The last campfire

The plan in the evening was to have a campfire, cook some dogs, and spread the table with enough goodies to satisfy any camper's appetite. So I took on the task of getting the fire started.

Karen prepared the table and much of the food in anticipation of us all relaxing and coming away being well fed.

As usual, "a good time was had by all" as we ate to our heart's content, enjoyed the beautiful and bountiful outdoors, and mostly, each other's fellowship.

I feel so blessed that God gave me this time with our friends to enjoy the last camping trip that Karen and I took together. Karen and I had two wonderful years of "doing the RV life" out of the many, many years we were planing on. But as sometimes happens, God has other plans and His plans are perfect even if we don't understand them at the time. I will never forget the time I brought Karen home from the Bismarck hospital after her first stay there. She wanted to go for a walk that evening so we walked out to the barn so she could take a look inside the camper. "I can't wait until we can go out camping again this year", she said. "And I am going to fight these buggers so we can go!!!" (She called those tumors that were taking over her insides, "those buggers".) That did not happen---but the memories are there!!!!

After we ate and it started getting dark, the "kids" brought out some games to play. So we lit the lantern and gathered around the table. Have you ever played BuzzWord? It was a first time for Karen and me and it did take us a while to catch on. I can't remember all the rules and exactly how it is played but the opposite team reads a word and the other team has so long to come up with the opposite meaning. It is a rather fast moving game and a lot of pressure is put on the team to come up with the opposite word. So the word that was read was HYPERTENSION. Immediately Karen and Loralie yelled out LOW-PERTENSION!!! It took a good five minutes for us all to stop laughing (maybe we stopped because our bellies were hurting so much from laughing) until someone finally said, "wait a minute, it needs to be a REAL word". Was that the highlight of the camping trip? I don't know, but it is the one thing that everyone remembers and we all still get a good chuckle out of it whenever we recall it. It may be a, you-had-to-have-been-there-to-get-it moment, but it will always be a memory for me of the wonderful sense of humour that Karen had. I love you, Karen.