What Would You Do for Your Weekend?

The weekend of July 24th, my husband and I drove to the Kennally Creek Campground, outside of Donnelly, ID, and I found out just what I would do to save my weekend.

You see, our previous plan to go to Blackmare Lake had been aborted, due to unexpectedly snowy weather. As we are running out of weekends left in the summer, I wanted very much not just to take a backpacking trip this weekend, but also to backpack to Blackmare Lake in particular.

My husband and I have developed a routine for when we go on a backpacking trip. We each pack our own pack and any other items we want brought along. Then we pile them in the hallway and on the day of the trip my husband loads them into the car.

Simple, right?

Except when I forget to place my boots in the hallway, which is mistake number one.

And he forgets that if he hasn’t loaded something, then it hasn’t been loaded, mistake number two.

And we both don’t realize this until we are about five miles from the campground.

Which is about 95 miles from home.

Strike three.

We had several options at that point. We could have cancelled the trip. I could have tried backpacking in my sandals (really bad idea, especially on a "no trail"). Or I could prove to both myself and my husband that I am, indeed, a crazy backpacker.

He finished driving us to the campsite. We unloaded the car. And then I got in and drove all the way home on dark, narrow, twisting mountain roads.

When I saw a sign reading 91 miles to Boise, I thought to myself, “This is crazy. What the heck am I doing?” I thought about turning around, declaring defeat and cancelling the trip by default. But I’d already driven 17 miles on dirt roads to get to that sign. 91 more miles didn’t seem like much, not at good speeds.

It took me about three hours to get home and rescue my boots from the closet. I made coffee to sustain me on the drive back up, and, at about 11:30pm, I drove back up.

The drive actually reminded me a little bit of when I was in high school, driving to Shabbona, IL to visit a friend. Except those roads were all flat, and the worst that could happen if I fell asleep at the wheel was a whole lot of flattened corn. As opposed to car flying into the Payette River…

I made it to the campsite before 3am and crawled into the tent with Ambrose to go to sleep.

I’d drive six hours in the dark, late at night, for my weekend.

What would you do?