Today is our wedding anniversary! Warthog and I have been married for eleven years now! Any holiday or special day (birthday, anniversary, etc.) we try to beat the other person to saying “happy ____ ” first. We will resort to secret alarms and middle of the night wake up’s to get the first word in. This year I won! Sometime after midnight I leaned over and said, “HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!” He responded with an exasperated, “Man!” Neither of us like to lose at this game.
We slept in until 8a or so. Then headed over to site twelve for breakfast with Joe. The group we camped near said he was asking about us. Afterwards we meandered back to the campsite to settle in for the day. I worked a bit on catching up the blog. Warthog relaxed. He also did our laundry and ran to the store for lunch and other supplies. He’s such a good man. We ate our anniversary lunch from the grill by the lake. I had a chicken sandwich with fries, he had a burger with fries. We splurged and bought the $2.50 brownies too. They were a couple of days old, but we thought they were still good. Usually we would have a fancy dinner out planned. But sitting out in nature (even nature in a state park campsite) was the perfect way to celebrate being an awesome married couple for eleven years.
On the way back from one of his trips to the store he picked up something from the side of the road… he called them “roadkill fireworks”. They were old sparklers that people had left. “To celebrate our anniversary” he said. I love his creativity and general playfulness. I’m a pretty goofy person and he meets my goofiness full on with his own.
We had a beautiful day off. We got to relax some and still get caught up on work that needed to be done. Any day off from the trail requires work. I was glad that today we could balance that work with special celebrations too.
Our day off also allowed for another thing; Snow Monkey and Wonder Woman could catch up. Now we will be able to hike again as a group. Motivation and more importantly, accountability, that I think both couples need. It’s so easy when it’s just the two of you to go, “Eh… let’s lay in bed a little longer or stop a little short.” When you have other people counting on you, you tend to push yourself that much harder. Look out Katahdin… here we come! Well, in about eight weeks anyway.
After they arrived, we ordered pizza to be delivered to our campsite. We ate with headlamps illuminating the table. Wonder Woman and Snow Monkey bought a bottle of wine to celebrate. It was a great ending to an already great day.
-ansel