Friends Don't Let Friends Roast Marshmallows!

Dean, the husband

Shalane, the wife

We had a couple of our “city” friends from Las Vegas visit us this past Sunday.  It was wonderful to see them again and catch up on what has been going on in their lives.  We were excited to show off the area where we are currently staying and decided to take them down by the creek to roast some hotdogs.  My wife wanted to start the fire and asked me for some paper.  I reached into my wallet and gave her some.  I told her that I wanted to be impressed by her fire-making abilities, so I gave her a little bit of a handicap.  Handicap?!  He gave me a one by two inch receipt and a handful of weeds.  To say the least, it took me a few minutes to get the fire going.  As a matter of fact, I finally told him to go get me some REAL paper, so he brought back a small wad of toilet paper.  Sometimes he thinks he‘s SO funny.

Eventually, lunchtime turned into dinnertime, and she was able to get the fire started. See what I mean?  Hilarious, Babe!   Once the hot dogs were cooked and devoured, it was time for dessert.  Now, we had chocolate chip cookies baking in the solar oven back at camp, but our friends (we’ll just call them Ginger and Gilligan to protect their identities)  decided that they wanted to roast some marshmallows.  ‘Ginger’ took the roasting fork and started working on turning the marshmallows a golden brown.   I was glad she wanted the marshmallows, because, even though I’m not a huge fan, it just doesn’t seem quite right to have a roasted hot dog and not follow it up with a roasted marshmallow.  At first, it looked as if the marshmallows where just too far away from the fire.  ‘Gilligan’ kept insisting that they were only going to get hot and never get toasted.  ‘Ginger’ then put them down next to the fire, and suddenly, one of the four slid into the fire.  This only seemed to make matters worse, as one by one the poor defenseless marshmallows met their demise.  Now, only one remained, and my wife had the honor of eating the only survivor.  By the way, my wife described the lone survivor as “perfect.”  No, I described it at delectable!  Nice work, Ginger!

Ginger now felt confident that she could try again and this time successfully transform these soft, white cubes of sugary bliss into to a treat of golden perfection.  She loaded four more onto the stick and started the task of recreating that magical combination of stick, fire, and marshmallow.  Gilligan was then given a plate by Ginger and instructed to catch any flying food coming off the roasting fork.   HA!  Okay, now he IS being funny! That‘s pretty much what happened, though.  Gilligan was poised and ready to rescue any unruly marshmallows.   Again, the same techniques were employed.  Alas, it soon became apparent that the same outcome was about to occur, so quickly, Ginger removed the badly damaged globs of goo from the fire and rested them on the awaiting plate.  (Note the picture that accompanies this post.)  I am happy to report that all ended well.  Every bit of sticky stuff that was not clinging to the plate was enjoyed, and our friendship continued.  (At least I hope so, after they read this blog. This is, after all,  the reason why we used fictitious names! lol)

Anyhow, this ended a perfect afternoon, with perfect friends, a perfect wife, and not so perfect marshmallows.  Hey, a guy can’t have EVERYTHING you know.  :O)   Hey!  That’s not how it ended!  We came back to camp, ate our chocolate chip cookies, drove out to Spring Valley, took a walk out to the dam and then came back and said goodbye so that Ginger and Gilligan could get back to Vegas.  THAT was the end of a perfect day.