recap 1/3 - a camping miracle

Hey guys.  So we haven't officially got the internet, we're borrowing (legally) from our neighbors until we're dialed in next month.  Despite rumors to the contrary, Montana does have the internet and graduated from dial up many moons ago.

So much has happened since I last posted, and to really do justice to what was going on we need to start at the beginning and the end.

Our very first camping trip was with our friends the Nelsons.  We had only been in the ward for several months (as a married couple), and Chad and Kimber took a big gamble on us and invited us to join them on their memorial day hike/camp to Mt. Anderson in the Sierras.

We'll always remember that camping trip as the genesis of our dearest friendship, and we'll always remember it because of my altitude sickness, and me wearing shoes that were too small so on the decent it felt like I experiencing foot binding.

To commemorate our time together in Los Angeles, we decided to have "one last hurrah" camping trip.  Chad picked an awesome location north of Santa Barbara called Jalama Beach.  We had no idea, but we would soon find out what a huge deal Jalama Beach is.

We left Los Angeles around 7:30 ish.  The boys were slowing our escape so Ashley and I stopped by Primo's Donuts (our favorite Donut shop in LA) and got way too many donuts. I was sick before we crested the Sepulveda pass.

Anywho - as we made our way to Jalama (about a 2-3 hour drive) our spirits dipped a little as we saw a "camping lot ful" sign 14 miles out from the campground.  Kimber texted to me, "oops."  We hoped for the best as we approached the ranger station.

Once we arrived, the ranger informs us that the lot is full, but that we can get on the waiting list and find out later that day how many campers would be leaving, and that maybe we'd get a spot.  Not a bad idea right?  So we got on the waiting list... #25.  25 freaking people in front of us, and there were only 98 total spots.  Chad said that the ranger said our chances were "slim."

We decided to make the best of it and had a nice day at the beach.  At 3:00 pm everyone circled around the ranger as he ran down the names on the waiting list.  As names were called, we wondered how many more spots were vacant.  A couple from SD told us that they woke up at 3:00 to get there by 6:30, only to be number 21 on the waiting list.  Insane.  They also told us that they had counted 18 vacant spots.  Our chances weren't looking good.

A handful of times, he'd call a name and no one would come up to claim their spot.  The ranger quipped, "it's ok to clap."  With each vacant name, I got more and more excited.   Finally our name was called.  We got the last spot!  A camping miracle.  Ironically, because we had the last spot that meant that we didn't get to choose where we were camping, but we got one of the best spots in the campsite.  Some of the campsites were bordered by campers at every direction, whereas we were on the outskirts of camp so only had one pretty courteous neighbor and a good view of the beach.  We could not believe our luck.

The rest of the camping experience was pretty grand. I'll let the pictures do the talking:
(sorry about the slideshow - the new blogger photo-upload interface is really buggy)