Camping

We went camping last weekend for Father's Day. We only stayed one night (last Friday). Camden had a blast helping Aaron put up the tent......well, he jumped all over the tent while Aaron tried to set it up! By the way, we have the biggest tent ever. I sort of have this compulsive problem with getting the best value for my dollar. So as it turned out the biggest tent possible was the best value, and the rest is history. Marley loved being outdoors.

There was this big meadow right behind our campsite that had a spring running through it and she just ran like crazy through there, splashing back and forth through the spring. We roasted marshmallows that night, and got Camden to sleep. Aaron and I stayed up a little while longer, just hanging out. Then sometime in the middle of the night Camden woke up unconsolably crying. He was screaming so loudly that I knew he had to have been waking up other campers. I took him into the car to try and calm him and contain the noise to the car, but that just set him off even worse. I finally had to walk up and down the dirt road for about 30 minutes until he was sleeping again. But as tent living would have it, the noise of the tent zipper woke him up when I was trying to put him back in the tent and he started freaking out again. Fortunately we had brought our new portable dvd player and I put on Baby Einstein for him. He just laid on my stomach watching his movie on repeat until the battery died 2 hours later. He eventually fell asleep, but I had to hold him the whole time in my sleeping bag.

All in all, I think we got about 3 hours of sleep. And of course, Camden is an absolute Mama's boy, so he would not have anything to do with Aaron helping him if he could see me there, which he could since it was a tent! It was pretty cold that night and we didn't have a heater, so I think Camden was probably cold and that's why he woke up, and then he freaked out when he was in an unfamiliar setting. So if we do go camping again, we will make sure to buy a camping heater. If that doesn't work, then for the next little while we will just be day campers until Camden gets a little older.

Once morning came, Aaron took Camden outside with him to cook breakfast on our new camp stove! Actually, it was my birthday present last year, but we haven't had a chance to use it yet. So Aaron and Camden were our professional camp cooks. We cooked New York steaks, bacon and oatmeal.

When we checked out the following day, the camp host told us that during the night a black bear was wandering through camp and had taken one camper's bag of dog food. We were warned when we checked in that there was a bear seen there, so we kept all of our food in the car, including Marley's. I was kind of freaked out to hear that the bear had been wandering around the camp during the night when I was out wandering around with Camden trying to get him to sleep. Yikes! I guess the bear had cubs too. Imagine the stand off we would have had if I encountered her with her cubs and me with my baby. Would we each have respectively backed off, mother to mother? Would she have come after us? I would have made for the car for sure! I'm glad that I didn't see her, I wonder if she saw me? It would be cool to see a bear, but not in that circumstance!

We camped in a place called Boca Reservoir up in Tahoe. It was only about 30 minutes from home. I love that there are so many cool and beautiful places to enjoy the outdoors here. Next time we may try Stampede Reservoir, we've heard good things about that one too.