The final chapter to vacation

One of Padre’s favorite ways to end a good evening on the boat is with a bloody-mary. Padre is not much of a drinker, but this is one of his indulgences.

On our last night in the cabin, Biscuit and I mixed up some loaded drinks, handed one to dad and sipped on ours as we cooked dinner. As usual, they went down smooth and fast.

Dinner helped temper the buzz.

After dinner, Biscuit and I had our eyes set on the fire pit. We even bought dry firewood so we were stocked. Are you remembering that this vacation was plagued by rain and clouds? One may say it was forboding.

We ambitiously stacked the logs and found kindling (and cardboard) to get things started. Try as we might, the fire wouldn’t start.

To all of you people out there thinking I did it wrong (I'm looking squarely at my husband), I did not! Not only do I have a fire-pit in our yard, I also, just the Friday before we left, built a fire with only a lighter and some scraps from the woods.

So this fire wouldn’t start. Even the cardboard wouldn’t light. It was getting dark. The lighter was burning my fingers as I circled the pit, fanning, lighting, and fanning some more.

It was after the first twenty minutes that we (I) had ran out of cardboard, broken the lighter and spilled two drinks.

Now what? No lighter or matches to be found.

Enter Padre to the rescue with our next idea. Dinner was cooked on the charcoal grill. “I’ll bet those coals are still glowing hot” he said. Off he goes to scoop up some coals and add them to the fire.

Now we have glowing coals lying in the moist ash at the base of the dry firewood—still no flames. We had more paper, but the coals wouldn’t catch it on fire. I think it was Padre under the influence of too many bloody mary’s who said “Sparklers?” Long story but yes, we had sparklers with us. Biscuit returned with the sparklers. What a sight, the three of us bent over the non-existent fire, holding sparklers to the glowing coals. Still nothing.

I think that was about when Padre gave up and went to finish his book.


I had another idea, I ran inside and grabbed a roll of paper towels. FINALLY something the coals were hot enough to light. I circled the fire ripping off sheets of paper towels, stuffing them in the base, followed by Biscuit who ensured they lit. FLAMES!

The flames only lasted until the fuel of paper towels ran out. So we continued to circle, fueling the fire with Brawny. After a whole double roll was engulfed, the dry logs had finally caught fire. We took turns watching it, fearful it would go out.

SUCCESS


So what was the point? Why did we exhaust all sources of spark and fuel?

SMORES, why else.

Oh and don’t forget about those sparklers. They were still in the fire pit, One ignited while I was taking the picture below.