Hello, everyone. It's been almost two months since I last updated. That's too long. So, here I am.

Last weekend, four of my closest friends and I went camping at Chewacla State Park in Auburn, Alabama. This was the first time any of us had been to this State Park. We chose this site because my friend Joel (the one with the epic beard in the following pictures) had heard that there were some neat waterfalls, creeks and a lake. Around this time of year, it is not unusual for the temperature to peak in the lower 90s and reach a low of upper 60s at night so we wanted to go somewhere we could swim. Unfortunately, it hadn't rained for nearly 5 or 6 weeks before our trip, so none of the waterfalls were active. The lake was still high enough we could swim in, but there were a couple of families there with younger kids that demotivated us from doing any sort of fun jumps off the high-dive in the middle of the lake.

The highlight of the trip didn't come until Saturday afternoon. We were hiking along the creek when we noticed a path across the stream that led up to some sort of clearing. Much to our surprise, when we took the path we came up on an active open pit rock quarry (being Saturday, no one was working). None of us expected this. We probably weren't more than 5 miles off the interstate. Still, he quarry truly was awesome. Giant rock walls brushed flat from hundreds of explosions greeted our eyes. We followed a road eastward to try and get a better glimpse through the trees. We noticed a couple waterfalls along the cliffs. All water travels to the lowest possible point, right? What we found was some of the strangest looking water I've ever seen.

We continued along the road and eventually came to a plateau of sorts. My friend David is not fond of heights, so when I walked right up to the edge, he nearly lost his stomach. After we left the cliff, we found where the water from the quarry lakes are pumped to. I thought it was pretty hardcore.

One of my friends left late Saturday night. Another left early Sunday morning. David, Joel and I were left to pick up the rest of the equipment. We woke up around 10PM. I instantly noticed what sounded like leaves rustling very lightly above our heads. I was still somewhat delirious, so I didn't realize that it was actually a light rain starting to fall. What started out light soon ended up drenching us from head to toe. Luckily, we were able to get our stuff out of the tent and pack the tent away before the rain really started to downpour. We rinsed off at the bathhouse and changed into drier clothes. Joel pointed out that whenever we three are the last to leave, we always get rained on. From what I can remember, this is true. We didn't let our misfortune ruin the trip for us; we actually found it quite funny. After we dried off, we drove into downtown Auburn and stopped at Five Guys to get some lunch.

So yeah, that was pretty much the greatest camping trip I've been on. Aside from the fact that there was a No Burn Code after 10PM. That didn't stop us from our deep theological discussions we normally have. We have another trip planned for late October, but with a much larger group this time. We go to Fort Toulouse and play Capture the Flag or Attackers & Defenders (with glow sticks as the flag) in a Civil War fort around midnight. Civil War forts are -incredibly- creepy in the darkness of the midnight hour.

I've also been fairly busy with school and work. I'm coming up on midterms (already?!?!), and I usually work 2 or 3 nights during the school week now. Any time I would have for BZP has been absorbed by Halo: Reach. I probably don't need to go into detail on my thoughts of this game. Those who care probably already know, and those who don't care...well, you don't care anyways.

I'm going to make a sincere effort to update my blog more often. I enjoy writing down my thoughts, even if it's just to get them out of my head. Who knows where that may lead us.