Two-Thirds of Summer Have Flown, Fled, and Vanished...

The good news is that we're still managing to enjoy the summer instead of spending our days sitting at home.

This weekend I took the girls camping again, just us, without friends. We loaded the car with gear, bought camping food—pasta, canned stew, vegetables, cookies, instant noodles, and kvass—and drove out after work on Friday night to Lake Pleshcheyevo near Pereslavl-Zalessky. My wife picked the spot.

We left late, took forever to pack, and got stuck in traffic leaving Moscow and on the Yaroslavl highway, so we didn't get there until midnight. I parked on the shoulder near a barrier gate and went scouting with a flashlight. At first glance, I wasn't thrilled with the place in the dark, but we had no energy to search for anything better. We unloaded the car and hauled our stuff about 500 meters to the campsite. I quickly pitched our new house-style tent (I'm still amazed by it—the best tent I've ever seen), got things more or less organized, and went to sleep to the sound of guitars. It turned out that we'd stumbled onto the Otkrytie ('Discovery') singer-songwriter festival. =)

In the morning we looked around and realized we'd pitched our tent near a path running through the entire campsite toward the lake. There were several other families with children camping nearby, so we decided to stay. Next to our tent was a large wooden pavilion with a long table and benches. People carrying guitars and other instruments started gathering there. I'd never seen so many guitars in one place. All day, a group of people sat in that pavilion listening to different performers and selecting the best acts, as we later learned, for the big evening concert. Basically, we heard the whole concert before it even started. And some of the performers were really good.

During the day we swam in the gorgeous lake, with its clear water, very gentle slope, and pleasant sandy bottom. We met a lovely family, Kristina and Maksim, with two daughters—one a month old and the other six. Saturday night was noisy, with music playing everywhere. A group near our tent stood out: a genuinely talented guy with an incredible voice was singing fantastic songs, while everyone around him shouted along and made it impossible for anyone to sleep. Drunk couples wandered back and forth loudly discussing their relationship problems. For example, we learned that Kristi's boyfriend Dima had dumped her after failing to wish her a happy birthday and telling her he didn't care about her. Tearful Kristi promptly turned to Slava, who didn't mind at all, then announced to Dima that he hadn't dumped her—she'd dumped him. Their mutual friend Nikita defended Dima, trying to keep him from falling out with Slava. A homegrown Russian version of Santa Barbara, in other words. In the morning, a slightly disheveled Kristi seemed quite happy—she hadn't slept alone. Some names have been changed, and the similarities are not entirely coincidental.

The location was fantastic, we got lucky with the weather, and the tent is amazing. We're now 100% ready for extremely comfortable, self-sufficient camping trips. Summer isn't over yet.