My 30th Birthday

This is me on my 30th birthday.

I spent the weekend at Maquoketa Caves State Park in Maquoketa, Iowa, which is coincidentally about 30 miles west of the Iowa-Illinois border. I was accompanied by my steadfast camping companions, Geoff and Cubby Dog. We piled our gear, a few blankets, our headlamps, some beverages, and plenty of good cheer into my old Jeep and headed west into the setting sun.

Liberty road warrior

If this sounds poetic and romantic, it wasn’t, because we also left the printed directions and all the information about our campsite on the kitchen counter at home. And also I burned all of our paper maps the last time we were camping and didn’t have any kindling and I said, “Oh these old things? We’ll never need these stupid maps. Twenty-first century, dudes.” And once we veered off the interstate and onto county roads, our smartphones went from a few bars of service, to one bar, to no bars, to a message informing us, “NO SERVICE – YOU’RE LOST, YOU DUMMIES.”

We finally stumbled upon the state park in the pitch black night by sheer luck, and two friendly Iowa DNR rangers riding around in a golf cart in the dark (??) very kindly pointed us to our campsite. So actually I guess it was pretty great, and now I know I can set up our tent by myself in the dark of the night using only the light of the moon. Hashtag empowered.

The next day we hiked all the trails. We got to the park early and seemed to have it almost to ourselves for a few hours, which was a real treat. We scrambled up and down cliffs and bluffs. We leapt across a small river. We put on our headlamps and crawled in the caves, sometimes far, and sometimes not so far. We were adventurers for the day.

In the late afternoon we hopped back into the car and visited the nearby Tabor Family Winery. They let us taste just about everything. I’m no wine snob (I drink table wine on the regular), but I will opine that wine made from Iowa grapes is nothing to write home about. The fruit wines, though, are another story: Tabor gave us their cranberry wine, raspberry wine, and blackberry wine made in the port style, all of which were excellent and all of which we bought to serve ice cold with cheese as a final course at future fancypants dinner parties. We bought a bottle of the sparkling wine called "The Toast of Iowa” and drank it on the spot, outside, overlooking the Grant Wood-esque landscape.

We spent the night under the stars with a fire to roast our mallows, and we got the chance to talk about our dreams for our 30s.

I was sad to leave the next day but very happy to go home. My family made a birthday dinner for me, and my sister decorated the house like a boss:

There are so many things I like about this birthday: reconnecting with nature, unplugging from the constant pull of email and the internet, and plugging instead into the people in front of me. The luxury of having unscheduled and unstructured time. I like the beginning of feeling more comfortable in my own skin.  I can’t wait to see where my 30s take me next.