The Georges Go Camping!

I love camping. I have many, many fond memories of camping as a child. I was a camp counselor for four summers. I love to camp.

However, the George Family had never been camping together...Adam and I had gone a few times together before we had kids. That was pretty easy, though. Not a big deal. I have to admit I may have been a bit scared to go camping with my kids. Scared, you ask: Why? I'm not sure, maybe it's all the extra "gear" little ones need and the lack of room when packing. Maybe I was afraid they wouldn't sleep in a tent and keep me up all night. Maybe it was the fact that I have one child in particular who seems to have a mission to hurt himself in any and all ways possible, and emergency rooms are hard to come by out in the "wild". Whatever my reasons may be, I always could come up with an excuse not to go when we discussed going camping as a family. 

Well, the stars aligned and Adam had some time off during the kids' Spring Break. I decided to give camping a go, although I was secretly hoping the weather would be bad and we could all forget we agreed to do this. Tuesday morning, however, the reality hit. Adam had gone to the store and bought a ton of missing camping equipment that we would need, including a bigger tent. We had set up the old tent in the toy room and the boys had been "camping" in that to practice. Adam's memory about how big it was quickly faded as he realized we would all be crammed into that 7' X 7' space. Hello, eight person tent!!!

Since I hadn't prepared for the trip in hopes  because we could have had bad weather, Adam was in charge of packing our gear and food while I took the boys to the gym and taught my classes. He did super great and when we got home, I quickly packed the clothes for me and the littles, we had a bit o' lunch and we were on the road! The two hours up to Martin Dies Jr. State Park went really well, we bribed Elliott to take a nap and it worked, Spencer got a little game time on Mom's phone, and Adam and I actually had a nice conversation. Could this camping thing actually work???

On the way, I realized I had left my pride and joy, my camera!!! How could I??? Horror of horrors! I could have taken so many great shots of our first camping trip! Adam: "But you have your iPhone." Gee, that's great. The shutter is so fast and it has so many cool settings. I was mad. But, over the course of the camping trip I realized that I wouldn't have loved carrying that bulky thing around on hikes, definitely wouldn't have wanted it on the canoe ride, and my kids were either covered in dirt or food of some sort in their less than attractive clothes I packed so that I didn't care if they got ruined. Oh, well. However, they say necessity is the mother of invention, so I am going to work on creating a digital SLR camera that you can just implant somewhere on your body that is waterproof.  Problem solved! I did take a few iPhone photos, which I will share with you now...

On the bridge to the Island Trail

Huge pine tree 

Hiking on the Island Trail

Spencer shows off our tent and the beautiful sunset!

Getting ready to cook some dinner!

Now, for some of the highlights:

Although, I must give Adam the highest compliments for his packing job, when it comes to food, he came up a bit short. He got the basics: Hot dogs, hamburgers, corresponding buns and s'mores, but as far as "side dishes" go, not too much in that department. As Spencer put it, "We had barely enough to survive!" :) I guess it could be that when I have gone camping in the past we pack a plethora of food, lots of snacks and an overload of drinks. We were on rations, here, folks! The first night I had packed up all the food to take back to the car, but, um, it never made it back to the car. Getting to sleep that night was fairly easy for the kids, but Adam couldn't get comfortable on his mat, (it wasn't inflated all the way) I was restless and just being a light sleeper. Some time around three in the morning, I heard an animal outside the tent. I knew it wasn't that close, but it was SO loud! Crunch, crunch, crunch!!! I tried to wake Adam, but he was out. I grabbed the flashlight and located the animal by a tree about 20 yards away. He just looked at me (Creepy lighted eyes) and as soon as I took the flashlight off of him: crunch, crunch, crunch!!! I tried Adam again. I tried to scare the animal off with the flashlight and some noise this time. Nothing. The noise I had made roused Adam a bit more than the last couple of tries and after telling him about the animal, again, I thought he was going to go back to sleep once more. However, after hearing the crunch, crunch, crunch!!! He sat straight up and said, "He's eating my chips!" Funniest thing EVER! He then proceeded to be my hero by going out and scaring the raccoon away and putting the rest of the food in the car once and for all. He even saved some of the chips (since that was our only bag and all) Spencer and I didn't care to try any of the raccoon chips. Elliott and Adam had no problem with them.

Another great highlight was when Spencer was playing "where am I?" with the walkie-talkies. He would hide and then we would guess where he was. Elliott was just kind of tagging along. It was just after twilight, so he had a flashlight with him, but it was still fairly light outside. The first couple of tries Spencer was too close and we could hear the walkie-talkies and it gave away his location. The third time, he went into this little cut out area of the "woods" where they put downed trees. I heard him ask us where he was (I knew) and then he cut out and I see this little streak of white bolting toward us. I mean, he was running faster than I ever saw him run in his life! He was whimpering and had totally left Elliott to fend for himself back there! :) I asked him if he got scared and he said there was something rustling in the leaves and it was coming straight toward him! He was done playing that game after that! Poor Elliott wanted to keep playing.

There were many other great times on this trip, so I will count it as a HUGE success. Yes, there are things we are going to do differently next time and have made note of them, but all in all a really great trip! I will leave you with this last story from one of our hikes. While hiking in alligator and mosquito territory, Adam was walking up ahead a little bit. All of a sudden he covers his mouth and muffles a scream while jumping back a few feet. He tells us he saw a giant snake. The boys want to see it, but it's gone. Adam's reaction left a big impression, however. It made it into several of our campfire stories that night. Here are the boys' impersonations of the "snake reaction" I hope you enjoy.