Hello all! I just got back a couple hours ago from camping in the Eastern Sierras for a week.  After putting away all my camping gear, taking a nice hot shower and getting some tasty food in my belly,  I figured that I would post a little blog post about my experiences (and yes, I did bring my NDS system).

I learned a couple of things in my exploits in the high-up dusty wilderness.

It's breath-taking but don't forget to breathe.

First of all, high elevations are not for the weak of heart.  Our campsite was at 7100 feet elevation, and I normally live at sea level.  My body was acclimating all week to the thinner air, and this was especially a problem when I was doing things, like, say, hiking up and down sheer cliffs, or simply going up the semi-steep hill to the bathroom.

"DS HAPPY!"

Second of all, high elevations are MAD AWESOME when it comes to video game battery life.  I am not sure why, but I played DS each day for about 30 min-1 hour and an entire charge lasted me through Thursday.  Normally, my DS battery only lasts for maybe a day or two when I'm playing for long periods of time, but it lasted twice as long.  Plus, my parents had brought one of those car cigarette lighter charger adapters, so I wasn't totally out of luck when the battery finally went down.

"Yo, I'm here to rip up your stuff and eat your food."

Thirdly, BEARS ARE WAY LARGER IRL.  There were three "baby" bears that were trolling around the campsites each night looking to swipe food away from the rest of us.  By "baby," I mean that these bears were around the size and height of an English Sheepdog.  One of them was much larger than the other two and loved to take this trail that went right around our camp site. The last night we were there, the larger bear LEAPED into the back of a truck in the campsite next to us after they had returned from fishing at the lake. There were some people who were sitting in the back of the truck, and they SCREAMED when 200+ pounds of juvenile bear jumped up with slathering jaws.

I was pretty nervous about the bears because I have gone camping at Sequoia National Park in the past and they have many full-size adult bears (which, next to the average person, are about the size of a Mini Cooper, only a bit less wide) who love to come into camps and pilfer ice chests and rip into cars (there was a car next to us where the bear had ripped the door off like it was nothing and had ripped the front seat to shreds all for this little Carls Jr. wrapper under one of the seats).  A full grown bear is more than a thousand pounds and has the kind of muscle and claws that would make a hardened biker pee his pants.

Bottom line is that even though these were "small" bears, they were still pretty dang scary and horrifying. And it doesn't help that I am still breastfeeding my daughter, so I was terrified that the bears would smell "me" and come ripping through the tent.  Luckily, this obviously did not happen, but it did make for some unsettling pre-sleep thoughts.

You know that a town has a checkered past when the motto is "Goodbye God, I'm going to Bodie."

And finally, I visited the ghost town of Bodie.  Now, in it's hey-day in the late 1800's, it had over 100,000 people, and was home to some of the largest amount of crime, boozing, prostitution and murder in the whole of the West.  To some extent, going into the decaying buildings and looking at all of the peeling wallpaper and rotted toys and home furnishings was somewhat reminiscent of Silent Hill.  I almost expected to see a creepy fog come over the hills with the various monsters in tow when trying to squint into the old fashioned uneven glass and rubble of the town.  Of course, considering that my husband has been playing Red Dead Redemption, there were lots of interesting parallels in the town's construction, and there were plenty of stories written up on all the various plaques around the town that spoke to the opium dens, prostitution "cribs", and the bank that was burned down all except for the big vault that stands even today.

One of the interesting things about going out into the "great outdoors" is the number of things that influence things that we are familiar with while experiencing the world of gaming in the "great indoors".  Most good stories (and game worlds in general) are best created from a patchwork of facts based on real places.

"NOM NOM NOM-HOOMAN BLOOD!"

So, finally, I'm glad to be back.  I love the fact that I got some time away, to relax, unwind, and generally reset my natural day/night circadian rhythms.  But I am also glad not to be free food for the mosquitoes, covered in dust, and generally dealing with high-altitude stress on my circulatory system.

So, anything new around these here parts in the time I have been away?  Any questions about some of the interesting places I've visited?  And have any of you experienced high-altitude gaming?