We did a last minute camping trip Friday night. It all came about because Rene was asked to do some service work at the President Monson Camp. He agreed thinking it was a guy's weekend trip with some Brothers from church. They'd have a boy's night followed by a day of service together...turns out he was the only one going. Not so much fun. When he first asked if I wanted to go I said no way. Having 4 girls and a dog (who would most likely have to be on leash all the time) by myself while he was working did not sound fun. Seriously, sometimes I can be such a stick in the mud. I tried to talk Rene out of going at all but he's a much better person than I am. He had committed to go so he was going to go.
He then though he would take Amelia and Evelyn and they could help. Has he met our girls? They would be into it for about 10 minutes then get bored and want to go play and explore. Who could blame them? I discussed with him that he would have to be a parent and work at the same time. And that they would probably get cranky because they'd have to be around him all the time.
I woke up Friday morning and felt terrible. He'd left for work already and we still hadn't really decided what was going to happen. I decided to go. Rene was going anyway, the girls would have fun, the only person that it might be hard for would be me but sometimes you just have to suck it up!
So I spent all day Friday preparing for a one night camping trip. The amount of stuff that needs to be brought is staggering! Add a dog and a baby to the mix and it's even worse. I wish we had been able to go longer to make it worth the time it took to pack and drive (it's about 3.5 hours away with no traffic). But we made it.
It was a little awkward once there. It's not really set up for individual family camping. It's a camp geared toward large groups so each site can fit 50-80 tents. There were going to be lots of people doing service on the Saturday but not a ton were staying the night. They put us on the site we'd be working at (staining a picnic structure) however there were already families on it. To make things worse, they weren't there as part of the service project. They were having a long weekend camping trip with friends and family...and us. There's only one fire pit and one eating area. We pitched our tent as far away from them as we could but didn't hang around the fire because it was just weird. They were nice about it but I could tell a little ticked that we had been put there when there were so many other sites empty. We also had to move around their stuff as we (as in Rene) stained.
All in all it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. The girls mostly kept themselves entertained. We hung out at the beach and around the site. Truthfully, I don't know how we killed the 5 hours it took Rene to work!! When he was done he took the older three girls out for an hour canoe trip (which they LOVED) and I watched with Lucienne and Paris from the beach.
It's been a while since we camped as a family. I think Audree was a baby so that would be three years. I forgot how much I love it, especially when Rene is around. I'm thinking we'll have to make some long weekends for camping this summer. Closer to home, with our own site...
No comments:
Post a Comment