CHAPTER 49
Martha hated camping!
She wanted her comfortable bed, sleeping on the ground, even with a padded mat under their sleeping bag, was hard and uncomfortable.
She wanted a proper kitchen, trying to cook using the camp fire or their camping stove was hot, messy and inefficient.
She wanted a comfortable chair to sit on.
She wanted her bathroom, bathing in the river was only fun if you were a fish!
She wanted a supply of water that she could turn on at a faucet.
She liked fishing, but after the first couple of hours she got bored waiting for a suicidal fish to eat her bait.
At night, the tent was hot and stuffy and during the day there was no escaping the sun.
The walks were lovely and picturesque, but because it was so hot they became more like an endurance course.
She wanted to go home! She really wanted to go home! The only problem was …
Jonathan loved camping!
The great outdoors, the wide open spaces, beautiful scenery, communing with nature, long walks, fishing for your supper, building a camp fire, lying under the stars and just relaxing with no work and no worries.
In his opinion, camping was the perfect holiday.
Jonathan was blissfully unaware that Martha hated camping.
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Martha lay on the grass watching Jonathan; he was sitting by the river trying to catch some fish for their dinner. It was late in the afternoon and he was just wearing his swimming shorts and a very disreputable hat.
His skin was evenly tanned a deep golden color and the hairs on his chest and arms were catching the late afternoon sunlight and looked like a fine covering of down. As he adjusted the line on his fishing rod she admired the way his muscles rippled across his back and down his arms.
Jonathan glanced at Martha, who was stretched out on the grass relaxing. She had either given up trying to catch a fish or was trying a new method of trying to catch one by mind control alone.
"Hey, lazy bones, that's no way to catch our supper." He teased her.
"I'm thinking." She replied.
"Thinking that a fish is going to jump out of the river and land in your lap?" Jonathan queried with a grin.
"No, I was wondering why on earth you would want to wear such a terrible hat." Martha answered.
"There's nothing wrong with this hat. I'll have you know that this is my lucky fishing hat!" Jonathan replied, looking offended.
"You mean it's lucky that the hat hasn't been thrown away?"
"Thrown away? How could you? If this hat ever goes missing you will be in a big heap of trouble, Martha Anne!"
"But it's hideous! Why would you want to hang on to such an awful hat?" Martha asked, looking mystified.
"I told you … it's my lucky fishing hat." Jonathan repeated.
Martha gave up, if Jonathan wanted to wear a hat that even a hobo would have thrown away, it was up to him. She closed her eyes and relaxed in the fading sunlight.
Jonathan smiled as he watched her, she was wearing a very brief pair of shorts and she had tied her sleeveless shirt in a knot at the front and from where he was sitting he could see that she wasn't wearing a bra. Forgetting about fishing for a moment Jonathan just sat and admired the view of his wife's voluptuous body as she lay in the grass.
As her mind drifted over the details of the last forty-eight hours, Martha tried to work out just why Jonathan liked camping so much.
As soon as she had arrived home from work on Friday he had been eager to leave on their vacation. The truck was already packed with all their camping gear; he had organized all their food supplies and was busy loading the last of the coolers into the truck when she drove into the yard. Without even giving her time to catch her breath she had been hurried upstairs and told to pack and while she took a quick shower Jonathan loaded his bag and all the fishing gear into the truck. By the time she was ready to leave he was busy stealing a few extra brownies from the kitchen.
Barely giving her enough time to say goodbye to Jessica and Hiram she was hustled out to the truck and they were on their way.
"You're gonna love camping." Jonathan said enthusiastically as he drove towards Milk River.
Martha grinned at him, "I hope so. I'm really looking forward to spending a few days with you and relaxing. It's a pity we couldn't bring Buster with us."
"Maybe next time, this time he's too young to be left outside the tent all night and there's no way he's sleeping with us in the tent!"
"I know, it's just that he looked so sad when we left." Martha said with a small sigh.
"Honey, he's perfected that sad and pathetic expression especially for your benefit!" Jonathan teased.
When they reached the place Jonathan had chosen for their camp at the edge of Milk River, Martha watched in amazement as Jonathan bounded around setting up their camp. Although she offered to help, she wasn't really needed and finally, in an attempt to do something useful, she wandered off in search of firewood.
That first evening had been really romantic, sitting by the camp fire, eating the food Jessica had given them and chatting. They had sat up late under the stars and when they had finally gone to bed Jonathan had solved the problem of her finding sleeping on the ground uncomfortable by making love to her so enthusiastically that she had finally fallen asleep totally exhausted.
Early the following morning, when it was barely light, Jonathan had woken a deeply sleeping Martha and dragged her out of the tent to enjoy the early morning. Martha, who was barely awake, stumbled around in the gloom and tried to work out why Jonathan was so excited.
"Isn't this wonderful?" He said, waving his arms around and breathing deeply.
Martha peered around trying to work out what she was supposed to be appreciating and heroically resisted the urge to crawl back into their tent and go back to sleep.
"I wanted to share this with you, don't you just love it?" Jonathan said grinning happily.
Martha, who had no idea what he wanted to share, suppressed a yawn and wondered whether she would be spoiling the moment by going and putting some clothes on.
"Come on, honey. You're gonna love this bit." Jonathan said, grabbing Martha's hand.
"What bit?" Martha asked nervously as she tried to keep up as Jonathan ran across the grass.
All too soon Martha realized what Jonathan was intending to do. As they ran towards the river she shouted, "No!"
But it was too late; Jonathan was already jumping into the river pulling Martha in after him.
As she was plunged into the cold water Martha let out a piercing shriek. Now she was fully awake and mad as heck. "Jonathan!" She yelled, as she came up for air spitting out water and dragging her sodden hair off her face.
"Isn't skinny dipping the best thing ever?" Jonathan shouted gleefully as swam over and gave her a big hug.
Martha shivered and contemplated drowning Jonathan.
"Hey, you're cold. Come on, a good swim will warm you up." Jonathan said, as he started swimming down the river.
Martha sighed, there was no way she wanted to be a spoil sport and dampen his enthusiasm, so she started swimming after him. Slowly, as she became used to the cold water, she began to enjoy herself and realized that maybe skinny dipping wasn't so bad after all.
The rest of the day was taken up with Jonathan's boundless energy and Martha trying to keep up with him. They had made breakfast and then gone for a long walk, stopping for a picnic lunch, before returning to their campsite late in the afternoon where Jonathan gave Martha her first fishing lesson. Martha had just been grateful to sit still for a while. That night they had sat out under the stars and then, rather go into their stuffy tent had made love outside in the cool of the evening. When they finally crawled into their tent Martha snuggled up to Jonathan and just before she fell asleep thought that maybe she might get used to camping after all.
The following day she had been woken at the crack of dawn again and, before she could get her sleep befuddled mind to work properly, had found herself back flailing around in the cold river water again. Sighing, she began to swim to keep warm. Next time, I'm staying at home and you can bring Buster camping! she thought.
All day she had tried to keep up with Jonathan, he was so eager to share all his favorite places with her and was so obviously enjoying himself that she didn't have the heart to tell him that she was hot and tired. As she trudged along behind him trying to keep up she wondered whether he was distantly related to Davy Crockett, she even considered asking him if he owned a coonskin cap, but was too hot and thirsty to bother.
When they finally returned to camp rather than relaxing Jonathan insisted that they had to gather some more firewood and then he had given her a fishing rod and they began trying to catch their supper. After trying to catch a fish for well over an hour, Martha had finally given up and had stretched out on the grass.
Jonathan was beginning to think Martha had fallen asleep when she suddenly opened her eyes, "You know what I don't understand?" She asked him.
"That you actually have to put your fishing line in the water to be able to catch a fish?" Jonathan guessed.
"Very funny! No, what I don't understand why we are the only people camping here. As it's a holiday weekend I would have thought that somewhere as beautiful as this would have had lots of people camping out around here."
"Milk River is real popular with campers, but they mostly stay at the camp grounds or near to the lodge." Jonathan explained.
"Camp grounds? Lodge?" Martha queried.
"Yes, there are several camp grounds up and down the river and the Milk River Lodge is about fifteen miles up river." Jonathan explained.
Martha closed her eyes and resisted the urge to push Jonathan into the river as she thought about proper bathroom facilities like hot water and showers and being able to eat in a restaurant. Instead she just patiently asked, "So why aren't we staying at one of the camp grounds?"
"What would be the point in that? The whole reason to come camping is to get away from people and enjoy the wonderful natural surroundings. In a camp ground you'd be surrounded by people all the time. No, this is much nicer." Jonathan said happily, as he reeled in another fish.
Martha considered the possibility that if Davy Crockett hadn't died at the Alamo whether his wife would have ended up killing him. However, realizing that they only had another twenty-four hours of their vacation left, Martha decided to let Jonathan live. After all, he was obviously having a wonderful break and, considering how hard he worked, it was only fair that he should be able to relax and enjoy himself.
"Okay, we now have enough fish for supper." Jonathan informed her as he began to gather up their fishing rods. "Would you like some coffee?"
Although Martha was prepared to forgive Jonathan for depriving her of all her home comforts during their vacation, she decided that he really did deserve a little punishment. Standing up, she said, "No, I'll have some later." Tossing her hair back, she began to untie the knot holding her shirt together. Jonathan watched in amazement as she dropped it on the ground and then after giving him a very provocative look she slowly unzipped her shorts and shimmied out of them. Next she removed her panties and then, with Jonathan's mouth going dry as he watched, she slowly stretched showing off her body and tempting him.
"Martha?" Jonathan croaked.
"Yes, Jonathan?" Martha purred as she slowly walked towards him.
Stopping just in front of him she carefully placed her index finger in the middle of his chest and very slowly and provocatively drew a line down to his waistband, pulling the elastic away from his body and licking her lips as she watched him. Then, as she released the elastic so that it snapped back into place making Jonathan yelp, she laughed as she turned and executed a neat dive into the river.
"Martha!" Jonathan called out in frustration. It took him several moments to control his fumbling fingers well enough to remove his clothes and join her in the river, by which time Martha was peacefully floating on her back enjoying the feel of the cool water on hot body.
Swimming up to Martha, Jonathan warned her, "Martha Anne, you are gonna suffer for that!"
Wrapping her arms around his neck Martha smiled and said, "I'm counting on it!" before kissing him until Jonathan pulled them both out of the water and began to make love to her on the grass.
Martha's last coherent thought was that although camping was vastly over-rated the fringe benefits really were superb!!
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