Two weeks ago I went camping at the beach with wild ponies and ate s’mores for every meal.

I have been waiting my whole life to type that phrase.

The past 2 weeks have been consumed with paper writing and exam studying, but before the craziness began, there was a blissful weekend camping. Our good friends Charlie and Ellie live in Baltimore and months ago they mentioned that they love to go camping at Assateague Island in the spring. James is always sold on camping, Eagle Scout that he is. I was sold when they told me that ASSATEAGUE ISLAND HAS WILD PONIES ALL OVER IT. Remember that horse stage that little girls go through, the one where they rent Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken every weekend and they wear the ugly horse shirts? I am still in it (minus the shirts).

The night before we left James and I went to the store to buy food. It was here that our exceedingly different definitions of camping came to light. In my mind, camping means excessive amounts of s’mores, songs around the fire, stargazing, and wearing French braids. S’mores might be one of my favorite foods of all times, so it just isn’t even worth camping if they are not a part of the equation. For him it means lots of hiking, consumption of beef jerky, and carrying all of one’s possessions in a backpack. Let me emphasize: I am not a wuss. I really really do love hiking. But the Stone family is more the hike-all-day-then-stay-in-a-cabin sort (except for Zach). When I gleefully announced to James that we could make cinnamon rolls in a dutch oven, he looked at me like I had burned down the forest.

Assateague Island was the Hannah version of camping, the type where we parked and then lugged our stuff a couple hundred yards to set it up on the beach. Now usually camping at Assateague means frolicking on the beautiful beach in the sun and trying to hide your food from the ponies who will eat anything.  But all of Saturday, the weather turned freakishly cold and foggy and the beach looked like this:

This did not deter Josie (world’s best camping dog!) from trying to catch entire waves in her mouth, fighting with crabs, and swimming. 

In theory, this would be miserable. But because we put our phones in the car, had no watches, and could never look at the sun to gauge what time it was, we had the most relaxing day ever. Here was the schedule: wake up. breakfast. post breakfast s’more. nap. read. nap. read. rebuild fire. mid-day s’more. nap. read. excursion to seek wood and hunt down wild ponies. rebuild fire. fire’s ready s’more. fire might go out soon s’more. make dinner. post dinner s’more. this-is-the-last-one-of-the-day s’more.  Eucre in the tent. Fall asleep to the sound of rain on the tent and waves on the beach. In a word, it was one of the most relaxing weekends ever. 

Look—wild ponies!

Sunday dawned bright and sunny, though still cold, but we did get a final sunny walk on the beach.I also succeeded in my first Jump Shot since the foot incident.