Why does it always have to be something?

We were all so excited to get into our final camp. We talked to Ben, one of our walker/runners who turned into a security guy; We wanted to find out from him where the best spots were to put our little clan.

"You guys should go up to A Loop - it's nice and quiet up there - we're sharing it with folks from the Northern Route."



Cool - we like quiet. So we started gathering our gear and heading towards camp. Along the way, Kathleen pulled up and we put our bags in the back of the truck and hopped in, looking for campsite "A" and Ray and Patrick, who were supposed to be finding a spot for us.

When we got to what looked like a lovely location, Antonio came over and told us that we probably weren't going to be allowed to camp there. That it was "northern route" camping only...and we weren't welcome.

What the hell? After all that talk about unity and how our two routes will be uniting as we head into Washington D.C. - here we are not even at the point where we can share the same camping area together? One of the guys headed off to see about it, and sure enough, a Northern route guy came back and said, "no...you guys need to go camp in D Loop."

D Loop. The camping area that just got flooded out during recent rains and was pretty much in a sinkhole. And it was near the main fire. That's great. Thanks so much.

It pissed Patrick off. I was more annoyed than anything else. Jen rolled her eyes and Kathleen decided not to get in the middle of it and just make the best of it. So..we loaded everyone's gear back into the truck and headed out to D Loop, where we found an absolutely lovely spot for all of our tents.




Kathleen wanted me to take a picture of this. She was trying to find something..of hers..in her truck (go figure) and couldn't get to anything because of all our stuff in there (whiner). See what you get for being such a nice guy?



Anyway, here's a few shots of our last little camp. Sort of bittersweet isn't it? The whole Northern Route thing pissed Patrick off so much that he ended up leaving camp the next day...he did join up with us later on, but it wasn't the same not having him around.. the butterhead!

Okay..here's some photos of six of the dirty dozen. We figured that, give or take, there are 12 of us that started in Alcatraz and made it the whole way. There are a lot of criteria for that list and everyone has their opinions, so that's why I say "give or take" I'm not gonna list them here for fear of massive email retribution.....sorry it's not a very flattering picture of Jen..



.here's a better one of her just to balance things out. We took six different versions of this picture, with someone rotating to work the camera..and at least one person looks dorky in all of them. Criminy.



Okay...how about this one?



Yeah, well...okay. Here's a sweet pic of Ray drawing a picture. You can't see the picture (or Ray) very well. But it's sweet I tell you. Darling.



Anyway, we did settle ourselves on in and a couple of us went on an expedition to get some burgers and fries for everyone, as the camp food scene appeared a little...wanting. Thank goodness for dollar burgers...I would have no idea how many dollar burgers I'd be consuming shortly...but we'll get to that later.

The exciting news about getting into camp is that we knew that Joe and Barb Spado were waiting for us along with their 4 grandchildren! And...in a few short hours Kathleen's mother and sister will be arriving...and then Jen's mom comes in the next day. Exciting news for them...I'll tell you all about it here in a sec.