Regrets and second chances.

I'm giving myself ten minutes to write whatever I want here right now, because I need to start my lab report but I just can't seem to get settled. Last week I was on spring break, and I worked 40 hours over the week for spring break camps. I got the five year old group though, and I came home dead tired every day, so I didn't read any of the ten chapters I needed to get through. I went to see the Killers on Saturday, and they were great, but my feet weren't doing great and we didn't get a phenomenal spot. But, in line before we got in, I saw a shirt a girl was wearing that read "The desert is calling and I must go". Below that, was a black and white image of a desert with the caption 'Death Valley, California". And I don't know why, but when I saw that, it really struck a chord in me.

There is just something so magical about the wilderness. I'm romanticizing it, of course, but being close to nature is something that is incredibly important to me. I don't know how to describe it exactly, but I always have a yearning for wide expanses at night and in the twilight or at dawn. I have an opportunity to go camping this weekend with my family, but I still need to catch up on reading because I have a test next week. I know I'm not going to read if I'm out there, but I also know this is my last chance in a while to go camping, and my previous attempt ended badly...

I don't actually think I've written about that yet. The wound still feels fresh, even though it was weeks ago, so maybe this will help to accept it.

I had a camping trip out to Joshua Tree planned a few weeks ago, we would leave right as class got out and arrive just after dark on Thursday night, since we all have relatively empty Fridays. We were delayed though, and hit traffic on the drive, so what should have been a three hour trip turned into four.

We got in through the 29 palms entrance late, maybe around 11, and the ranger station at the entrance to the park said "ALL CAMPGROUNDS FULL".

I was floored.

  All Campgrounds full? I'd run into this sign last year too, taking my boyfriend out here with my family, but that was on a Friday. Surely there had to be some spots left. I remember days when we could roll in whenever and our biggest worry was getting a campground at Jumbo with a nice view. And before I can remember, my parents only used to go to Jumbo if Ryan was especially full! At risk of sounding old and curmudgeonly at 18, I will say this: Times have changed, and not for the better, and I'll bet my bottom dollar Coachella is part of it.

Anyway.

Now we had little option, so we drove into the park and started looking. Cause sometimes those signs aren't quite accurate.

Jumbo, no luck. Belle, no luck. White Tank, no luck. I halfway expected this, because I mean, the sign said full. But still. At this point I was freaking out internally, and my friends definitely sensed that. It was my first time driving into the park ever, I was the only one who had been there before and we were out of cell service in the dark. Luckily there aren't too many roads in Joshua tree and they have good signs, but I was a little nervous. So after checking those three, we turned around and got on the big road. The one that goes all the way out to Cottonwood. That's usually where we get lucky with spots, if the north sites are full, Cottonwood is usually so out of the way they have something.

 That was a very long, very stressful drive in the dark, made longer and more stressful by the fact that I ha no idea how long it would take or if there would be spots. We get there and drive around both loops (I could have sworn there were 3), and... nothing.

I was floored. Again.

 We decided to head into Indio for the night and get a hotel rather than driving three hours back home. I let Nat take over for driving and texted my mom that we were getting a hotel. Most hotels didn't have vacancies that could fit three people, so we decided on a little motel that my mom didn't like the look of. So of course, she got up in the middle of the night (the MIDDLE of the night) and called around. She ended up getting us a suite room in a more upscale Best Western for a discounted price. Two rooms, three queen beds. It was, admittedly, a nice end to an otherwise disappointing night.

Of course, the thought that Joshua Tree wouldn't be full up by nightfall really shows my naivety, but the next morning we ventured into the park and found a spot at cottonwood no problem. It was actually the same spot we had found last year with my boyfriend. I was elated, ad we promptly set up camp.

 After setting up and settling in, we ventured into the park. We decided to see Barker Dam first, but the car decided we were getting gas first. So, after gas and cell service, we went to Barker Dam and ate lunch. It was really quite windy, so some of the fun was taken out of it, with coarse sand pelting any exposed skin as if to say "you're not welcome here". We still had fun anyway. We walked out to the dam and around the back and saw some petroglyphs and took some pictures and had a beautiful time anyway.

After the hike, we debated going to jumbo to play some desert bocce out in the rocks, but we were all exceptionally tired, so we decided to go back and make dinner.

On the drive back from the main part of the park, there is a cholla garden along the side of the road, with a path winding in and out of a patch of cholla, and it really looks magical in the sunset. There were, sadly, some clouds that gave me a little knot in my stomach heading over the mountains, and the cold wind was still buffeting us. I remained outwardly optimistic as much as I could, but mentioned it to my friends.

We drove back to camp to make dinner, warm in or car. We arrived back at camp to find that the wind there had been so strong it had uprooted all ten stakes in our tent and managed to roll it away, along with the three bags, water bottles, and camping gear inside. We fished the tent out of the bushes and set it up again, this time with literally every stake we had. The tent was still bending and creaking in a way that didn't look quite healthy though. We started up dinner and managed to make rice before the wind grew so bad the heat blew away as soon as it was produced, and we couldn't cook the rest of our food.

The clouds were rolling in thicker and it seemed more and more likely that it was going to rain. As darkness fell, I felt the first patters of rain, and the nervousness that had been sitting in the pit of my stomach leapt into my throat.

I was the only experienced campers with two friends from school that had never been here before. We were out of cell service with no way to know how long this would last. The winds were blowing so hard that the tent was creaking like it was going to break, and we had no dinner to eat because the stove blew out. Our tent was sitting at a wash at the bottom of the campground and if it rained hard enough, all the water would come running down there. and possibly flood my nice family tent.

I considered all of this at once, in a panic, and decided to run for it. In the rain my friends and I broke down camp in literal record time and drove out of there, probably looking like fools to the other campers. With Nat driving, when we got to cell service, I texted my family of my shameful defeat and we drove the three hours to get home. We arrived late that night, windswept and shocked and still muddy, and told my family about the weekend, then slept in my house overnight. The next day, I took my friends back, then retreated home to lick my wounds. in the comfort of my own home.

I felt--and still do feel--like a failure for this trip. I checked the weather beforehand but I didn't check it that day as we were leaving and I didn't check the wind, just rain forecast. The night we left, the rain passed pretty quickly, and I felt foolish, but I kept reminding myself it was still windy enough to blow away a well staked tent with three heavy bags and a few heavy bottles in it, but when we got home at midnight we checked the weather again and it was predicted to stop by 1AM and be beautiful for the rest of the weekend. If I had just toughed it out, we could have ad a fantastic weekend. Instead, I got tears.

I also feel immensely bad because I cost everyone so much money. My friend put down $40 for the nights there and we didn't use any of it. My mom also paid for our hotel the first night and filled the tank before we left, and my friends all pitched in for food and firewood. And it all came to nothing.

I mean, I guess all of it came to a good story and a learning experience. But it really feels like nothing.

This has been very cathartic to write, but even now, months later, I'm still not over it and I don't think I really ever will be, but the most I can do now is move ahead and learn from this mistake for later trips.