03/24/12

The view from our camp at night.  Bad cell phone picture, but pretty view!

 
1.  My boys LOVE dough boys.  We went through two packages of biscuits, which means about 5 for each boy.  :-)

2.  That camping site ended up being really great.  The boys slept great, even out under the stars in the cool evening air (down into the 50's).  I drove back up there when they woke up and we stayed until noon.  The boys collected shells (lots and lots-- mainly by Brigham), hiked around for a while, and then spent a long time throwing rocks into the lake and watching Sandy go after them.  She's such a funny dog.  The boys would stand on the shore and throw the rocks out into the water.  Sandy would run and jump into the water and swim frantically to get the rock (which she always missed), and then come back anxious to try again.  Eventually Ben went down there and taught her to play a great game of fetch with a stick.  After a couple of hours she ended up cutting her paw on a sharp rock, or something, and sort of limped around the rest of the day.  Poor thing! I think she's feeling better now.

3.  Camping overnight requires a surprising amount of gear.  Most of it was necessary in order to start a fire and cook over the fire, which I suppose we could skip, but that's a lot of the fun of camping.  We ended up taking two coolers for 2 meals of food!  We didn't need both coolers, but I wanted one to put ice in for the refrigerator biscuits and orange juice and hot dogs (which we didn't end up eating), and the other for everything else that I didn't want to get wet from melting ice.  We brought wood and charcoal and a charcoal starter, dough boy sticks, and hot dog/marshmallow roasting sticks.  We brought ingredients for tin foil dinners, as well as condiments and a cutting board and knife and tin foil to assemble (I guess I could have done that at home beforehand).  We needed graham crackers and chocolate and marshmallows.  Plus garbage bags and paper towels and plates and utensils.  And of course camping lanterns and flashlights, plus 4 sleeping bags, a tent (which the also didn't use), and 5 folding camp chairs.  Oh yeah, the dog's food and water bowl, extra food, and two big jugs of water.  It's a lot for just a few hours!  But the boys had SUCH fun and it was worth it.

4.  Camping, even over night, also generates a LOT of laundry.  Everyone's clothes were saturated with campfire smoke.  All the sleeping bags and blankets and pillows also got pretty dirty from sleeping on the ground instead of the tent.

5.  Besides unloading and laundry, we also hosted a "friendship dinner" at our house last night.  Only 2 out of the original 6 ended up being able to come, but it was still fun.