Happy Campers

(Beware that reading this may take up too much of your valuable time! It's a bit lengthy.)

I thought I'd write a bit about the fun trip we took over the weekend. It was cold and rainy but that didn't stop us from taking two small kids on a camping trip! I was actually a little worried about it, but the rain cooperated for the most part and we had a great time.

Before the camping began we stopped at a Thomas the Train Festival. The kids both loved it. Luke is a huge Thomas fan, so he was in seventh heaven. We bought him a little train conductor's hat and he looked so cute. It was fun to see him so excited. The train ride itself is not exactly scenic. They take you about 10 minutes each way on tracks that run right behind people's houses. That didn't phase Luke though. He would point and say "look a trampoline" or "there's a river" (actually an irrigation ditch). Seth loved the train ride too. Afterwards we hit the other activities. One of them was a temporary tattoo booth. I kept asking Luke if he wanted one and he would say no. For some reason I kept pressing so after asking a few more times he said, "Fine, I want one." ("Fine" is one of his words right now. I will ask Luke to pick up his toys or something and he'll look at me with a big sigh and say, "fine." Attitude at three!) The tattoos were a hit though. Luke got Harold on his cheek and Seth got Thomas on his hand. Seth's Thomas spanned over his fat wrist wrinkle, so everytime he bent his wrist it cracked into two!



We spent the night at a hotel in Beaver, which is basically like a truck stop, but Luke loved it. He got to swim in the motel pool which was enough for him. He kept asking later in the trip if we could go back to Beaver. We spent the rest of the weekend camping in Bryce Canyon. It was beautiful. The scenery there is truly amazing. Luke liked the orange dirt and "rock doors" we got to go through.

Now I'm digressing a little here, but I must say that our first night there was one of the worst camping nights of my life. Jer is always freezing when camping. We've had numerous experiences with this while backpacking together over the years, yet somehow he never has enough to keep him warm and seems suprised by it. Hmm...On this particular occasion Jer wanted to zip our sleeping bags together for warmth (sure). I agreed although I prefer my own sleeping bag. To make matters worse we shared this giant air mattress with Luke also. In the good old backpacking days we slept on thin air mattresses that were not the most comfy but not too bad. When we're car camping with the kids we take this huge air mattress that inflates to like 1-foot tall. It is a nightmare, in my humble opinion. (Kimberlee--if you're reading this--it reminds me of my grandma's waterbed--so you can feel my pain.) Needless to say I spent the whole night unable to roll out of the hole Jer was creating and with Luke laying on my head on the other side. Luke somehow snores like a 70-year-old man so all in all it was quite unpleasant. Jer and I checked his watch at 3:21 am and could barely believe it. In desparation I suggested Jer drive around in the car for a while. He took me up on it! I actually slept for a few mintues while he was gone and was slightly disappointed when he was back so soon. In a long line of bad camping nights, it was one of the worst ever! The next night Jer and I slept with our sleeping bags apart and Luke was on his own air mattress. Except for the few fights Luke had with his mummy bag during the night it was much better. (Seth slept like a champ in the port-a-crib throughout all of this.)



This was our first hiking trip where Luke had to walk on his own. Seth graduated to the big backpack and Luke had to hit the trail. He did awesome! The first day we did a 3-miler and the second day it was 5-miles! We didn't set any records, but he did it. I carried him for about a half mile the second day. The hike had tons of changes in elevation, including the last 3/4 mile of really steep switchbacks. He was a trooper. I found that he really didn't seem that tired. He just needed something to distract him. Right before we started up the last steep part Luke found a little piece of branch that looked like a gun. He was entertained the whole way up the switchbacks by finding all the bad guys I could see and shooting them. Luke requires specifics, so I had to wrack my brain to think of a long list of bad guys plus tell Luke exactly where they were and if he "got them." I also had to discourage him from shooting his "gun" at the actual people we were passing by. Oh well, whatever works! We had fun and I was so proud of him and his little chicken legs! Seth once again lucked out and got the best seat in the house on Jer's back.




We ended both nights by making smores around the campfire. Luke wanted a story and somehow Jer came up with Hansel and Gretel (which neither of us could really remember. The rest of the trip was full of questions about witches putting kids in their ovens--is that how the story goes? It did in Jer's version. On the way home we bagged all scenic routes and tried to get there as soon as possible. We put off lunch for around 100 miles waiting for a town with a McDonald's. We wanted Luke to be able to burn off a little energy in the playland. We made him eat his lunch by threatening loss of the playland, and so he ate. We could not have built something up more. It was a sad moment when the door to the playland was locked and the McD's employee informed us that it was closed due to threat of rain. I barely dared to look down at Luke. He took the disappointment like a champ though and after a trip to the gas station he happily got back into his carseat (with the blue ring pop he selected in hand). Crisis avoided. Family camping trip ended on a good note.





(Ignore my greasy appearance! I guess that's the price you pay for camping memories.)