Redneck Weekend!

Yeehaw, I definitely had a redneck weekend at the Silver Lake Sand Dunes! Dave and Mariah (Mitch's bro and his wife) have a seasonal lot at one of the campgrounds up there, so we went to spend the weekend there. First off, I had an awesome time. Dave and Mariah's friends there are all really nice and positively hilarious, so any descriptions here are not meant to be negative at all.

So this campground, at least the seasonal section, is like the coolest trailer park ever. If you could ship all your friends to a trailer park and have a constant party, this is what it would be like. Most of these people are here for the long haul, as in they will have their lots for years and year to come, so they've built decks off their campers, put up storage sheds on their lots, even hooked up outdoor TVs and surround sound systems underneath their canopies. Every Friday night is Texas Hold 'Em night and every Saturday night is group dinner night. Everyone can tell whose sand dune vehicle is whose when they start them up in the mornings, just by the sound of the engine. Everyone watches out for and feeds everyone else's kids, people are two-waying each other on Nextel to get ready for go-carting adventures...basically, it's a riot all the time.

Most of the men look the same, with the exception of this one British dude: barrel-chested, beer bellies, short haircuts and facial hair. Most of them spend all day with a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other, except when they are on the dunes and then there's no beer. Lots of swearing, too, and lots of yelling during card games!

The dunes themselves were awesome. It's hard to describe, so I'll try to post pictures when I have time. There's one huge hill, called Test Hill, and besides driving up it, people sit in their trucks at the bottom and the top and watch people try to make it up. The bottom is not as cool as the top, though. We spent a good couple of hours sitting in Dave and Mariah's Blazer at the top of the hill watching these two awesome dune buggies lauch themselves over the top of the hill. We also saw a Bronco flip over when he came over the top of another small hill too fast. It was really steep on the backside, and he just dug his bumper into the sand and flipped upside-down. I think everyone was OK, but they still had to be taken down in a truck with a backboard (you can't get an ambulance up there) and their Bronco had to be towed away. Interesting thing: on the sand dunes, your vehicles have no insurance, so if you break them, you're paying the whole thing. Someone told me your health insurance is not valid either, but I don't believe that one at all.