Wednesday, May 27, 2009

adventures in camping - otherwise known as "don't like the weather? wait 5 minutes" *edited*

*edited* I fixed the link to the video below. One person told me about it not working...that's great for my ego...


We got a wild hair this past weekend and decided to get out of town for a spur-of-the-moment camping trip. You know how it is, you spend a week in the house with sick kids and/or not being able to get out and do anything fun, you end up just busting to get out and do something, anything. So we did!

Packing for camping trips is anything but a quick chore, but 2 hours within deciding we were going to do it, we were off. As we got closer to the Rim, the clouds started to build, so we were a little worried about possible weather problems, but we figured we would be OK even if we got a little wet.

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As we were setting up, it did rain a bit off and on, but we had the waterproof part of the tent up, as well as our pop-up awning protecting our chairs and things, so all was well. It wasn't a lot of rain either, just a few showers here and there.

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The boys were such a big help, gathering firewood and helping to clear our area.

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I love how Cameron documented our trip, writing a journal of sorts as the weekend progressed.

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The sun shone on and off and after the showers came and went, we had a lovely clear night.

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I love the clarity of the stars up north out and away from the city. Millions and millions of stars feeling so close; it's just gorgeous. The night was cool, but not uncomfortably so. My favorite part of camping is always that hour or two after the kids go to bed, when the adults stay up to play card games and drink cocoa by the fire.

The boys played a bit of frisbee the next morning. The sun was shining, the ground was drying up, and we were quickly shedding our jackets and layers of clothing.

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I was just about to start slathering some sunblock on the kids when I noticed some clouds moving in.

And then this happened:

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From sun and warmth to rolling thunderheads and hailstorms in minutes. We were going to just wait out the storm like we had the day before, but this storm, as you can see, totally made the ground white with hail and eventually turned it into a swampland. The kids were bound to get muddy and wet, so we just packed up our wet tent and left.

And from then on out, it was blue skies. Crazy crazy weather! But fun memories and we were so glad we went.

9 comments:

Jenna said...

That looked like so much fun! Even if the weather was so crazy, you'll never forget it.

The Bluths said...

Weird! Where were you at?

Carrie said...

That looks like SO much fun! I haven't taken midget camping yet.

You look so pretty! I geh-rohn-teeee I don't look like that when we go camping.

It's all a part of the plan to scare the bears away!

Liz said...

Awesome pics

Dahlene said...

How fun! It looks like our weekend. Matt went fishing up on Fishlake where it is about 8,000 ft. in elevation. He said they got sun, wind, rain, sleet, snow...throughout the day. Down 1,000 feet lower at my parents we got sun, rain, wind, but mostly sun. It was quite nice anyway. Fun times.

OneHappyfamily said...

Yeah I heard the weather was strange up North this weekend. Great pic though.

Lorie said...

Crazy! I am so not a camper, but would have loved to see the hail storm.

wittygal said...

I am very impressed with your home away from home set up. Crazy weather!

Margee' said...

What an exciting trip! We've had some like that!