Texas Renaissance Festival - Camping

This past weekend, I went to the Texas Renaissance Festival with Kevin and our friends Shelby and Caegan on what turned out to be a double date camping adventure extravaganza. We had originally planned to get a large group of people together and Shelby and I had been trying to coordinate everything for about a month. Everyone was super pumped about it but a few days before we left, the count was down to the four of us. In the end, I'm glad it worked out that way because its easier to run around with just four people as opposed to ten or so.

Friday night was my bandmate, and long time friend, Doug's birthday. He had a huge party and just about everyone we know was there. We all had a ridiculous time. We had originally meant to start driving the two hours to Plantersville for the festival by 10 am the next morning but the party got a little too awesome and we didn't end up leaving Saturday until around 2 pm. haha.

Doug even ripped his pants trying to take a jumping picture drunk. 

By the time we got to the camp grounds, it was almost dark. We decided to just set up camp, chill, and go into the festival the next morning. Kevin and Caegan set up the tent while Shelby and I unpacked and sorted everything and made friends with our neighbors. After everything was set up, we grilled some hot dogs and hung out with our neighbors for a good hour or so. They're in a celtic clan that travels to Renaissance fairs and festivals all over the place and camp out. They were incredibly nice and welcoming. After a while, we decided to venture around the campgrounds to meet and party with other people. First, we went to the big campfire in the middle of the grounds and watched people dance around the fire, including a couple of guys who looked like the Jonas brothers who were literally wearing leather jackets and nothing else. The police came and yelled at them to get dressed and then started yelling at other random people so we left. We then came across a campsite where these people were blaring Limp Bizkit (I just had to google how to spell that, haha) and playing with these crazy balls that had LED lights switching between colors so fast that you couldn't tell until you threw the ball and the space broke up the colors. We played catch with them for a bit and then continued on to another camp. All the while, we're walking around the grounds going from campsite to campsite and talking with people. Kevin tells me how he feels weird just walking into random peoples' campsites and I had to reassure him that that was precisely what you're supposed to do at Ren Fest. The point of camping there is to meet random people and get drunk with them. He then tells me that he doesn't really feel like drinking either.

Then we met Friar Tuck and all that changed. Friar Tuck immediately starts chatting it up with us and starts handing over bottles of liquor for us to sample and subsequently compliment him on. The longer we stand around with him, the more times the bottle passes around our conversation circle and the more inappropriate the jokes tend to turn. At one point, Friar Tuck hands Kevin a bottle of Wild Turkey American Honey and nonchalantly asks him to finish off the remaining 4 or so shots in the bottle. Kevin, who didn't "feel like drinking", gladly accepts. After that, he had little problem warming up to new campsite friends. haha. We had a couple more drinks and a beer with Friar Tuck. Kevin and I wandered into the darkness to find a bathroom and when we came back, Shelby and Caegan were no where to be found. Kevin and I then head back towards our campsite on the other side of the grounds to either find Shelby and Caegan or just hang out in the tent and chill.
We make it back to our camp and our neighbors had a big group of people over including bellydancers and a couple of guys creating a drum circle. We ask if Kevin can play along and they hand him a drum. He caught on really quickly and we sat in the circle for a good hour, passing bottles of homemade wine along and tapping our feet to the rhythm of the drums. At one point, Kevin mentions that I'm a singer and we then all sing Bohemian Rhapsody to drums, accordion, and bellydancing finger symbols. After an exhausting and amazing night, Kevin and I went back to our tent to crash. It was absolutely freezing that night and we came ill prepared with just a couple of sleeping bags, one to sleep on and one to sleep under. After we snuggled up to each other and tucked in every corner of the sleeping bag on top of us, we stayed decently warm but of course we slept in our clothes. The sun rose pretty quickly but the temperature didn't rise as substantially as we had hoped. We then packed up our camp and got ready to go into the fair.