What a great camping trip! We got back this afternoon from Wizard Lake, after an excellent weekend with pretty good weather (except for this morning when it rained a little). Among the campers were myself, Jane, Yi-Li, Andrew, Megan, Warren, Lucky and sometimes Dickson (he came and went). Highlights include midnight frisbee with glowsticks and the most massive coffeemate fire known to man, but here’s a quick recap of everything:

Warren, Yi-Li and Andrew were the first ones to arrive at the campsite on Thursday night, followed by Dickson, and then me. With no women around, we took our time putting up the tent, making drinks, and cooking steak (very delicious) over the fire. Yi-Li brought glowsticks, and so we each wore one on our wrists, and we taped a couple to the frisbee so that we could play midnight frisbee! It’s actually pretty cool, playing in the dark.

The next day we mostly just waited for Jane and Megan to arrive! Warren cooked bacon for breakfast, and we spent the day walking around the campground, playing frisbee and badminton, exploding pop cans, and crashing a basketball game the girls who were staying next to us were playing. Jane arrived as we were playing basketball, so Lucky joined in the game 🙂 When Megan arrived, she brought with her a massive screen house that we built and put a picnic table inside of, and of course, a can of coffeemate. Needless to say, we built a big fire and threw a whole bunch of coffeemate on it! But the best was yet to come, as we all decided we needed more coffeemate for the next night. Megan even said she’d bring a fourth can if I touched the burning logs in the fire – so of course I did!

Dickson went back to Edmonton on Friday night, but came back during the day Saturday, while Megan left in the afternoon to go back. As a result, Saturday was spent waiting for Megan to return with four cans of coffeemate! We bought some more wood and chopped it, after which we built an incredible base for the biggest coffeemate fire ever seen. We played Risk, cooked marshmallows, hotdogs and hamburgers, and once again prepared for midnight frisbee with glowsticks. When Megan returned with coffeemate, all four cans, we almost couldn’t wait to burn it.

The fire took a while to start, as our incredible design didn’t allow any air to get in. Jane ended up taking most of it apart to light it, after which we stuck it back together. Then the festivities began. We tried a bunch of different methods, but found that if we held two handfuls, and threw in one after the other with the second slightly higher than the first, the coffeemate made the biggest fireball. We thought it was amazing when all seven of us were throwing coffeemate at the fire, but after about ten minutes, the neighbours had seen what we were up to and had formed a large group of onlookers. Sensing an opportunity that could not be missed, we invited them to partake in the craziness. And that’s when the largest coffeemate fire known to man burned – when thirteen different people each threw two handfuls of coffeemate into an already oversized fire! The resulting fireball was absolutely incredible, all of it captured on three different video cameras (Dickson has posted the video – download it here [WMV, 20 MB]). Definitely something to remember!

We spent the rest of the night drinking, reflecting on how big fires attract girls, and waiting for the meteor shower that was supposed to happen (we only saw a few). Eventually we went to sleep, only to wake up the next morning with rain! We had planned to leave around lunchtime anyway, so we packed up early and headed back to the city where we stopped at Denny’s. I had to clean my car this afternoon too, as it was completely covered in coffeemate from the big fires. Fortunately, it looks as good as new now!

And that was the camping trip! Dickson has posted some pictures on Flickr, and you can see my pictures on Flickr too (seventy six in total).

Read: Pictures