You guys know this place is clothing optional, right? (Part II)

When we left our heroines, they were about to embark on an exciting campground adventure…

As we drove into the site, snowflakes began gently fluttering to the ground. We parked the car, unloaded the “mondo condo” (the only tent left at the rec center) and began blindly trying to put together this unknown and ridiculously large tent in the pitch-black, near-blizzarding mountains of Colorado. Neither of us had thought to bring a flashlight, and the batteries in the tiny keychain light that we had brought died within minutes.

So we ditched our tent-erection attempts, and decided to hunt down some firewood. If we could get a fire going, we’d be able to see much better, right? We wandered over to the campsite’s designated wood pile, consisting of a rather sizeable log in a trough, which we were meant to cut with a rather less sizeable hacksaw.

Cold, tired, and not really knowing what we were doing, we made our first few feeble attempts at hacking. Suddenly, out of the nearby sauna building came a gray-haired man with a pot belly and a cigar. Naked. He sat outside the steamy enclosure for a few minutes and watched as we struggled in our frustration. Finally, Mr. Pot Belly gets up, saunters over our direction, and tells us we’re doing it all wrong. Naked. Then he proceeds to pick up the saw and show us how the saw is meant to be used. Did I mention he was naked?

Daisy and I stood back, stifling giggles and giving each other “is this really happening?” looks. Finally, once Mr. Pot Belly felt he had sufficiently demonstrated his sawing prowess, he left us and went back into the sauna. We stood there for awhile, incredulous, frustrated, and ready to give up.

And give up we did. As it turns out, we didn’t have the skills, equipment, or patience to finish the job. Hanging our heads in shame, we packed up the car and headed home. In hindsight it was a good thing we did—the storm of the decade dumped on Colorado that night, closed roads and stranded hundreds of students on their own adventure. If we hadn’t been so ill prepared, we might have been stuck sleeping in the sauna with Mr. Pot Belly, smoking cigars and eating the last scraps of our PB&Js.