Camping

This past weekend was Sarah's first experience with camping. We had slept in the tent in the backyard for the past 3 weekends, hoping to get her used to the idea of not sleeping inside, and she did really well with that. Well, this past weekend was the moment of truth. She did extremely well!

We got to Muddy Run Friday night at about 6:30, set up camp, and cooked sausages over a fire that I built, no camp stove neded for dinner. She did well eating outside, staying away from the firepit, and just generally listening to what we told her to do and not do. Sleeping was uneventful, which was exactly what we wanted.

Saturday morning we woke up early and cooked breakfast. This time, we used our new camp stove to boil water and make coffee and oatmeal. Simple, quick, and a good breakfast. The French Press was a great thing to have for the coffee. John and Claire and thier kids joined us late morning, and we then had lunch. Lots of sausages were eaten over the weekend.

The rest of the day was spent walking around the park and relaxing. We checked out the information on boating, found a geocache, went over to the playground, and generally enjoyed being lazy at the campsite playing with fire. Sarah, Paige and Ben got along well for spending so much time in close proximity to each other. They are all young and all feed off of each others energy, so things get wild every now and then, but they were good.

The kids were exposed to may forms of nature over the weekend. We had a walking stick take up residence on our tent, as did many spiders, caterpillars and even a cricket. They kids all enjoyed just looking at the bugs and asking questions about them. Nothing too exciting like snakes or bears, but a good introduction beyond grass, trees, and lightning bugs.

Saturday night was a different story all together though. The kids all went to sleep by 9:30, which is exactly what we were hoping for. The four of us sat around the camp fire talking and cooking. We retired around 11 or so, only to be awoken at 3:00 by heavy rain, thunder and lightening. Sarah slept through the entire storm, which is surprising. John and Claire didn't have it so good. Their tent leaked, heavily, and they ended up laying in puddles in their tent. The decided around 4:00 that they were going to go home and finish sleeping there, for the kids sake, then come back in the morning and finish out the weekend with us.

Breakfast Sunday morning was good. It consisted of leftover potatoes and sausage cooked in a cast iron skillet, and pancakes on a cast iron griddle. We then packed up and headed out. A wonderful, very enjoyable weekend. We will be doing this again in the coming months. Probably only once more this year, since our weekends are booked in September and much past October it get's cold overnight. Not sure I want to expose Sarah to that yet.