Camping!

We took our first camping trip as a family a couple weeks back, and oh, the tales we have to tell! Daddy's parents joined us in their camper, while we, stalwart tenters that we be, of course brought our tent.  We'd each reserved a site, carefully selected for location (they had to be adjacent), same date availability, and distance to the bathrooms.  We were pretty happy with what we had picked out...but as anyone will tell you, what it looks like online is not necessarily what it actually will be...

Despite coming from different directions, traveling at different rates, and journeying over different amounts of distance, we actually got to the campgrounds at about the same time without meaning to.  Grandma and Grandpa were filling up their camper's water supply as we pulled up to the gatehouse to check in.  Our arrivals to our specific sites happened within moments of each other, which was rather cool.  So guess what the first thing we did was?  Nope, wrong.  The very first thing I did was pull the Munch's spare clothes out of my bag and head out with her on the first of what would become many, many, many bathroom trips.  The poor kid had woken from a rare car-nap only about 15 minutes before we were to arrive, and we had already passed the last gas station...though we didn't know it...and she HAD to go. It was the first time she'd ever had an accident in the car, and of course we'd gotten complacent, thinking she'd be fine, and we didn't have a towel in her seat to soak anything up... What a GREAT start to our trip!!!

But once THAT was done, we proceeded with proper greetings and got going on our set-ups:

Our tent and car.

Grandma and Grandpa's gazebo dome and their camper, with our mesh dome in the forefront, all on the same site....We spent the vast majority of our time on that site.

And then proceeded a series of unfortunate events that significantly dampened our spirits, though not our wills...

Problem 1. Grandma arrived at the campsite already bearing a small but significant injury.  While packing, she'd jammed a finger so badly that she thought it might be broken.  It wasn't (as we later found, having given it time to rest), but she still wore a finger splint for the first couple of days to be safe, and that complicated her set-up, cooking, and cleaning efforts considerably.  Then the doozy happened...On Day One of our trip, no less.  She already has trouble enough with steps, and the camper has a total of 3 to get in and out.  As Grandpa was helping her out that first evening, she landed on what she thought was the solid pavement of the campsite driveway; but what she actually landed on was the pavement's edge, where the grass dipped away from the pavement by a good inch or two.  Her foot rolled, and she went down instantly, twisting her foot so badly that she couldn't put any weight on it at all.  The grand plans that we'd made in the month before vanished in an instant as we realized that she would be spending the bulk of this trip on the camper's couch.  She had an ace bandage, and wrapped her foot up snugly with it...but then the swelling started, and then the bruise became more and more apparent.  Ice, wraps, and my marvelous arniflora gel could only do so much.  There were a couple of days that she tried gamely to hobble about--she had a cane--but every time she did, she ended up worse than before.  Not so much fun for any of us.  A week or two later when she was able to get it fully checked out, we learned that she had not suffered a bad sprain as suspected...No, she'd actually broken her foot on that little misstep.  Ouch.

Problem 2. It rained.  And rained.  And rained.  And then it stormed, and then it rained some more.  We had some seriously heavy downpours that first day (like the kind that show up red or purple on rain radar), and the second day was only a little better.  In fact, those first 2 days were so wet that the camper's site flooded and never did fully dry out in the week we were there...And of course the puddle was right in front of the door.  We had to get pretty creative going in and out, but thank goodness Daddy and I had purchased wet shoes!!  They came in handy during all that water, let me tell you!  Meanwhile, on our campsite, our sturdy tent held up against the rain very well, but puddles somehow got in between our tent and tarp, even though I'd been careful to tuck that tarp fully under the tent's base.  I discovered this on the second night, when I woke to find that the floor beside our mattress had a little puddle on it--water had seeped through the seam in the otherwise solid base of our tent, and was now pooling underneath our bed!  We couldn't do anything about it right then, of course, so all I could really do was lay out what should have been my shower towel beside the bed to soak up anything else that came in.  In the morning, which thankfully was the beginning of a dry rest of the week (we've certainly had worse rain when camping!), we literally emptied the entire tent, tilted it up on its side, wiped down its base, and brushed and then dried the little ponds from off the tarp.  The sky was threatening rain though none was forecast, so of course we were more than a little desperate to get the job done quickly, but no rain came, the sun finally broke through again, and we were able to right our once-again-dry tent and get ourselves set up for the second time.  I also found some seam sealant among some of our random stuff, and ran a nice thick bead of it along that base seam...and a few other places as well, just in case.  ;)  But of course after that, it didn't rain again, so I won't know how well I sealed things up until the next time we go camping in the rain....But if there's one good thing to come from this, it's that we were able to scout around the campground when everything was at its soggiest, and now have a much better idea of which sites are preferable for a return visit.  ;)  Cuz it's a very nice campground when it's not wet!!

Problem 3.  Sleep?  What is sleep, and why on earth would you try to have some of it when you're camping??  We'd purchased a brand new air mattress for this trip after the last ones died horrible deaths...or something like that.  The first night it was mostly ok, but the second night (the same night everything got wet) it had deflated to the point that we were on the ground at 3am, and then (after refilling it in desperation, despite the noise of the pump) again at 5 am.  We knew at that point (duh) that there was a leak somewhere, but finding it was another matter.  When we pulled everything from the tent to dry it out, we put the mattress on a table and inflated it, then smeared some of the Munch's bubble solution all over the base.  It was a moment of sweet glee when one smear began to form a nice big bubble, but then came the challenge of actually fixing it.  For some reason, I'd brought the mattress instructions, but not the repair kit that had come with it--dunno how I missed that.  But Huzzah for duct tape!  We are never without that on a camping trip, and, while not wholly perfect (it was starting to fail after a couple days), it at least kept us cushioned above the ground for most of the time we needed.
Right about the time we'd gotten THAT sorted out, we had neighbors move in at the site next door.  Normally, this is not a problem, as most campers are conscientious folk who don't want to bother the people around them and just want to be able to enjoy the shared love of the outdoors.  These people were...not that type.  The first night, they stayed up until 2:30 am.  I know this because, despite having been able to fall asleep to their noise and light when I first went to bed around 10:30, they were still up and still just as noisy when I woke again several hours later.  The light from their lantern was shining so brightly into our tent, I thought for a moment that it was the morning's light already...until I looked at my phone and confirmed it was in fact only 1:30 am.  But I was the lucky one...Daddy and Grandma have much better hearing than I do, and had been kept in a state of drowsy non-sleep during that entire time while our new neighbors had (somewhat drunkenly) kept up a steady conversation that was only barely muted...And I then, having been awoken, could not return to sleep until they finally turned in an hour later.  I have never been so tempted to do something retaliatory and evil to fellow campers as I was the next morning when they (of course) slept in very late.  I refrained...but oh, I wanted revenge.  We did contact the gatehouse later in the day (when our moods had improved a little beyond blind rage), and they sent someone over to remind our dear neighbors that quiet hours start at 11 pm.  The next night was better, although Daddy reported hearing them...um...enjoying time together in their tent...There are times that I am grateful my hearing is not always good...
After that, it was the raccoons, who figured out that someone had put tortillas into what should have only been the beverage cooler which was kept outside...and they kept coming back even after getting chased away, until Daddy put something heavy on the cooler that they couldn't budge...and THEN they went to our neighbor's coolers and made a big ol' mess.  But yeah...sleep?  We really didn't get good rest until we got home on Friday...So you can guess how we were all feeling by the end of the week...

Problem 4. Cooking is a pain, and complicated enough as it is.  Why complicate it further when you're camping?  I should call this my cooking camper's creed or something.  Grandma has any number of cool and fun camping recipes...things to do on the grill, things to use the pie/sandwich irons for, things to put in the coals, etc.  LOTS of tasty recipes.  Since she and Grandpa have a camper, this DOES make the fancier mealtimes a bit more manageable, but...Well...I've gone on my fair share of week-long camping trips, and I have NEVER brought so much food as I did this time around.  Plus, I felt like I took nearly all of it back with me, even though I know that's not true.  Grandma and I had carefully constructed our week's menu a good month or two in advance, with all sorts of different things that she wanted to do included in it, and I was game for it...because of course at that point, she hadn't hurt her foot, it hadn't dumped a ton of rain on us, and we were all well-rested.  We'd agreed on who would bring what, and had done our shopping accordingly, but clearly, our plans changed.  They had to!  We certainly had plenty of food and weren't going to starve on our trip...But we also had so *much* food that it took up far too much space in our little car...2 coolers-full, plus a couple bags, and that's just the food WE brought.  Several meals were changed, by necessity, and when we decided we were going to cut our trip short by a day, that changed things that much more...instead of pizza on the grill, which we all agreed by then was too much work, we had baked potatoes...and instead of baking them the hard way by the fire, they got zapped in the camper's microwave.  Next time, I will be KISS-ing this job big time, essentially the way Daddy and I have always done it in the past.  And our car will feel a little less like a sardine can.  :)

But on a side note, the Munch officially LOVES fired-baked apples and roasted marshmallows.  :)

Problem 5.  We got stir-crazy.  It would not have happened if Grandma hadn't fallen, because naturally enough, we hadn't planned to spend our *entire* time stuck at the campsite.  There was a swimming pool we'd wanted to go to, but couldn't with the injury; there were hikes and river fun that only Daddy was physically able to do (67 stairs...um...no, not when I'm pregnant); and the towns were a bit too far to explore (what's the point of camping if city life is so close, after all??)...In fact, the only exciting thing to do, according to the Munch, was go to the bathroom.  And guess who got to take her...Every. Single. Time.  I discovered that even though we were only a few sites away from the bathrooms, we really were too far away.  I was so finished with those bathroom walks by the time Friday came!

FORTUNATELY...Though the above list may beg to differ, camping is not ALL just terrible things waiting to happen.  We had perhaps more than average on this particular trip, but there were also some definite, lovely highlights:

Highlight 1:  We actually DID fit everything into the car, except our camp stove and bocci set, which we didn't need since the grandparents had their own.  We do need to figure out how to shrink things down considerably though if we don't want to get a trailer for these trips.  New thinner sleeping bags, more compact tools, and vacuum packing bags are on our radar...

Highlight 2:  Glowsticks!  The Munch was up really, really late that first night.  Dinner didn't even happen till it was almost dark, and it was fully dark by the time she went to bed.  By then, we'd taken a little walk around the grounds with her, and we gave her a glowstick bracelet play with during the walk.  I'd brought those goodies on a whim, and I'm so happy I did, because she loves them, and it's a great visibility thing after dark.  They will not be a whim next time, but a part of the plan. :D

Daylight, and she still is madly delighted to have a glowstick in her hand, even though you can't see the light it makes.

Highlight 3:  Bubbles and a kite are just about the only things a kid needs to be happy these days, it seems. Times haven't changed as much as we'd like to think they have.  :)  The Munch really didn't need anything else...especially when it came to the bubbles.  She's asked for them every single day since, too...Glad I got such a big bottle!!

Bubbles are serious work, you know!

Yes, parents can have lots of fun with bubbles too!  :D

Highlight 4: And when bubbles aren't enough, Grandma was prepared!  She'd found a bag of random connecting toys at a garage sale, and brought it with.  We don't even know what they're called, although there were some k'nex pieces in the bunch.  Once Munch figured out how to attach stuff, she had a blast!  And...well, so did Grandma!

Glasses were the Munch's idea, and they both enjoyed making something a little crazy... :)

After that, it wasn't long before she'd figured out how to make funny little creatures to play with.  This is how she loves to build--forget the houses or structures, she wants to make characters!

Highlight 5:  I had expected SOME down-time here and there...but not as much as I got.  Fortunately, I was prepared!  I'd visited the library shortly before our trip, and found a couple books by a favorite author that I hadn't read.  I took them along with me, and ended up getting so much alone time that I'd finished one and started the next before our trip was over...It was nice...and my camping chair is awfully comfy.  :)

Highlight 6:  We saw SATURN again!!!!  That by itself can make any trip awesome. :D  There is a back-story here....2 or 3 years ago, I think before I started this blog, when the Munch was still quite young and we'd gone down to visit the grandparents at their house, Saturn was in the sky at a good, visible spot...if you could get away from city lights.  So one evening we headed out with some friends who lived in the area, found a great open spot to set up in a park, and searched long and hard using an app that Daddy had on his phone to locate approximately where it should be.  I finally spotted and zoomed in on that elusive, quick moving planet just peaking out from the city lights that the park unfortunately looked toward, and it was a beautiful moment, and we all got to see that tiny, orange-ish, ringed dot go zipping across our view, but I couldn't really zoom in with a better lens because of all the light pollution...and my telescope wobbles any time you even touch a finger to it--highly annoying, especially when trying to focus.  But it was beautiful all the same, and I was thrilled.  So...skip forward a few years to the present, we'd brought the telescope along as we usually do when we go camping, and even though Daddy said his app didn't show anything, we still brought it out.  We looked at the moon first, which was close to full, and just gorgeous, but then on a whim (if nothing else I could practice focusing with the different lenses, right?), I pointed the scope at one of the nearby stars.  As I slowly narrowed the focus, I got a rather amazing surprise...my chosen 'star' had RINGS.  I'd just found my favorite outer planet again without even trying!  And the sky was wonderfully dark, which meant I got to play with the better lens, too.  :D  Yeah, I was prettymuch in heaven that night...almost literally, in fact, since I was *looking* into the heavens.  *cough, cough* Ok, I'll stop...  My scope does not have the strongest magnification...I can't see fancy things like shadows from the rings or even much in the way of different colors, despite the claims on the box, but I can see the shape, and I can see when the shape gets bigger!  I feel a little like Galileo in those moments... :)
The next night held another surprise for me...And it too comes with a back-story...WAAAAAAY back when Daddy and I went on our first date (almost 11 years ago, yipes!), it had actually been to star-gaze.  At the time, we didn't have the scope...just our eyes, a pair of binoculars, and a very tiny (really just a toy) telescope that Daddy had had for years.  But we drove out about 2 hours to get away from city lights so we could gaze on Mars in any way we could.  It was a lovely, tiny little red dot in the sky that we marveled at that night.  Well...zooming forward again in time to the present, I got to see Mars with my bigger scope on this camping trip, though when I found it, I only knew it was a planet by the fact that it grew in size when I put the stronger lens in...stars don't do that.  I guessed what it was because I'd seen Jupiter a year or two before and it had 3 very clear little moon-dots next to it; this one had no moon-dots...Daddy's app confirmed that yes indeed, Mars was in the sky, right along with Saturn.  How he'd missed both those planets when he'd first looked at that app, I don't know, but I was and am very pleased to have found them all by my little self.  :D  Again, I couldn't see color...the sunlight it reflected washed it out, but it's SUCH fun to make these little discoveries!  I pointed my scope at several other stars, and didn't find much other excitement...though I did learn that the middle 'star' in the Big Dipper's handle is actually at least 3 stars grouped together...ah, I could go on forever with this stuff.  I love astronomy.  And I want a better telescope (if it could be more compact, that would certainly be a plus, too).  Cuz this really only just whetted my appetite for more.  :)

Highlight 7:  Bugs?  What bugs?  Usually, I am The Mosquito Magnet.  Doesn't matter where I am, they find me, and they do their darnedest to suck me dry.  I was at a friend's house recently for about 5 minutes, dropping off the Munch for a couple of hours while Daddy and I went out for a date, and in those 5 minutes, a mosquito not only found me, but gave me a nice big welt on my hand that was still driving me bonkers two days later.  I can only imagine how many more bites I could have gotten if I'd been there longer...Mosquitoes can get bad in that neighborhood.  So clearly, this bug issue being what it is for me, when I go camping, there's only one thing to do...buy LOTS of bug spray, candles, fans, bug-zappers, you name it, whatever will chase those awful critters away, or better yet, kill them.  Except...On this trip, I didn't need any of it!  There were virtually NO mosquitoes to be had!!  I only got one (ONE!!!!) bug bite.  Six full days of being outside, in the bugs' world, and only ONE bite to show for it, and that one was on my ankle, where a sock failed to protect me in the evening hours, I would guess.  The biggest bug problem we had were flies, likely brought on in higher numbers because of the mini-swamp we had in front of the camper door.  Sure, they were irritating just because they're flies, but I will totally take them over the biters ANY day!  There is something to be said for a river campground as opposed to one by a lake.  :D

And then there was THIS beautiful bug.  It really liked the cords that helped to anchor one of our mesh domes, and it kept coming back over and over again...I wonder if the black and white stripes on the cords confused it? ;) 

On a side note, I LOVE this picture.  I am very pleased to have gotten such a good shot.

Highlight 8.  After years of arguments dating back to our honeymoon, Phil and I have finally (maybe?) come to an agreement about campfires and who is better at what.  The argument has gone something like this:  My Aunt C took me camping for years and taught me precisely how to make a fire without needing any special starters or fuel other than tinder and paper.  I KNOW the right way to make a fire!  Daddy's Royal Rangers group took him camping for years, and they're practically like the boyscouts, teaching everything one needs to know about outdoorsy stuff, including how to make a good fire.  He KNOWS the right way make a fire!  But our methods have been very different...and they have had very different results.  We didn't have a campfire more than a couple times on this trip, sadly, but the first night we did, Daddy worked very hard and for a very long time trying to get it started, but he was a bit haphazard with his placement of the various elements, and he didn't have any success in keeping it going until he used a fire-starter that Grandma got out for him.  Once he finally had the fire going, though, he kept it roaring.  Sustaining a fire was no problem for him at all, and it was a beautiful flame that turned to lovely hot coals and toasted up our marshmallows just right.
The second night we wanted a fire, Daddy let me do the work of starting it...He chipped off a bunch of smaller pieces of wood for me to use, and I crumpled some paper into balls rather than long twists.  Instead of only putting a few things in randomly, I designed a little tower, and then I lit it in several places, rather than relying on one flame at a time to take over.  It took on the first try, and then we both worked to stoke it and build it, and it, too, turned into a lovely fire with lovely hot coals.  Then Daddy made sure it burned long enough and hot enough to consume all the wood we had, because we were leaving the next day...and he left that fire pit cleaner than we found it.  SO, all that to say, we have finally agreed that I am the official fire-starter, and Daddy is the official fire-sustainer, and everyone is happy now because we all get to play (safely) with a little bit of campfire without getting in each other's way.  As he puts it, starting a fire is an art-form, and sustaining it is a science.  Our official 'titles' just show where our strengths lie.  ;)

Highlight 9.  Campsite neighbors can be very...interesting.  I do enjoy seeing what sort of people are drawn to nature, for better or worse.  The first night I met a friendly older woman who winked and said to watch out for the 'circus freaks' in her suburban...She and an older man (I assume her husband) were only there a night, and didn't even have a tent, just a big sheet of some sort that they fitted around the trunk door of their vehicle...and they were gone in the morning.  I guess that's what labels them freaks...?
Then there was the beagle in the site across from us who howled in the most unearthly way, and often at the most unearthly times...If that's what a normal beagle sounds like, I will never, never get a beagle...not that I plan on getting a dog of any kind anyway...
I saw a motorcyclist couple who packed everything they needed in one tiny motorcycle trailer...And they had a LOT!!  Tent, picnic table dome, chairs, stove, all the things we'd brought, but in a fraction of the space.  I would have loved to have had a chance to ask them how they did it...

So...yeah, that was a lot of words...How about a few more pictures?  :)

Kite flying was a bit of a frustration, as the winds were pretty swirly and the thing only stayed up for a minute or so at a time, but to the Munch, it was all fun regardless.

 
Scenes from Daddy's hike:

The sign lies...There were only 67.  But who's counting?  Apparently, most of the people Daddy happened to meet on the hike, and Daddy too!

A small alcove of cliffside.

There were quite a lot of these narrow, walled-in passageways.

A foot bridge spanning the river. 

Waterfall!

 Right before everyone headed for home, we snapped some family pictures:

     Daddy, Mama, and the Munch      Grandma, Grandpa, and the Munch

 

And not to be excluded, this is the grandparents' 9-or-so year old puppy dog, Picasso.  He's one of a very few dogs that I really like...Mostly because he acts more like a cat... ;)  The Munch loves him too.