Badin Lake - September '09

Everyone arrives at the Epworth parking lot at o cold thirty. We happily hop into the cars for our uncomfortable ride to the hiking ground. We get there, and after stretching our legs and arguing about who is going to be the leader of the hike, we stumble our way onto the trail. Little did we know, we were in for a very long hike, and a very rainy night. About halfway through the first segment of the walk, we stopped and saw a campground full of trash. Furiously battling the groans and whines of the kids, the adults finally manage to get us to pick up the trash and move on. After about one hundred yards of walking, we see another embodiment of terror, another trash filled campsite! We clean it up as well and move on. For the next hour, we stop every hundred yards to pick up after some party. We then settle into a park for a relaxing and almost well deserved lunch, followed by fishing. After depositing our trash into the bank of  unpleasant smells, we continue on our waste- filled journey. After another two and a half miles of hiking and cleaning, we find our campsite. After a walk up a hill, which most of us found more strenuous than the actual hike, we open up our packs in hopes that we could set up our tents and rest. Sadly, some of us couldn’t enjoy this time, because our tent poles seemed to be missing, broken, or left in cars. For those who had this problem, they found themselves exploring the arts of building makeshift tents and/or begging for room in other tents. Once these problems are dealt with, everyone has a delicious dinner and we challenge another troop to a game of capture the flag. We are about to start, but wet drops from the sky plummeting toward us result in everyone spending a good amount of time under a rain fly. People eventually migrate to their tents and sleep. The next day, we hike as fast as we could and crossed the finish line to find our trophies awaiting us: the cars.

We had finished out first backpacking trip of the season.