Camping & Kayaking at Blue Ridge

We went camping this weekend! At Blue Ridge! We only stayed one night, but I think that was plenty of time, if you catch my drift. ;) Michael goes camping all of the time with his broskis, and this was actually our first time camping together! I was going to write I don’t understand how that happened, but then I remembered that when I get to pick a weekend trip we usually end up at the beach. #sorrynotsorry

Saturday was rainy on and off the entire afternoon, and it was such a nice refresher compared to the weather we’ve been having in Phoenix. We explored to find “the perfect site”, and ended up at the base of the Moqui Lookout Tower. Before I go on, here’s a picture I found online of it:

We’re sitting in our car at the base of it, and Michael looks and me and says “Do you want to go up to the top?” Uhhhhhhhh what? Somehow, I agreed and we started climbing up to the top of this 83 foot tower. The stairs are grated, so you can see the ground underneath you and it was definitely making me a little nauseous climbing up. The view at the top was worth it though! You could see for miles and miles around, and it was so beautiful. The lookout worker at the top is even available to answer any questions, and to give out Smokey the Bear bookmarks. Haha It was pretty neat! 

We soon found our campsite after that, and stayed at our site for the rest of the day. We took a small walk, but didn’t go too far because it looked like it would start pouring any second.

 Michael made a little “shelter” for a makeshift kitchen, and hunkered down to start grilling up our chicken. About 2 seconds later, we realized that neither of us had actually packed the chicken. Huzzah! I’m on this diet (more on that later), and despite my inner being craving a classic hamburger from the grill, I decided to stick to my meal plan of grilled chicken on a bed of spinach with blueberries (and no s’mores :( ). Well, no chicken = a dinner of spinach and blueberries. Michael settled for a can of chili from the general store down the road. . .a can of chili that passed its expiration date 2+ months ago. 

Even though dinner was a bit of a bust, I was happy we got to set up a campfire to sit around and talk for a while until it got dark. :)

 This campfire was begging for some s'mores!

The next morning, the skies were clear and it was the perfect day to go kayaking!! Somebody Michael works with was generous enough to let us borrow his kayaks, even though we are very inexperienced kayakers. We’ve been talking about buying some of our own, and this was kind of a test run.

Kayaking is HARD. Hahaha Or at least I’m not very good at it. I must’ve spun in about 35645 circles trying to navigate myself down the Reservoir. It was hard to get too mad though, with the sun shining and the beautiful scenery! 

Getting them on top of our car was a whole different story. You know when you’re trying to strap 2 kayaks on the roof of your car and one falls down and breaks off your side mirror? So then you use some rope to tie your side mirror to your car and pray it doesn’t fly off on the highway? Yeah, that happened. Needless to say, I don’t think we’ll be buying our own kayaks any time soon!

We got home with plenty of time to spare for the crazy madness of going to Costco on a Sunday, and a mad dash to Sprouts. Then after stocking our fridge and pantry with groceries, we obviously went out to dinner. We ended up going to True Food Kitchen so Michael could try a bison burger while I could stick to my diet pretty easily. TFK isn’t exactly Michael’s scene, and he pointed out that he must really love me if he is voluntarily eating dinner there. I gently reminded him I’d been peeing out in the middle of the woods all weekend, and marriage is all about sacrifices. ;)