Out of all the ideas that some of my buddies throw my way, few ever reach the stage where we actually end up going through with it.  However, this one apparently did.  As the title states, a buddy of mine wanted to go camping and stargazing.  I think he might have done it once or twice, but this is definitely a first time for me.

The basic plan was go camping for a couple of days out at the Sky Meadows State Park in Virginia.  As advertised on the brochure, it's an ideal camping place for people who also want to stargaze.

I have a tendency of being over-prepared for anything and everything, so uh, that's exactly what I did.  In fact, I was bringing so much crap that I ended up needing to bring a wagon as well!  Packed up, it sort of looks like this:

A quick word about what you are seeing: We had attempted to go camping as far back as 8 years ago, but the last time we tried, there was a hurricane-like storm moving in, so we had to ditch the idea.  In other words, I didn't buy a lot of new gear, but merely dusted off the old ones.  I still had to purchase a bunch of stuff, such as new freeze-dried meal bags, for example.  I shudder to even think about this month's budget update.

On my way to this trip, I also stopped at my favorite gas station ever: Buccee's!

The gas at Buccee's is reasonable relative today's overall gas prices, at $3.60 per gallon.  Most importantly, they have absolutely the BEST public bathrooms I have ever seen.  I am not a fan of using public bathrooms anywhere, but if I had to, I definitely prefer Buccee's.  It's a shame that they have very few locations in this area.  I even had to detour out of my way just to stop by here.

Upon arriving and meeting up with my buddy and fellow camping idiot, we were about to find out what a grueling hike just even getting from the entrance to our camp site was going to be.  I was told that it was merely "a mile or two", but I assure you, it most definitely did NOT feel like just that.  Most of the path was hilly terrain with a somewhat steep incline.  Enough for me to even slip and fall one time.  On top of that, we were both dragging wagons of gear on what is mostly dirt and gravel path up and down said hilly inclines.  I was absolutely wiped from getting there, and we still had to set up camp before it got dark.

On top of that, we were warned in advance that these woods also contained bears, coyotes, venomous snakes, mosquitoes and ticks.  However, being a managed state park with Park Rangers on patrol, the threat level is minmal.  Indeed, besides mosquitoes, horse flies, and even spotting one snake, we really didn't run into any probems.  Here is the only picture I have of said snake.  It nearly slithered away before I can take the picture.

What really sunk in was just how DARK it was when night fell.  Naturally, if you are trying to stargaze, it makes sense to be somewhere far enough from the typical light pollution of civilization.  In fact, the closest bustling town was nearly 30 minutes drive away.  Still, it was so dark, it was hard to tell the difference between a deer and other park campers, when all you can make out are dark silhouettes.  One time, I even literally ran into a park sign!  Here is a picture that sort of try to show what it was like, but my phone made the picture much brighter than it actually was out there:

Unfortunately, the nights were somewhat cloudy, and with a full moon, we weren't able to see too many stars.  However, we did get to see a lot of wild animals during the day, such as deer, cows (in fenced in farm pastures), foxes, squirrels, and rabbits.  Of them all, this was about the only good picture I was able to get:

Living up to our names of Two Idiots Camping, we had tried to start up a camp fire, but the wood logs simply refused to catch fire and keep burning, and that's even after asking a passing park ranger how to build one.  In our defense, it was raining the night before we arrived, so the logs might have been too wet to burn.  Anyway, here is a picture of our poor attempt at a campfire:

Uh, what else?  Well, our sleeping bags kept us warm enough in the 50F (10C) nights, but sleeping on the ground, and on inflated sleeping pads are not really the most comfortable thing in the world.  In fact, mine half deflated through my stay, and it was hard to keep it inflated.

I think the worst part, and the part that is going to turn me off from camping in the future, is the fact that I was not able to shower or brush my teeth during the entire two day stay.  Such activities are possible, but it's simply not practical.  We made do with toothpicks and wet wipes.  In fact, the moment I got home, the first thing I did was shower and brush my teeth.  It was such a relief just to finally do that. 

And even though the park had public bathrooms, and was about as clean as you can realistically expect, it still stank and had flies flying everywhere.  Flashlights were absolutely vital at night just to get to the bathroom and back without running into or tripping on anything.  Also, these bathrooms did not have lights inside.  You had to bring your own flashlight and make sure you don't accidentally drop it down the big dark hole that is your toilet.

Overall, I had fun hanging out and catching up with a buddy of mine, while finally checking this off my bucket list.  He was already pitching a camping/fishing idea for next year, but I just really don't know.  Assuming it even goes through at all like this one, I am not sure that I really care to live this up close to the Great Outdoors.  For now though, I'm going to rest my poor, achey body from dragging a weighed-down wagon through a gravel trail, up hill, both ways.

Finally, here's a picture of the Cracker Barrel we went to for breakfast, before heading back out: