Birthday Float Planning!

I love to plan things! It gives me things to be excited about and look forward to, and nothing is more rewarding than having a camping trip go perfectly because you thought of everything you might want!

Here's the itinerary:

Friday 

I get off work at 4:30. Ideally the car will be packed and ready to go so all I have to do is go home and pick up Dustin and we'll be on the road to beautiful Bearcat Getaway in Lesterville, MO!

Bearcat's Website

Bearcat is right on the beautiful Black River, which is perfect for floats! We plan on doing a canoe float on Saturday, more details on that later though!

It's a two and a half hour drive to Bearcat from home so if we leave at 5:15, we should be arriving by 8pm or so!

Once we get there and before the beer starts flowing, we need to set up camp. Luckily this isn't my first rodeo!
Instant Tent: literally takes 60 seconds! The poles are already attached!

Queen size double tall air mattress with built in air pump: ultimate comfort!

One purchase I've been meaning to make is a power inverter for the car. There's always something I need an outlet for, whether it's our phones, the pump on the air mattress, the crockpot, or my light up hula hoop, so this will come in handy and I can get one for under $30!

Once we set up camp I'm sure we'll be starving, so after we make a fire we can have a nice dinner around the campfire. There's a meat shop in Alton that sells all types of homemade bratwursts which would be great around the fire!

For sides I'm going to make some baked beans with bacon and onion in a crock pot to heat up, some creamy dill red potato salad, and some coleslaw. Yum!

After dinner it's time to wander about the campground and meet up with all our friends and see where they are all camped for the weekend. It's a slippery slope on Friday night though because we have to wake up early in the morning and be ready for the Float!!

Saturday

Today is the day of the float! The float is 7 miles and typically takes about 5 hours on the river. The latest float is at noon and we have to be at the buses by 11:30. All our friends are going at noon too! (Ted, Casey, Curt, Brittani, etc)

We need to be leaving our campsite by 11am so we should probably plan on getting up around 9am to wake up and get a good breakfast in before five hours on the river (Trust me, if you want to last drinking on the river all day you will need a good breakfast!)

I'm going to bring my cast iron skillet to make a yummy cowboy breakfast skillet with hashbrowns, onions and peppers, sausage and eggs on top:

Also getting some good sustainable energy from fruit is a good idea so I'll make some fruit salad

And finally a kick in the behind with some rumchata iced cofee!

After we eat breakfast we need to get all our supplies together for the float. We'll be taking a canoe so space will be of the utmost importance. One thing that will be a fun and in my opinion necessary addition is a waterproof speaker to listen to music on the river!

Other than that we need: Alcohol! And water! I tend to find that a light beer like bud light is good to be able to sustain drinking for five hours in the middle of the day on the river. I also like to bring a mixed drink. I'm thinking a grape vodka like concoction: 

At some point we will stop on a sidebar for lunch on the river. Now this is the tricky part: pack lunches that travel well on the river! It's pretty easy to assemble sandwiches at the campsite but leave off wet ingredients like mayo and tomato and pack those separately and tightly wrap the sandwiches in plastic wrap and aluminum foil. Other than that we'll need some salty snacks that provide protein and healthy fats like homemade trail mix, and easily portable veggies. I'm going to make little cucumber sandwiches, with garlic herb cream cheese, stuffed mini peppers with hummus, and stuffed cherry tomatoes with basil pesto and mozzarella. I found a cute recipe for chocolate rolled rice krispy treats for a sweet portable dessert too!

By the time we get back from the float it will be time to relax for a little bit and have some dinner at the campsite before Aaron Kamm and The One Drops play! For dinner I'm making steaks that I have marinated and top with caramelized onions, loaded hasselback potatoes, garlic lemon asparagus and campfire pull apart garlic cheese bread

Time for Dustin's ice cream birthday cake!! I'll keep it cool with dry ice!

Time to party with the One Drops!!!!