Scary Campfire

Matt, Scott, the dogs and I all went to the coast. After a nice long beach walk we decided to cook dinner over a fire. We dug a hole in the sand, and patted ourselves on the back for thinking to line the hole with rocks to 1) allow ventilation to keep the fire burning, and 2) to contribute to holding the heat we'd use to cook our food as the fire burned itself out. It seemed like a good idea. Until the rocks started exploding.

In the photo below, look at the largish round rock near the center of the photo (and a little to the left)--the one that appears to be broken into at least two pieces. It wasn't broken when we put it in there. That larger rock breaking wasn't the scariest though. It was the little rocks at the bottom that exploded into little bits of super-heated rock shrapnel that were the scariest. Eventually as the fire cooled down the rocks stopped exploding and we actually did cook a meal. After the meal we were cold so we tried to get the fire going again, but we were all a little scared to get close enough to really warm up, so we went home--where we could warm up without fear of losing an eye.