Bell Camping Trip

Good ole Zions camp had a Stake thing on Friday night where you could stay in a cabin for free if you participated in the service project the following morning. Mom was not so keen to leave on a camping trip right when she got home from work, so I convinced Richard to go with me. We drove over listening to STYX and One Republic, checked in with the camp director lady, played some football, and then proceeded to our cabin. Then, we gallivanted around the trails, rope swing, and lake. We constructed boats and launched them from the dock, then rocked the dock until the waves capsized them. Richard's Black Pearly was decidedly more awesome looking than my Feathery Falcon, but I believe mine lasted much longer against the waves. He may have also won the pole-climbing competition. We finally returned to the cabin and played cards while consuming pringles, pudding, apple juice, and granola bars. I won egyptian ratscrew and canasta, while Richard took the blackjack tournament.
Then, realizing we could see our breath, we set to work making a fire. After about a dozen attempts and several creative methods, we dejectedly played some more cards. About an hour later, the cold became intolerable and Richard stood up, stuffed all the failed kindling into a plastic bag, lit the bag on fire, threw it into the fireplace and commanded it to burn. It actually worked quite well and we gradually put bigger and bigger sticks in it until we had a rather substantial heat source. We sat in front of the fire and swapped manly stories until 2:30 in the morning. We were supposed to be up and out by 8am, so I set my phone alarm.
We received a rather rude awakening in the morning. My phone alarm went off, only it was lost somewhere in my sleeping bag, so it took forever to find. Before I disabled mine, Richard's alarm went off as well as the carbon monoxide detector, which is this incredibly loud, shrill sound akin to a nuclear alarm. We couldn't figure out how to turn it off, so we just got up and ready amidst the cacophony of noise.
Not many people were at the service project, which was cleaning the cabin roofs of pine needles and moss. At first Richard got roof duty while I was supposed to rake the fallen stuff up and cart it somewhere, which I felt was rather pointless. Then we landed a more fulfilling job: sprinkling tide on the roofs to fight moss. Then, we packed up and left about an hour and a half later and ate macaroni and cheese and played with Libby. All in all, a pretty fabulous camp out.