Adventures in camping

There has been a cyclical discussion going on between my husband and I for the last few years. It goes something like this:

Person A: "We should buy a tent trailer."

Person B: "Where will we put it?"

Person A: "Ok, maybe we should buy a cottage."

Person B: "Egads! Look how much they cost. We don't have that kind of money."

Person A: "Maybe we should just camp in our tent. I think we need a car carrier for the roof of the van to hold all of the stuff."

Person B: "Maybe we should buy a tent trailer."

Well, a few weeks ago, we finally ended the discussion and bought ourselves a tent trailer. We managed to stuff it into our garage somehow. We suspected that it would take us an hour to squish it in there every time, but the first time my amazing husband parked it in about 10 minutes. We thought that might have been a fluke, but he did it again the following weekend and has now earned the title of "Grand Parking Master".

Our first camping trip went very well. I had a week to pack everything we needed. The weather was good. We had a nice campsite. We swam. We hiked. We got along great.

We were so excited by our initial success that we resolved to go again the following weekend. We decided to go somewhere else, to a campground we had fond memories of visiting 10 years ago.

The day before we were set to depart we checked the weather. Rain, rain, and then more rain. And then we checked our route. We thought it was going to be a 3 hour drive, but it was really a 4 hour drive. We decided not to go.

The next morning I took the kids to a museum since there were thundershowers in the forecast. As we drove there we looked at the beautiful, cloudless blue sky. We had a terrible time at the museum and then came home, as the sun still shone on a perfect summer day. At about 2 pm my husband calls me and says, "Let's go camping! Can you pack in 2 hours?"

So, I packed up all our stuff. When you pack on the spur of the moment like that you know you will forget things. You just hope they aren't too important. Like the Chickadee's shoes, for example. Or Bluejay's size 6 diapers.

Somewhere along the drive I realized that the Chickadee had no shoes, so we stopped at a Walmart before heading off into the wilderness. We did not realize the lack of size 6 diapers until we reached the campsite, so I stuffed him into Chickadee's size 4 diapers when he went to bed. That didn't work so well, as we discovered the wet spot the next morning.

When we arrived at our campsite, we wondered where our fond memories of this place came from. I think we were newlyweds, and the rose-coloured glasses we looked at each other with were also used to view the rest of the world. Our campsite was about 2 feet away from the campsite next to us. We set up the trailer in the dark and the rain and went to sleep.

The next day there was rain. Rain, rain, and then more rain. We drove around and saw a few sights. The forecast for the next two days was rain. Rain, rain, and then more rain. We decided to give up and go home. We packed up the trailer and drove home in the rain. Of course, when we got home we were greeted with beautiful sunshine the next day, but we won't think about that too much.

So, this is all I have to show from that trip. A very, very dirty car. Sigh.