Squirrels are Evil

I had a WONDERFUL time camping this past weekend, although I could've done without two things:
1. Our loud, obnoxious, trashy neighbors (check out the crap they left in the fire ring on my photoblog) and
2. Those nasty little squirrels

Now, I had nothing against squirrels before this weekend. When we first arrived at the campsite and saw them skittering around everywhere, I actually thought they were kinda cute. Hah! I totally retract that thought now. Why all this animosity towards those innocent furry little guys, you ask? Because they're not innocent, they're nasty little rodents! So this is what happened...

We'll start the story by saying, I heart my tent. After years of camping and bumming off of friends' gear, it was my first big purchase when I finally was able to afford my own gear.

So onto the squirrel part...

I put one little bag of food, containing oranges, bananas, and bread into my tent. I did hesitate at first, but after further consideration, decided that I was not in bear country and one little bag in my tent would be no big deal. We had all gone to the beach for a few hours on Saturday morning, and upon returning for lunch, found our campsite littered with trash--the squirrels had ripped through our trash bags and spread it everywhere. They had also gotten into Meghan and Liam's tent, which also had food, and ate our brownies, cheetos, and bread. Worst of all, they had tried to get into my tent by chewing on the zipper (which is now ruined and my tent cannot open or close). When that attempt was unsuccessful, the squirrels decided they would just CHEW A HUGE HOLE THROUGH my tent to get to the bread. It was quite upsetting to see my lovely year-old, only-used-three-times tent with a big HOLE in it! Damn evil squirrels. Lesson (quickly) learned, however: never leave any sort of food in your tent, even if you're not in bear country. Luckily, REI is fixing the damage as we speak, so it's not the end of the world.

We had been having rain on and off here lately, but our camping weekend was sunny, warm, and beautiful. As a result, I have a very bad raccoon-eye look going on. Everyone keeps pointing it out to me, like I don't already know I look ridiculous. So, aside from the squirrel issue, we had a great time. Hung out at the beach for a while, Pat & Shelby went GPS treasure hunting, played frisbee. After lunch, we took a hike up Nicholas Flats trail, which was much steeper and much longer than we had anticipated, but had great views of the ocean and green mountains.