Camping

   This September we got to go on our first family camping trip. I got lucky and was given the last week of a rotation off, giving us the ability to go camping. Our ward had a schedule campout Friday and Saturday of that week, but the campground was reserved for the whole week. We didn't want to overdo it and find out that camping wasn't the greatest idea, so we just went up one day earlier than the ward campout.  We were expecting a couple other families to come up the same day, but things didn't work out for them, so we got the whole campgrounds to ourselves for almost 24hrs.

   The campground were located at Buck's Lake in northern California. The nice thing about the whole deal was the campground is a girl's camp, so it had some amenities that we wouldn't usually have available if we were to just go out camping; such as a kitchen with refrigerator and gas stoves, hot water (including showers), canoes, already cut firewood, running toilets (since Ashley doesn't use outhouses), and all sorts of camping tools. We probably wouldn't have gone with three little kids if we didn't have all the extras available. The whole week before Ashley was constantly looking up if there were bears in the area and what to do to keep them away. She worried herself to the point of almost not going, but I forced her along anyway. She did find out that the county the lake was in is one of the best bear hunting areas in the west.

   We got there shortly after noon. First thing we did once we had explored all the building and got lunch, was to get a fire going. I got to put my long unused scouting skills back to work. This was probably the easiest fire I've ever started though, everything lit right up because the wood was so dry I think it would have been harder to try and not make anything catch fire.

   Of course, the kids were more than excited to be outside and wanted to help out with everything.  It was all we could do to keep them from putting wood on the fire, which was a big disappointment to them that they couldn't put anything in the fire.

   Adahleigh even wanted to help chop the wood, but that was out of the question.

   After the fire blazed up, we had the kids entertained for a while. Its amazing how a fire can capture the attention of all ages.

   They were both glad to have their own camping chairs to sit in to enjoy the fire.

   After getting the fire going we set the tent up. This was one of the roadblocks that we had to get by to even go camping. The only tent we have is a little two-man, and we knew all of us wouldn't fit in it. We ended up borrowing one from our Bishop who had an extra five-man. We all were able to get in it fairly comfortably, and I'm sure all the kids enjoyed it since it was just like getting to share a bed with Ashley and I all night long. The tent went together extremely quickly and gave us enough time to explore more the rest of the day.

   Here are the kids getting up after their first nights sleep in a tent. Its amazing how late they slept in. We thought for sure they'd be up at the crack of dawn with all the light coming in the tent.

   Since no one joined us the first day we just kept our food and supplies up in the kitchen. When we got up the next morning Ashley went to get breakfast started and saw this little guy playing around in one of our tupperware containers that didn't quite get closed the whole way, so she trapped it in. She came and got me. It tried to jump out of the container and got stopped with a frying pan to the face. I hadn't planned on doing it in that way, but it got hit hard enough to put an end to it's life.

  Since it was fresh we decided to roast it on the fire and have roasted mouse for breakfast. Adahleigh thought it tasted just like pig, that's what she refers to for any pork product. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough meat to give anyone their fill, so we still had to make breakfast.

   Later that morning, I took the kids out for a canoe ride. They loved paddling around the lake, once they got use to the rocking of the canoe. We ended up going out several times that day. One time Ashley even tried to joined us. We didn't get 10 feet from the shore and she couldn't handle the rocking so she made us turn the canoe around so she could get out (and no I wasn't rocking it to scare her, we hadn't made it out far enough to make that any fun yet).

   While we were out the kids would rock the canoe and ask me to rock it for them too.

   Charles got comfortable enough that he would move around inside of the canoe from front to back.

   He even went to the extent of leaning over the edge of the canoe to get a good look in the water.

   We thought we might be freezing the whole time we were camping, since it was a higher elevation and a week into September. Ashley was surprised that the ward had actually scheduled a campout so late in the year, but it ended up being perfect weather (mid to high 70s in the day and high 40s at night, in fact we are still enjoying those temperatures in Reno in November). The saddest part of the campout was when everyone else arrived. We thought that would be the funnest time with the kids having someone else to play with and getting to know other people in the ward, but it just took the peace and tranquility out of the area. We also couldn't just go and do what ever we wanted without worrying about bothering other people.

   It was amazing how beautiful it was where we were at, and how little you really have to travel to get from a desert to a forest.

  Just for those that thought we actually ate the mouse, we didn't, we just unceremoniously burned it.