Camping: Part III

I just realized that I never put up a post about our final camping trip of the season, which took place the last week-end of September.  First, and most obvious, it was chilly!!  We were expecting this, so we took a down comforter with us and plenty of wood for the fire.  A1 decided in advance she had no desire to accompany the rest of us on this trip, so she and B stayed home.  K was brought out again to join us for the last trip she would have, so the members of this encounter were myself, J< A2, and K.  With there being only 4 of us, I decided to take and put up our original, smaller tent instead of the big one.  It was a short stay this time, we left Saturday morning and came home the next day.

We got to the camp site and set everything up, we started a fire and prepared a lunch.  Then we got everyone ready and marched off hiking.  The big girls led us to a trail that went around the lake to a small waterfall on the back side.  We saw a mess of bees raiding the last of the wildflowers, we found a discarded snake skin, and we found a large black newt underneath a damp log on the side of the main trail.  It was a lot of fun!

Later that afternoon we were all around the fire when a low roaring could be discerned coming towards us through the woods.  It took several seconds for us to realize that it was rain moving our way!  We had just enough time to grab all the chairs and pull them under the canopy when the drops began to fall.  J was in the process of cooking bacon for our supper over the fire, but had to run out and grab the pan from off the fire and switch over to the camp stove to finish it.

Fortunately for us the rain was fairly short-lived.  Everything was perfectly normal a mere hour or two later.  We had some neighbors this trip, an interesting group with a couple of young boys who were about A2's age.  So she and they were often running all around the woods and down to the creek.  A2 went through all the socks she'd brought with her on this trip!  And we'd brought extra for her!!  Our neighbors had a very impressive blaze going with their fire that night, though when we visited them to see how they'd managed, I found they had put in a very large trunk, about 5 feet long and decided I wasn't so envious as to emulate their efforts!  I'd likely be the one to set fire to the woods trying something like that!

We all slept in our bags on 1 air mattress with the down comforter covering us all.  A2 and K were on the ends with myself and J in the middle.  The next morning was COLD and J had managed to steal most of the comforter that night.  So getting a fire going that morning was very important.  J & K went out and hunted up several nice sized logs and we managed a very nice fire that morning.  Though it wasn't long after I had prepared our breakfast that we had to get everything packed into the van to head home.

I'm not crazy about the short camping trips.  It always feels like we just didn't have enough time.  However, since it looks as though we won't be able to manage anymore trips this year, before the campground closes at the end of this month, I am very glad we were able to make that one last trip.  I'm hoping that next year we can start our camping forays earlier and manage at least one trip per month throughout the summer.