adventures in camping: day.twelve hundred and eight-two

Yes, I realize this is going on and on and on and on.  But it's my blog and I'll beat something to death, wear something into the ground if I want.  :)

Random story about our camping experience:  at one point we had to leave camp to go get water or get more ice or go down to the lake or something.  Most of the time I'm really good about hiding, protecting, and otherwise securing our food so the animals can't get at it.  This time, brilliant me, I left some bags of bread, tortillas, and chips on the table-all bagged and tied up, but still, within reach.

When we came back from our outing, even from the road I could see that there were giant predators on our table trying to get at our food.  Huge. Vicious. Crows.  Or something-they were seriously HUGE!  I've never seen such a big crow; I actually thought it might even be a vulture.  They had sniffed out and attacked my plastic bag full of chips (the SunChips were their favorite; I found 4 empty bags around our site) while we were away.  From then on, I made sure nothing was left out.

Note:  in the mornings and evenings, it was cool enough for fire.  Surplus note:  even if it were not cool enough for fire, my pyromaniac husband would have built a fire.  Because it's what you do when you go camping and how often is a  grown man (or anyone) allowed to play with fire?  However, by 11, 12 it was decently warm, as in maybe upper 70s, lower 80s. 

By our third day out there, some of us stinketh.  Not me-I smelled like fresh daisies the whole time, but my boys-whooo.  Dan decided that no matter what the temperature of the river, he was going to jump in and scrub off.  We weren't sure how warm the water would be, so all of us had brought swimming suits.  The boys got in theirs; there was no way I was jumping in that ice-cold crick.  It was chilly and I don't do chilly unless pushed in. (don't get any ideas, peeps)

So anyhoo . . . we drove down with our friends, made the slightly treacherous hike down to the water (sorry Preggo Chris, you weren't able to go) and one by one, all my boys jumped in.  They said it was stinkin' freezing at first, but they got used to it quickly.  I stuck my feet in and that was puh-lenty for me.

My one regret?  Forgot my camera back at camp.  Oh well.

So now all my boys were semi-cleaned and scrubbed and Ethan even had fluffy hair.  Then we experienced a dead battery due to someone-who-shall-remain-nameless listening to the radio for 5 minutes in her truck whilst she waited for the rest of us.  =)  Strangers helped us out with a jump start (note to self:  buy jumper cables for the truck) and we were on our way.  We drove down to the dam just to turn around and head back to camp.  Our truck did brilliantly on all the hills, mud, rocks, etc.  Much fun and so much more practical than our Mormon Mini-van.  =)

Back at camp we ate a nice lunch and then had some fun with the camera and the kids.

So from jackets and long-sleeves to swim-suits all in one day.

 

Good thing we got the rat-dog in there too.  ;)

 

The show-us-your-muscles pose.

 

The ok-just-go-ahead-and-act-silly pose.

 

The now-everybody-laugh pose.

 

The everybody-scream-at-the-top-of-their-lungs pose.

 

    The show-us-your-Grrr-face pose.

 

As you can see, the cleanliness from their dip didn't last long.