Last weekend I spent 2 days of quality time in the wilderness (well, it was car camping) – away from cellphones, civilization, et cetera.

A fair number of us (over 10, under 15) went out to Colorado Bend State Park, a 5000-some acre park roughly an hour and a half north-west of Austin. Much fun was had friday, including cooking hotdogs, strawberry marshmallows with mint-flavored chocolate crackers and the requisite raucousness of a group of people staying up far later than their ordinary bedtimes. (Yes, we even had the park ranger come by to tell us to quiet down, the weekend was a success!)

Rebecca had been gracious enough to bring one of the Dobsonian telescopes from UT with her out ot the park, since it’s nice and dark in the evening. We ended up looking at some very nifty constellations, and I got to play with the coolest thing ever.. A green laser pointer.

OH MY GOD. SO AWESOME!

My life’s been pretty busy lately, with work being overly busy due to a missing teammate (he got promoted), so it took quite a time for me to fall asleep fridaysaturday morning. Despite this, I was among the three first people out of bed the next morning, and I even felt well-rested.

Saturday was spent lounging around, canoe-ing on the Colorado river, followed by a late lunch and even more lounging around.

Much fun was had around the campfire, and as it got darker (and approached midnight), I remembered what I’d intended to do the first night, but didn’t end up doing… The last few times I had been out to the park, I’d seen this really awesome waterfall, that would look totally super awesome if I were to stick a dive light inside it.

I asked around if anyone wanted to accompany me on the trip (it was a good 30 minute hike one way), and Jeremy joined me.

We had a good walk there, practicing our night vision, avoiding dangerous racoons, and the GREAT BIG EYES on the bridge… 🙂

As for the result? Well, judge for yourself:

Many thanks to Jeremy for the good conversation and keeping my company while we walked through the deep dark woods. 🙂

Sunday we all woke up, had some time with song and a small devotional (Psalm 8), pack up camp, and then a group of us went for a short-ish (3 hour) hike…