Urban Camping : REI Nerds 2

Back in March, as you savvy readers will recall, Amanda and I spent a night camping out for an REI sale. Truth be told, we camped out so that we could hang with buddies, watch mountain climbing movies outside in the dark, eat a minnesota boil, and the sale was the icing on the cake. We figured we'd give it another go this past weekend at the summer edition of the REI sale. This time the sale was on July 5th, hence a July 4th campout was "required" (at least to have a chance at the good stuff!).

Being July 4th we didn't know whether to expect a sold out crowd or a very sparse offering. I was hoping for a crowd, the more the merrier so long as there were no bad apples. I had grand visions of rallying a group for some parking lot ultimate frisbee. We were wavering on whether to take our dorm-room size Kelty tent or our old trusty Sears tent. I convinced Amanda that we should be good citizens and bring the tent with the smaller footprint (Sears tent), that way there would be more room for the party!

Alas, the July 4th crowd didn't materialize, there were a few of us there but not enough for midnight frisbee. We did have video games all night so sleeping was mostly off-limits and 4:30 in the morning was time for some bad apples to shoot off some firewords in an apparent attempt to wake up the REI nerds.

We did find some items that we had our sights on and of course spent way too much money (justified by identifying what we "would have spent" had we paid full price). We came out with a 3-man tent (if they're basing it on non-american sizes) that should be a bit better for backpacking than either of our other 2 tents, a mummy bag to 0 degrees, kayak saddle for the roof rack, and some odds and ends.


We'll see if the fall event lures us in, it probably will, and if it does we'll be the bad apples and bring out the Kelty Mantra!