Tag Archive for 'Camping'

And I’ll never look at a pit toilet the same way again.

Published on Tuesday, June 22, 2010 in Claire, Conversations, Father's Day, Fun, Photos and Travel. Closed Tags: , .

This is one of my favorite pictures from our camping weekend!

This last weekend, in honor of Father’s Day Weekend, and in honor of Daddy Isn’t On Call Weekend, and in honor of The Weather Promises to Be Awesome Weekend, we packed it up, packed it it and let it begin…

…we went camping!

The weather was perfect!

This time, we headed to locales to the northwest of us and tried out a new area.  When we go camping with other families, we wander off into the woods and live deliberately (i.e. without pit toilets), but this time, because we found an awesome spot when we got to where we were going, we tried out an official campground.

The campsite was just the right size for us! (And relatively private for a "real" campground.)

The upside to sharing the area with other campers is the pit toilet.  The downside to sharing the area with the other campers is the pit toilet.

You never know what you’re going to get with a pit toilet.  Pit toilets are always a crapshoot.  Literally.

I’m sorry.  I just couldn’t resist!

I must say, however, at this campground, the pit toilets were some of the cleanest I’ve seen.

On one of our numerous trips there, Claire got really excited.

“You know what, Momma!?”

“What, sweetheart?”

“This is just like going to the bathroom in a CASTLE!!!”

I couldn’t help but laugh.  We had been reading a book about castles that my mom and dad gave her, and one of the pictures they have in there is of the garderobe.  (That’s a fancy name for the “toilet” they used in the castle.)

“Yes!” I agreed.  “Yes, it is!”

“Only we don’t have a curtain,” she said.

“This is true.  We just have a door…but no curtain.”

“Do you know the best part??”

“What’s that?” I asked, wondering where this was headed.

“When I pee or poop, it goes in the SAUCE-PIT!”

“Sauce-pit?” I asked.  “Oh!  Yes!  It goes in the cesspit!”  I knew what she was trying to say a split-second after she said it.

I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard in a pit toilet in my life.

…and then I waved my Wand of Positivity.

Published on Tuesday, July 28, 2009 in Fun, Photos and Travel. 4 Comments Tags: , , .

This weekend, we went on an overnight camping trip. How did it go? Well, the short and sweet answer: Awesome!

But…

You’ll probably wonder what’s wrong with me after you read the long answer…

It all started out innocently enough. We’d planned a weekend getaway with another family, and we couldn’t wait! We were in the midst of out-of-state visitors, but they were scheduled to leave our house on Saturday morning, and we’d head out right after them.

And then my hubby looked at the weather report.

Doh!

It did not look good, but it didn’t look as bad as it could. Typically, we snub our noses and laugh at anything lower than a 60% chance of rain…and this was hovering around the 40% mark.

Weather people.
What do they know?
Most of them argue about what is happening outside right now, let alone what will happen in the future.

No offense to any weather people…

After discussing the options with the other family, we decided to go. We’d go, and if it got bad, we’d just bail.

Bail water?
Ha!
Hopefully not.

Does anyone else hear that ominous music?

We did, but we chose to dance along to it, ignoring what could lie ahead.

Anyway, we get our visitors out the door, get our vehicle all packed and made it to the park-and-ride on time. We followed the other family to the pass we wanted.

I laughed out loud when I saw the name of the road.

“Breakneck Pass Road!?” I laughed. “Ehhh…how bad can it be?”

How bad was it? I’m sorry. I can’t hear you over all the screaming in my head.

But, for the record, it wasn’t the worse road I’d seen. Still…

At one point, we switched places with our friends and had them follow us, because our car was the lowest denominator. Unlike their car, ours didn’t have a higher clearance and wasn’t a 4-wheel drive. If our car could make it, both cars could make it.

Luckily, I had a handle to hold onto for dear life. We told Claire to hold on tight, and away we went.

“Daddy! Be careful or you’ll spill the car!”

Truer words have never been spoken…and she’s only three!

But, we made it. We didn’t break the car, and the camping spot we found had an established fire ring and an awesome view.

Just as we were getting set up, it started raining. It was so polite of it to wait until we had our rain fly adjusted. We set up some tarps and had some snacks. We could see blue skies up ahead, so we knew it wouldn’t last.

And, yes…40% may as well be 100% when it’s happening to you, and 0% if it’s not.

The rain stopped, and we went about camplife. The kids and the adults all had a blast. We ended up dodging the rain (and the mosquitoes!) off and on throughout the evening, but it all worked out perfectly.

Finally, after stuffing ourselves with campfire food, the fire glowing brighter as the night got darker, it started raining again, and we all called it a night. Because this was car camping, we’d splurged and brought our queen size air mattress. We had a smaller tent this time, so Claire had to sleep with us, but that was okay.

By the glow of Glenda, Daddy and Claire fell asleep and I surfed the ‘net for a bit. Yes, I got a signal there. Yes, I could play online from my campsite. No, this wasn’t really roughin’ it.

…until…

That stupid music started again, and I ignored the fact that the mattress seemed a little squishier than normal. Another hour went by and I realized that the pain in my hip wasn’t being caused by my existence as the center of a Claire and Daddy sandwich…it was caused by the hard ground.

It was barely midnight, and our air mattress had gone completely flat.

Now, keep in mind. This mattress takes up nearly the entire footprint of our tent. The pump we need to use is loud enough to wake the dead let alone our friends sleeping in the tent next to us. And, Claire is out like a log.

So, with no way to breathe life back into the situation, I laid there, trying to will myself to sleep.

And, then it started raining, hard…and the wind started blowing, hard. At one point, I was afraid the tent would upend and we’d end up in a pine tree, but it stayed fastened to the ground. I kept checking the seams and window for water, but the tent held fast! Our tent didn’t leak!

I think I got about two hour’s worth of sleep, maybe three…patch-worked together in 15 or 20 minute increments.

Awesome.

The kids slept in, so none of us stirred from the tents until after 8am, which was perfect. We made breakfast and broke camp. We navigated Breakneck Pass Road (without breaking anything, actually) back down to the highway, and headed home.

So, even though it rained, and even though a Mack Truck ran over our tent in the middle of the night, popping our air mattress and then crushing our bodies, we still had a fabulous time. Even though we look as though we’ve been attacked by an army of mosquitoes (and we were!), we still had a fabulous time.

It just goes to show that when you’re with the right people, you can laugh at the rain. You can hobble around and laugh at the kinks in your back. You can laugh at the mosquitoes that rival those in the Midwest. You can laugh hysterically (so you don’t cry) as you try to point out the best way around or over the boulders in your breakable car.

You could look at what happened on our trip and think that it sounded horrible! What terrible luck! But, that’s just not the case.

Of course, remembering to pack my Wand of Positivity made all the difference. :)

The Holiday Inn of Camping

Published on Wednesday, June 10, 2009 in The Great Road Trip of May 2009 and Travel. 2 Comments Tags: , , , .

I think it’s about time for another installment of The Great Road Trip of May 2009, especially considering the fact that it’s June already. I had intentions of getting these written right away, but Real Life has gotten in the way.  But, it’s okay!  This way, we can relive our trip for even longer!

You can read about the route we took and the first stop on our trip by checking these out:

The next stop on the list was a canyon…but it wasn’t just any ol’ canyon. It was The Grand Canyon.

It wasn’t only Grand, it was Awesome.

The three of us had never been there, and we were not disappointed. We’d purposely gone at the tail end of shoulder season (off season), because we didn’t want to deal with the crowds. We knew it would be a bit nippy at night, but that was a price we were willing to pay.

Even then, we were surprised at how many people there were! We can’t imagine it at the top of the season!

Because we were going so early in the season, it was easy to decide between the two rims: The North Rim or the South Rim. I’m not even sure most of the North Rim would be open that early, so the South Rim it was!

We’d decided to camp at The Grand Canyon. My husband and I love camping, and Claire had never been. (We tried to go camping last year, but were thwarted by a snow storm!) Well, it’s a good thing we like camping, because hotel rooms anywhere near The Grand Canyon cost an arm and a leg. (And, we wanted all of our appendages for the rest of the trip…).

If you decide to go to The Grand Canyon, I highly recommend staying overnight. There is so much to see, and it’s really “easy” camping.

We stayed in the Mather Campground. My advice is to reserve a camping spot before you go. If you go to recreation.gov, you can see maps of the campgrounds and reserve it right online. It was super-simple to go to the ranger cabin and check in when we got there. After a long day of driving, it was great to know we had a place to stay and that we wouldn’t be searching for something with a flashlight should our trip take a turn for the more adventurous. ;)

Because this would be Claire’s first time camping, I wanted something relatively close to the bathrooms. Now, this is where my husband starts muttering under his breath that there are no bathrooms in camping, and he’s right. When he goes on his Mondo Hiking Trips With The Guys, they can do camping “right.” They can hike 8-miles in to Base Camp. They can become one with nature and all that entails. I prefer “The Holiday Inn of Camping” (his words), especially when there is a preschooler in the mix. In the end, he’s a big talker, because he seemed to get over it pretty quickly. ;)

Anyway, before the trip, I painstakingly searched for the perfect camping spot. I finally found one that was on a large lot, across the road from the bathrooms (Yes, there were flush toilets! Yay!) and was surrounded by RVs. Now, in the height of RV season, this may be annoying, but most parks regulate the running of the generators at night, and I had a feeling that this wouldn’t be an issue. It would allow us as much privacy as possible.

It was nice to see that the reality of the campsite matched what was on the online map! It was an awesome spot!  (If I do say so myself…)

One of our friends let us borrow his tent. Correction: This thing was an apartment!  For real!

It was 204 square feet! It was massive.

The Apartment Sized Tent

The Apartment Sized Tent

This is the tent WITHOUT the rainfly attached! That in itself has a vestibule that made it even bigger! The mattress behind us (on past the living room, next to the kitchen. Ha.) is a QUEEN SIZED BED. Needless to say, we had plenty of room. It was actually too big for us. BUT, we are so thankful that we got to borrow it!!

Our friend brought it to us a couple weeks before we left on the trip so that we could practice setting it up and taking it down by ourselves. I’m glad we did a dry run, because nothing adds stress to a trip quicker than wrestling with a humongous tent in a new environment (most likely in the dark and in the rain)…oh, and with a preschooler “helping.”

Speaking of rain…there was none! The weather on our trip was superb. We couldn’t have requested better weather! And, we arrived at the campground with plenty of light left to set up the tent.

So far, so good!

Stay tuned for the next installment of our trip: Grand is a pretty good way to describe it.

In the meantime, check out The Great Road Trip of May 2009 Category for more stories.