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" \nOkay, let me start by saying that even though I love the earth and I may not seem like your typical &amp;quot;girlie-girl&amp;quot; because I&amp;#039;m down with getting dirty and will change clothes in gas stations, I still don&amp;#039;t fancy myself as the total &amp;quot;outdoorsy&amp;quot; type. Even though I don&amp;#039;t wash my hair every day, I love a shower. That being said, I had yet another Cali-adventure this weekend, which involved \u2014 get this \u2014  camping  in the desert of Joshua Tree National Park. My good friend Claire was having her birthday and wanted to celebrate by taking a camping trip. As I mentioned last week, I have my husband home from the road, and I knew he would want to go...after all, it was a group of about 12 of our closest friends, so I didn&amp;#039;t want to miss it either. I had no idea that it would be 100 degrees this weekend though, and that it would be so difficult to find a patch of shade in the barren, rocky landscape of Joshua Tree. That being said, we had an amazing time.  We arrived in the early afternoon, and the hard-core campers immediately took off for a 4-hour hike. Those of us who knew better politely declined and got busy setting up camp. The first task was assembling our tents. Ours was borrowed and went up fairly easily, but we were scratching our heads for a while, trying to figure out how to set up Claire&amp;#039;s tent. There was something a little off about it, and we finally concluded that there was definitely a pole missing. Once we asked around, someone remembered seeing something that looked like it could be a tent pole folded up in the back of the van. Phew!  Next up was the air mattress. That&amp;#039;s right, I camp in comfort. Or so I thought. In preparation for the camping trip, we decided to invest in an air mattress. That&amp;#039;s how Ned&amp;#039;s brother camps, and if he&amp;#039;s not ashamed of it, neither am I. I went mid-range when I was choosing, hoping for something durable but nothing too extravagant. Ned went solo to inflate it in the van while I finished setting up Claire&amp;#039;s tent with the found pole, and on the way back (although he won&amp;#039;t fully own up to this) I&amp;#039;m fairly certain the awkward mattress was blown into a Joshua Tree which if you didn&amp;#039;t know, is a cactus-type plant with extremely sharp spikes. We patched the hole, but when it was time to go to bed, we knew that the half-inflated mattress wasn&amp;#039;t happening. Luckily my friend Will had an extra pad that he loaned us, and we managed to get a few hours of sleep.  Other than those two mishaps, the rest of the trip was superb. We cooked dinner over the campfire, and the moon was nearly full, so we were able to do some exploring around the campsite, pointing out all the images that magically appeared in the boulders surrounding us. The next morning, as soon as the sun came up, our tent turned into an oven so needless to say we were up early. Claire made us delicious biscuits on the fire (self-rising flour and cream soda...who knew?). After breakfast, we went back to an area we had discovered the night before, guessing it would be shaded from the sun. We spread blankets and spent a couple hours lounging, realizing this is what people did before there was TV (although we  talked  a lot about TV). Several of us had to get back to L.A., so we packed up our gear and got on the road. We spent the first portion of the drive discussing how much fun we had, but also how happy we were not to be spending another night out there and how we couldn&amp;#039;t  wait  to get home...to take a shower.  -SJ "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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