15th Quarterly Review - Enchanted Rock

"The rain won. Next time we will not be beat."
- Danny Stiller on May 15, 2009

In three and a half years of marriage and over the course of 15 quarterly reviews, we had our first flop last month.

Our plans to camp and climb Enchanted Rock were dashed by a steady rain ALL day.
But, let me start by saying that we arrived on Friday night - not deterred by a broken down car or a bad Google map - in plenty of time to set up camp in the daylight. Only to discover that someone else had already parked their gear in our spot.

We let the park ranger, a fellow Aggie, kick them out and watched the last of the sun dip behind the horizon as we waited for the squatters to move all of their stuff.

And so, we are pros at setting up camp by lamplight. Only, now we know to take the extra time to set the tarp up in the dark as well - BEFORE it starts to rain. We heard thunder and saw lightening throughout the night, but rain drops never fell. As Danny was setting up our dutch oven breakfast and getting ready to build a fire, I ran several hundred yards to the car to get some supplies. Just as I got the car the bottom of the sky fell out, so I hopped in and marveled at my dryness.

Guilt overcame me and I thought, "I just can't LEAVE Danny out there in the rain by himself!"
So, I grabbed the umbrella and some towels and headed back to the campsite, only to see our big, gray tarp thrown over the picnic table which was piled high with our supplies. Danny was no where to be seen.
I started yelling for him and quickly realized after a muffled reply and a shift of the tarp - that he was sitting, under the tarp and at the picnic table, trying to stay dry.

Unfortunately, things only got wetter.
After making breakfast and being tired of being confined to the picnic table, we crawled back into our tents to read. We promptly fell asleep . . . for several hours.

Tired of being confined to our tent (do you see a pattern here), we shifted back to the claustrophobic picnic table to make lunch.
Basically, we ate, slept, ate, slept and then stared longingly at the slippery wet rock that we really wanted to hike. It was torturous.
And, so we did what we've never done before. We left a quarterly review an entire day early. Yep, we scraped the camping idea, drove into Austin to eat at Kirby Lane and then finished off the evening in the comfort of our own beds.After all that I can't even tell you what we discussed. I know we had good conversation in the car on the way home, but other than that we were probably discussing how to cook dutch oven meals over a JetBoil stove.

So, this quarterly review will definitely have to be repeated and redeemed.

Quarterly Review History:
*1st - 12/16/05 - Raleigh, NC
*2nd - 03/25/06 - Charleston, SC
*3rd - 06/24/06 - Columbia, SC
*4th - 8/27/06 - Boston, MA
*5th - 12/1/06 - Gatlinburg, TN
*6th - 2/09/07 - Charlotte, NC
*7th - 5/26/07 - Myrtle Beach, SC
*8th - 8/27/07 - College Station, TX
*9th - 11/10/07 - Dallas, TX
*10th - 02/15/08 - Grapevine, TX
*11th - 05/17/08 - Houston, TX
*12th - 08/27/08 - St. Joseph, MI & Dallas, TX
*13th - 12/12/08 - Cartwright, OK
*14th - 2/6/09 - Austin, TX