I'm going on a camping trip and I'm bringing...

...home a very smelly backpack.

I went on a camping trip this weeked, but I will get to that later. What matters here is the poor state of my backpack. It used to have such a lovely, vague, ambiguous smell. It smelled faintly of pencil lead and paper. Well, going home from this awesome weekend I managed to throw it in the back of my friend's truck. No big deal, except that it apparently landed in a puddle of trash-juice. I got home and it smelled disgusting. Totally awesome. Then I forgot about it and this morning I swung it on my back and got a big wiff. EW! I grabbed some fabreez and some oder-eaters spray-stuff and sprayed it all over. Well, it sort of worked but my backpack is very water-resistant so it didn't have time to soak through. What matters is that I left the house smelling like a powdery, fabreez-laden puddle of trash-juice. Needless to say, I have been very self-concsious for the entire day and it's exhausting! I really hope I was overeacting and it didn't smell bad at all. I hope I hope I hope.

The camping trip was FUN!! We drove to Ruidoso and camped in a cozy little area surrounded by a dense growth of trees and lots of boulders. We got to build a fire on numerous occaisions, which I haven't done in years and was really exciting. Next to this camp site was a steep drop-off, and at the top there were lots of large boulders to scramble over, accomponied by an awesome view of neighboring mountains, valleys and meadows. It was so much fun, climbing and crawling and sitting, literally breathless, with such a gorgeous landscape right there in front of you. On the other side of our little campsite was a watch tower, apparently used to scout out forest fires. It was the highest point anywhere near, with a crude stone staircase leading up to the breathtaking view. This was probably my favorite place.

We also made it out to White Sands, a huge expanse of pale sand dunes in Southern New Mexico. We played like children, and I had more fun than I have in a long time. We rolled down them, we jumped off them, we sledded down them. It was so awesome. And so sandy.

We spent two chilly nights camped out in Ruidoso, Friday and Saturday. Saturday afternoon we walked around Ruidoso and meandered through their little tourist shops. Talk about shady, some of those places made me feel distinctly uncomfortable. We even had our pictures taken in that old-west style. THAT was an experience, but I'm glad we did it. I'm really glad we did all of it. It was so much fun.