is the Hindenburg like picture of the hornet's nest going up in flames. Here is Bob in the tree setting fire to the hornets nest.


Friday night Tim and Bob lined up a number of bottle rockets (kid burners) to set off with torches. As you can see they must have lit off 200 or 300.
Here is an action photo of the bottle rockets going off. I think I got his at least 3 or 4 times while taking pictures.

Here is Jota Saturday afternoon after jumping in the river. Jota sported the underwear look for a good share of the afternoon.
Saturday in the late afternoon Nate was feeling a little better. He sat down and made a homemade rocket. Here it is before launch.

Here is the launch in a movie format. My camera work isn't the greatest. As soon as the rocket goes in the air, the camera is aimed at the sand. I did better on the next one.

Since all we really did on the camping trip was eat, hit golf balls, launch potatoes, lit fireworks and drink beer. I wanted to build a beer tower out of the cans of beer on the island. This was what I had constructed by Saturday afternoon. I sort of gave up after that, but I would estimate it at 8 feet tall.

Saturday night is always tenderloin on the grill. Here is Tim serving up the meat.
Saturday night we had a decent fire, you can see here the campfire and then behind a cardboard tube stuffed with newspaper that we got to lit up like a torch.Sunday morning we all packed up to head back home. After having his tent all packed up, Eric realized that he left his wallet and car keys inside his tent, so here is Eric unpacking his tent.