Happy Campers.

The past three days camping out at Golden Ears National Park was relaxing, rejuvenating, refreshing, and rewarding, for the most part. I mean, that was the purpose of camping after all: to get away from it all and have a great time!

Not to typecast any generation of people here, but having a great time for 'young people' like my friends and I usually involve some amount of drinking to put our minds in a chillaxed state, like happy drunks without a care in the world. Though we weren't rowdy, mischievous, or irresponsible under the influence of alcohol, common sense, if I may just speak for myself here, was somewhat diluted with rum & coke and screwdrivers. Let me explain.

We were out on Allouette Lake on our neon pink and green inflatables, tugging along our 'booze boat' which we filled with orange juice, cola, and bitch-beers (Vex) for Janelle, and the harder stuff like Crown Royal and Smirnoff for Aaron, Kyle and I. Along with our inflatable orca, we strung a yellow rope around all of our tubes so that we wouldn't drift apart and tied one end to a heavy rock to anchor us down. We were well organised. It must have been quite a sight from the on-lookers on the beach.

Drinking and eating away while basking in the sun and shooting the breeze, eventually, someone had to urinate. Kyle had no problems getting off his tube and pissing in the lake. I, however, did. I didn't realise how drunk I was until I slid off my tube and went into the lake. After doing my business, I tried climbing back on my tube but failed miserably. I made another attempt and lunged forward but my tube flipped again. This went on a couple more times until I gave up, tired, drunk, and out of breath. Actually, I was drowning.

It's not as if I forgot how to swim (swimming is one of those things you never forget after you've learnt how to, much like riding a bike), but feeling light-headed as a result of being intoxicated puts a little spin on things. I was breathing in water, and that was NOT good. Trying to keep my head above water, I enlisted drunken Kyle to swim me towards the shore. I was relieved when I felt the bottom with my feet. I crawled the rest of the way to the shore with my tube in hand and subsequently passed out on top of it under the sun. I don't know how long I was in direct exposure to that shiny object in the sky, but it was long enough to get my very first sunburn of my life. The sensation wasn't the least bit pleasant.

I didn't actually realise I had burnt myself until a few hours after returning from the beach back to the campsite. That was when I started to feel this tingly feeling all over my shoulders, chest and stomach, which soon escalated to a sensation akin to rubbing yourself all over with a coarse sandpaper. IT BURNED!!

Never again will I do something so stupid like that again. As Baz Luhrmann and Martha Stewart might say in unison, "Sunscreen is a good thing".

Other memorable highlights of the trip was when all of us went down to the beach just before midnight for stargazing. Given that we were up in the mountains far away from the glow of city lights, the constellations twinkled against the backdrop of the midnight sky. Sadly, my knowledge of reading the stars and identifying star patterns are quite limited, so I could only spot out the big dipper, the little dipper, and Polaris. Looking up in awe, I noticed an orbiting satellite, an airliner, and a shooting star as well.

Playing a few rounds of chess with Kyle until 0400 in the morning was also something I will treasure. Though I was defeated at both rounds, playing a game that requires a lot of strategic thinking while feeling exhausted was truly something. The chess board lit only by the burning embers from the fire pit, we played until darkness turned to light with the arrival of the new sun over the horizon.