Camping in the Wild’s of Estonia

So on this fine and dandy free weekend James, Helene, Haley, and I decided that a bit o’ camping was in order. So we borrowed a tent from Anton, bought ourselves some tickets, and hopped on the bus to Haapsalu, deemed the Venice of Estonia! Upon arriving at our destination, we were greeted by a fresh sea breeze and the sounds of seagulls cawing. After a quick little walk we arrived at our campsite where a nice, old Finnish man, who happened to own the place, came out for a chat. He was a pretty cool guy and gave us the low down on what was going on in the city. As it turned out there was an America Car Show planned which while at first seemed cool ended up being очень no bueno because they shut down the castle on Saturday for it. Once our little talk wrapped up we set up camp and settled in for the night. Suffice to say none of us really expected it to get as cold as it did! I swear it was down right frigid when the sun sank below the horizon! Thankfully it doesn’t stay dark here for too long and the sun soon rose, allowing us to warm up and get ready for the day. We settled on just exploring the city for a bit, but that only lasted a few hours  so we thought it’d be a good idea to meander over the next city about 10km away via a nature path. This path was one of the straightest, flatest feats of human engineering I’ve ever laid eyes upon. Over the course of the 10 km we encountered a grand total of 3 bends, each of which we greeted with great excitement. Anyways this neighboring “city” was nothing more than a port with maybe three buildings on it, so as opposed to turning back around we decided to say #YOLO and take a ferry to one of the local islands. This island was more or less devoid of human life and quite frankly we are probably lucky we didn’t run into a tribe of local cannibals during our 90 min stay. After returning on the ferry we made the trek back to the campsite and settled in for another cold night on the ground. Over all the trip was a blast and nobody died so it was a huge success in my book!   Josh Shepard