27th Birthday

It is the end of July. (Thank you for the happy birthday wishes.) ZZ and I finally had our first camping trip of the year 2006. It will likely be the only camping trip I take this year. While I'm not happy that my summer fun has been limited to about a dozen bike rides, three mountain climbs, five other hikes, and a lot of jogging, I am very happy with the changes in my life that are causing me to compromise. I am mourning the loss of my super active outdoor life, yes, but at the same time, I am praising God for the opportunity He has given me to be a father.

Yes, I just said 'God' and capitalized He. I know, but I mean it.

ZZ and I didn't know exactly where we were going to stay on our camping trip, but we knew we had three or four nights and we thought three or four different sites would make the trip a lot of work, but a lot of fun too. She left all the decision making up to me, she said, because it was my birthday, but that didn't sit well with me. There was no way I was going to make a decision to camp in a place where my Prego wasn't going to be comfortable. She's quite the trooper in the first place to even attempt a few nights of tent camping when she's 8 months pregnant. So this is how it worked: I gave her ideas, she said yes or no. That worked out for both of us.

If you want to look these places up, you should. They're pretty. We stayed first at Sheep Mountain. There was a lodge there and a guy at the counter told me, "We have a bunk house," and I said, "we want to camp in tents," he said, "a third of a mile back that way is Sheep Mountain Airport Road, you can camp under the wind sock and they don't care as long as you don't interfere; it's public land." So we headed back up that way, found the road, found the short gravel landing strip, and then found a really narrow bumpy road that my Saturn would never make it down. Luckily, we weren't driving the Saturn, we were driving our new Subaru Forester and that car made mince meat of the silly dirt road. It was a lot of fun to drive, too. We ened up camping on a sand bar from a dried up washout area beneath the volcano burnt mountain. We were beset on all sides with small trees and shrubs, and the ground, though not very soft, was at least perfectly flat. We had a fire, hot dogs, smores, and I drank rum. The next morning was beautiful. We ate eggs and bacon in the bright early morning sunlight and took pictures of the awesome view of mountains surrounding us on all sides.

The plan then was to drive further East and head south towards Valdez, but cut east again towards McCarthy and Kennicott in the Wrangell Saint Elias National Park area and camp there. But, from what little I had read and seen of the area (60 mile dirt road, no gas for 100 miles, $300 fee to cross some bridge, and no hospital services for nearly 200 miles) I thought better of putting ZZ and I into a potentally very bad situation. We drove to Valdez instead, intending on camping there. But half way down the Richardson Highway, the rain began to fall and our hopes of finding dry ground in Valdez was diminishing quickly. We stopped at Worthington Glacier 30 miles outside of Valdez where it was 48 degrees. We drove up through Thompson Pass (2,670 feet, measly, I'm sure to you 11,000 ft fools) and were shouded deeply by cloud cover and more rain. We visited the Bridal Veil and Horsetail Falls in Keystone Canyon and by the time we made it to the camp ground outside Valdez, the rain was falling harder than ever. ZZ decided that the rain was making her sleepy so she took a nap as I pointed us back north towards Glennallen. By the time I had driven through Keystone Canyon again, ZZ was asleep and I suddenly felt like I was about to pass out. I pulled over, turned off the car, and fell asleep in about 30 seconds. Two hours later we both woke up and drove all they way back past Sheep Mountain (where we started that morning) and thought we'd just wait to find a place where it wasn't raining.

We found that place near the Matenuska Glacier, 101 miles northeast of Anchorage. We set up camp, made hamburgers and I drank rum. ZZ and I studied and discussed our workbook called "Save Your Marriage Before it Begins" and went to bed on the elaborate series of camp pads, inflateables and blankets we had set up for ZZ's comfort. I won't complain, I felt pretty cozy too. The next morning we ate bacon and eggs in, surprisingly, the sunshine. A bird came into the camp and began to peck at the remaining scrambled eggs on the pan. I looked at the bird eating the egg remants and, very puzzled, said to ZZ, "I didn't think birds ate-"

We drove further east and stopped at King Mountain. We contemplated camping there, but in the end, I decided that ZZ was getting too sore, and though she didnt' want to admit it to me, I knew she really wanted to sleep in her bed with her Snooggle pillow and a toilet nearby. So we left the Rec Area after a barrage of pictures by the river and drove to Hatcher's Pass, just north of Palmer. I had never been up there before and I found it to be wonderfully beatiful. So did ZZ. We took some more pictures there. On the way back out of the pass, I stopped to itch my heel and pee at the trailhead for Gold Mint Trail. There were two hippie kids, a boy and a girl, both looking very attractive and hippie like. ZZ said to me, "I'll never look like her, Erik, so don't even think it," but what she doesn't know, is that as hot and sexy as I thought that hippie girl in her shorts and braided hair was, my ZZ was more special and has always been more beautiful to me than the hippie. ZZ's big belly, the extra pounds in other areas, none of it phases my perception of her beauty. The changes her body is going through are for a very good reason and I find that to be the most wonderful human body in the world. Sexy hippies with nice legs, big boobs, and rucksacks don't hold a candle to ZZ.

Then we drove home. ZZ napped again over the last hour, and then we got home, napped for 2 hours, went to Bear Tooth (the old Denali Theater, remember?) ate a lot of great pizza and had a good birthday dessert. Later, after coffee at Barnes and Noble, we watched Mission Impossible 3 at the Bear Tooth. It was the first time ZZ and I had gone to the theater to watch a stupid action movie. We had fun.

We had coffee at Leroy's with ZZ's mother to wrap up the night, and brought her mother back to our house to sleep on the couch (long story). (as if this wasn't long enough!) We put in "The Big Lebowski" and Double O came over for some rum. I also drank some rum.

I won't be drinking for a long while now. Three nights in a row! That pretty much matches all the drinks I've had all year up to this point.

So that was my birthday fun. We had a blast and I can't wait to see the pictures from our trip.

Peace and 27 Damn Years Old,
Mungo

PS, I love the Subaru.