Thursday, July 25, 2013

Don't read this while eating lunch.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that we were going camping over the 4th of July holiday...and well...it could have gone better.  We camped at Clarksburg State Park in northwestern Massachusetts, and planned to hike the section of the Appalachian Trail between the summit of Mt Greylock and the Massachusetts-Vermont state line - about 20 miles total hiking.

We drove up the morning of the 4th, uneventful, easy enough drive.  We had planned to set up camp, have some lunch, then go hike from Route 2 in North Adams to the state line, which would be 8 miles round trip with a fair amount of elevation gain, but not a ton.  When we sat down for lunch, I felt kind of off, not bad, just not quite right.  We ate lunch and decided that we were too tired to hike, and really wanted to be able to hike to the summit of Mt. Greylock the next day.  So we went to Mass MOCA, a contemporary art museum in the area instead.  

That's where things deteriorated.  I actually really liked the museum - and I usually just think contemporary art is either weird or not art.  But my stomach was not happy.  I kept feeling more and more bloated, like my stomach was painfully distended.  Eventually it was just too much and I got sick.  Yeah, that kind of sick.  Thankfully I made it to a restroom - fortunately an unoccupied, single toilet restroom.  The short-lived upside was that I instantly felt better, so we continued to go through the museum.  But it only took about 20 minutes to feel miserable and distended again.

We headed back to the campsite and hung out - I managed to nap for a bit.  I could barely choke down a graham cracker or sit next to Boyfriend while he ate dinner.  The smell of his dinner was just awful.  After dinner he suggested that perhaps going for a walk around the campgrounds would make me feel better.  Well we got about three-quarters of the way around the loop before I was spectacularly sick on the side of the road.  Fortunately not in anybody's campsite, and hopefully it was dark enough that people couldn't really see (even though there was no doubt that more than one campsite of people could hear).

I felt tolerable overnight, but was ready to kill the large group of middle school age kids a few campsites over.  They occupied about 4 campsites, and at midnight they were still yelling back and forth between campsites and shrieking over who knows what.  Quiet hours started at 10.  I was pissed.  I got up around midnight to go to the restroom, and Boyfriend thought I was getting up to yell at the hoodlums.  I really, really seriously considered it.  But I didn't really want to go wandering in the dark feeling like crap.  Man it would have been so satisfying to tell those brats off though!

The next morning I actually felt decent, before and after breakfast, so we went hiking.  I'll blog about the hike in another post, but I made it through (very slowly) despite the lack of food the day before.  Anyway, everything was good on the stomach-issues front all day, and the hoodlums were gone the next night, so yay, at least one good day of camping.

Saturday morning we headed east to Amy's wedding, but that's a story for another day.  Unfortunately the stomach woes weren't over...

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