s'more cabin weekends, please!
Spent last weekend tucked away in a tiny cabin with my friend Pepper. We'd planned the excursion out tentatively in the spring, but decided to hold off on locking it in until we were through the majority of July, since it was a really busy month for us both. Luckily, our schedules worked out, so we hopped in the car Friday evening, loaded to the gills with coolers of yummy beverages and stuff for weekend meals, and headed up towards the mountains. It was rainy and overcast pretty much the whole drive up, but considering it literally poured buckets last time we went here (I think that was, like, two years ago?), a little sprinkle was nauttttthin and we managed to get everything unloaded into the cabin with only a little rain tracked in behind us.
There's a local spot to eat nearby, so after we got the majority of our stuff inside, we ran out for a bite to eat. Oh my GOOOOOOOOD, it was so tasty! We split the chocolate torte for dessert and it was seriously incredible. Then, we snuggled down into our pajamas and settled in for night one, for which our first priority was: watch some fun movies.
I'm actually not great at keeping up with movies (though getting a Letterboxd account has helped, since it at least lets me know what my friends are watching and sometimes moves me to give anything they rate highly a try), but Pepper is a movie fanatic and keeps me apprised of good ones. Unfortunately for her, I had panic-downloaded a random selection of stuff, since I didn't think we would have much internet connection...aaaaaaaand, I was correct. Fortunately for both of us, I somehow managed to secure a pretty good array. We finished one movie, started a second, and then paused to go to sleep.
In the morning, we woke up and crushed some mini-muffins (lemon poppyseed and chocolate chip, for me) and I drank copious amounts of coffee. Then we finished the previous night's movie. It was overcast and horrendously humid when I stuck my head outside, but the cabin had great A/C, so we were able to keep it cool enough to lounge around without overheating.
Last time we stayed at this same location, we rented out a different build and apparently that one does NOT have A/C. It was a meltingly hot 48 hours and we had to beg floor fans from the people who run the site, because otherwise it was waaaaaay too warm to sleep. Lesson learned. I checked our reservation about thirty times just to confirm this one wasn't going to turn into an impromptu sauna.
We waffled between a board game or a TTRPG. I have a few two-person TTRPG games I've been absolutely chomping at the bit to try and Pepper was really interested in a few of them, so we ended up playing a session of house and it was really, really fun. We fudged the rules a bit for our own purposes and we ended up rolling a six-sided die a few times to make some decisions that the deck of cards wasn't quite able to narratively satisfy, or where we were stuck on which way we wanted the plotline to fall. We played for maybe three or four hours total, with intermittent breaks for other stuff (like lunch! We made some delicious & super stacked sandwiches). I think we filled out seven or eight pages of a notebook! I want to type it up more neatly when I get some time. I think the game would be a really good lead-in to a longer-form Monster of the Week campaign. I'm gonna be thinking that over for the next few weeks, I imagine.
At the conclusion of the game, we tried to go out for a walk along the path that lines the cabins. The clouds, which had been mulling over the possibility of a rainstorm all day, took that moment to make their decision, so we pulled on our shoes to the sound of raindrops starting a slow beat against the roof of the cabin. Still, we figured we'd at least get outdoors for a minute; maybe the rain would stay light and we could meander for a little while. Picture me with my ankle-high rain boots, holding an incredibly flimsy umbrella (taken from the work lost-and-found, after no one came to claim it for a month). I gave Pepper the more structurally sound umbrella and we set off into the drizzle. Unfortunately, we only made it about three minutes down the path before the storm doubled down and we were forced to hoof it back. We gleefully settled in for resigned ourselves to more movies, in place of a walk.
The cabin didn't have a full kitchen, so I made microwave risotto. Wild experience, because the spinny-plate would NOT stay on track and I had managed to forget a measuring cup, so there was a lot of eyeballing measurements and hoping for the best. I told Pepper if she hated it, she had to forgive me for cooking her something terrible. It was a bit of a spectator sport for her, watching me try to wrangle the meal together. Still boggled by the amount of onion the recipe called for. I halved it and it still seemed like 85% onion??? It ended up being edible, though, so - whoooo! I win!
Anyway, we had planned to do s'mores outside over a fire to end the night, but it was still sprinkling and we couldn't find the firewood that we thought was provided in the rental, so we just decided to go full-microwave with it. I have not laughed harder over a s'more in my life. There were at least three points were I thought I might choke to death on marshmallow, because so many things were going wrong but also we were trying to eat them before they 1) fell apart or 2) coagulated into something horrifying. At one point, I opened the microwave and Pepper touched a marshmallow to check its meltyness. The only way I can describe the level of horror in her scream was, like, that moment in scary movies where someone touches a person and they turn to goo under their hand. Tears in my eyes the whole damn time. It was really awesome. I just have so much fun with Pepper, even when we're doing something so incredibly stupid.
We watched Twister (1996, dir. Jan de Bont) in preparation for going to see Twisters (2024, dir. Lee Isaac Chung) this weekend. So, that's something I'm looking forward to tomorrow! Though, I haven't seen the trailer for the new one, so I'm walking in blind in terms of what the plotline could possibly be. More Twisters, I would reckon. Guess we'll see!
Good luck out there,
Eve