How the camping went

I just realized that after all the excitement about my new computer and the terrible miserable days I had without internet that I totally forgot to tell you all about our camping trip.

I'm gonna follow the good old journalism techinque of using the famous W questions.

Who (all went)?: My real life buddy Jen and her entire Hoard, Darly, Lilly & myself.

What?: We went camping. Jen's gang in a pop-up and my gang in a tent.

Where?: Columbine Campground, just a bit up the road from Central City (apparently kinda North West, but I can't be sure). I'm not sure what you'll see when you click on that link...but look for the two loops. that's the campground...we were in the loop that is more to your left.

When?: Aug 24th threw the 27th. We were home by 11:30...that's when I learned that we had no more internet. :(

Why?: cuz I like to camp!

Here's what happened:
On Friday the 24th I loaded up the Explorer with all our camping gear and we headed up toward the mountains. For us it is about an hour & half or so. The new Central City parkway takes a lot of the time off...but you still have to drive through Central City to get there...'cuz they made the road to go to the town on purpose so folks would come there to gamble and leave all their money behind.

So Darly & I arrive there about 3:30 or so. I don't remember exactally. It was nice and quiet because most folks weren't planning on getting there until Saturday. Our campsite (and all of the sites there) was really intended to be for a RV. So figuring out where to put our tent at first took a bit of looking around. Right behind the "driveway" of sorts was a clear area, but it was on a sloap and it had a lot of tree roots in it. And even though we have "cots" I didn't want to try to set up there. Luckily behind the picnic table there was a relatively flat area without too many bumps.

So we got to work removing all the rocks, sticks and mushrooms! Let me say right now that grabbing a mushroom when you aren't expecting one is a very creapy feeling! There were partially buried mushrooms all over this place. And no, I don't know what kinds there were. Although, I did learn that the red ones with white spots were poisonous. Luckily I don't think any of us wanted to try to figure out which of the other ones were edible.

I grabbed our whisk broom and began sweeping our tent area to be sure we got all the little pokey things out of the way. I really don't want to poke a hole in my newish tent. We got that all done and set up the tent. I did a good job at making sure we had room for our screened room out the front without running into the picnic table and keep us on fairly level ground.

Next came the fun of setting up our beds. I let Darly work on that while I worked on getting our "kitchen" set up. I assumed that Darly would be setting up my bed as well...she did not. So I had to go blow up my air mattress (with the pump) and get my cot all set.

After that we began getting our fire started and working on dinner. I think that Jen arrived around that time. She wasn't very happy that her campsite was not a pull through like the website said. She discussed this with the camp host. The camp host said that this description stuff is written by folks in New York who have never even been here. Jen says that is why you should contact them and let them know what the site really has. I was expecting a pull through. Camp host says that no campgrounds have pull throughs. Luckily Jen had her hubby along who could help her get her popup in the parking spot. But unfortunately they were unable to use the awning because it would have hit the tree next to it.

Darly & I had Ham, mashed potatoes & peas for dinner. I learned that night that for the next two nights I wanted to have dinner finished earlier so I wasn't washing dishes in the dark. But we had a nice evening and went to bed around 9ish.

Silly me, I did not set up the camp potty that I had brought because on first inspection of the campground facilities they were not all that bad for a vault toilet. There were a lot of flies in there, but they stayed mostly at the top of the latrine and didn't bother us. Well for some odd reason I needed to go to the latrine about 4 or 5 times that night...I'm guessing that altitude squeezes the bladder or something. So I had to get up in the cold and take Lilly with me because she would wake up Darly if I left her behind. This is not fun once, after the 4th time I was Seriously NOT happy. Oh and it was cold in the sleeping bag too. I had one fleece blanket inside the bag with me and an old quilt on top of my bag...still cold!

I think I woke up about 6:30 for good and started my camp stove to make my coffee and some hot water for oatmeal. After I had my breakfast I woke up Darly so she could have a hot meal too. She was freezing and after eating she went back into her sleeping bag.

We spent Saturday exploring our campsites, chatting with Jen's hoard and going to the Cemetaries down the road from the campground to go check them out. Lilly did very well with the cemetaries...I didn't know that she could climb over stiles that well. I wonder if it hurt her feet any as they were the open grid stairs. She didn't complain at all.

Saturday night we had Chicken cooked in barbque sauce, rice and peas. I also made "apple cobbler" for dessert. The cobbler never got cripsy, but it tasted good. I shared our leftovers with Jen & the hoard. They seemed to like it too.

Saturday night I had the camp toilet in the tent. That made the night go much better, but one of the new camp families that had arrived also had a bunch of kids and the baby cried about an hour from about 10pm or so. To me it seemed as if the baby was cold...but I could be wrong. I know that we were cold. I had brought those Therma Care packs and Darly & I each had one in bed with us.

Sunday morning I let Darly sleep in...figuring that she would be warmer in her sleeping bag and that went well. I had my coffee and read some Harry Potter (again!).

After Breakfast Jen drives up to let me know that they are heading into town for more supplies...do I need anything? I ask her for more Therma Care packets. And thank goodness the store actually had them! Oh I was doing such a happy dance. I'll never go camping without them again!

It was sometime after lunch that Darly's bestest buddy and her family came up for a visit. Darly was beside herself with excitement. You would hardly know that BB & Darly had just seen each other on Friday morning. Those girls are so silly. So the girls played in our tent and the guys (BB's dad, brother, Jen's son & Mr Jen) went for a hike, while us "women folk" sat around the camp fire "swappin womanly stories" (sorry I coudn't resist...we watched Shrek here last night.)

All too soon it was time for BB's family to head back to town. The girls pealed themselves away from eachother and said their goodbyes, without any tears. And as soon as they pulled away, Darly says that she misses BB. *eyeroll!*

Sunday night dinner was hotdogs cut up in Mac & Cheese with corn. Smores for dessert. Sometime after dessert while we are watching the fire it starts to thunder and sprinkle. So I start scrambling to get everything that shouldn't get wet put away and things that might blow away tied down. We had left the lantern in the tent so I was using just my flashlight and at one point I ran into the picnic table's bench because I didn't see it. OUCH! We got everything put away and went into the tent. Darly was upset because we hadn't put out the fire. I figured the rain would take care of it...but we watched from our tent the fire still glowing. It didn't rain much.

Darly & I weren't that tired so we sat on the tent floor next to the lantern reading our books. I went to bed before Darly...that was odd. At some point after I dozed off I woke to the baby next tent site screaming. It was screaming as if it were in pain. My tent doesn't have any window flaps on that side so I couldn't tell if the parents were doing anything for the child or not. I could hear other noises from over there, but it didn't seem that they were doing anything for the child.

I later told Jen that I couldn't tell if the child was screaming because it was in pain (like the ear infections that seemed to be going around) or if the parents were trying to ferberize the kid and it wasn't going very well. I think the kid quit screaming at about 2 hours or I fell asleep at that point. Who knows?

Sunday I had decided to put our extra blankets inside our sleeping bags and oh how much better we slept. I was nice and toasty...especially since I had my Therma Care too. Ah! Oh did I mention that instead of having my Therma care on my tummy that I had it on my butt? That was the coldest part of me, so that's where I put it.

Monday morning we had all had enough of camping. Since a lot of my stuff had been put in the Explorer the night before for the rain I was able to get the rest of the stuff outside the tent packed away quickly...well except for what we needed for breakfast. Again I let Darly sleep in and she was a happy girl.

Right after breakfast we packed up and were on the road before 10am. We got home at 11:30 and I got the RUDE note that there was no internet. BOO! How dare DH mess with my computer. LOL!

Oh well. Now I have internet and a new computer. Now I just need to find a driver for my printer that will run on my Vista operating system.