A Fiasco of a Campout

A few months ago, when Steven and I were looking at the summer months ahead, we decided that we wanted to go on a short family camping trip sometime this summer. Between trek, 11 year scout camp, our big trip to California and Arizona, boy scout camp, and high adventure camp, and the fact that July is generally a busy month for Steven at work, our summer was looking pretty booked. But we thought we could squeeze in a campout the week before school started as a "last hurrah". Steven did some research and reserved a campsite for three nights at State Forest State Park, about a 3 hour drive from home.

Early last week we began our preparations for this campout. We made a menu plan, and then a food/equipment packing list, and a shopping list. I went shopping, and then gathered the food and stuff we would need for meals. I made a packing list for clothes that each of us would need, and each of us packed our clothes. Steven gathered the camping equipment and loaded the car, and Wednesday morning around 10am, we were off.

We arrived at the campsite in the early afternoon. It was a nice campsite, within 50 steps of a beautiful lake, and our first order of business after looking around was to pitch the tent. That was when Steven realized he packed the wrong tent. Instead of our big 8 man tent with three divisions that fits our family perfectly, he had accidentally packed a four man tent belonging to the scouts in our ward... which was at our home because it was broken and one of the poles needed to be replaced... and the broken pole wasn't even with us. In other words, we were three hours from home with a tent that was too small to fit our family and couldn't even be erected properly. And there was rain in the forecast.

Should we give up and return home? Should we go home, get the right tent and return? In the end we set out in search of a new tent. We asked around at a few places, and learned that the nearest place that *might* have a tent was a mini-mall/grocery store in Walden, 20 miles away. Luckily, they did have a tent big enough to fit most of us, and so we bought it and returned to our campsite where we set it up, as well as the broken tent - as well as we could.

That evening it rained. The broken tent door had been left unzipped, and water got in. The new tent wasn't designed very well, with netting across the top of the tent under the fly, and it, too, took on a lot of water. Steven bailed water from both tents with a cup, and then with a couple towels. One of our books had been accidentally left in a tent and got waterlogged.

After dinner we were enjoying s'mores over a fire when John's stomach rebelled and he raced for the outhouse, throwing up on the way.

That night it there was a huge thunder storm. Rain pelted the tents, winds buffeted them. Steven and I lay awake listening to the storm in the new tent we shared with Peter, while John and Josh slept in the broken tent and Hannah slept in the van. We didn't get much sleep that night.

The next day (Thursday) we explored the park, toured the visitors center and went on a couple hikes. It rained lightly in the evening, as we were making dinner, but we pulled a tarp over our heads for the few minutes it rained hard, and we were fine.

That night John decided to sleep in the new tent with us, since the broken tent didn't really provide enough room for two. Around 2am, he woke with an upset stomach again, and only made it to the door of the tent before his dinner came back up. He spent the next few hours travelling between our campsite and the outhouse, while Steven and I laid in our tent listening to some local bovine bellowing so loudly that the noise echoed off the hills around us, and more cows across the lake mooed back in response.

Friday morning after breakfast we climbed in the car and realized that the low pressure tire light was lit on the dash board. We found a maintenance place where a young woman helped us fill a couple of our tires. I hoped the low pressure was caused by bouncing over the rough dirt roads and not by anything more serious. While we were there, we also took advantage of the water spout there to refill our water bottles and wash dishes... there was no water in our campground and we didn't realize that before we came so we didn't have anything big to hold water in besides our water bottles and our cooking pot.

A frequent visitor to our campsite was a brave and inquisitive chipmunk. He had no fear of any of us, and even ran up my leg a couple times! He burned his paws on the dutch oven once, not realizing it was hot, and dashed off for a few minutes to dig his paws in the dirt... but he returned a short while later.

Friday we went on a couple short nature trails. We discovered another water spigot on the other side of the lake that we could use to fill water bottles. That afternoon we relaxed around camp, carving, reading, fishing. Steven and Hannah drove back to Walden to fill the car with gas.

That evening when we were pulling out the ingredients for the stew we had planned for dinner, I realized I had forgotten to pack the stew meat... (It had been in the freezer, and not with the other things in the refrigerator so I forgot to grab it.) The stew was fine with just the vegetables and seasonings...

That night I actually slept well. I think John got up to throw up again sometime during the night, but I was so exhausted I must have rolled right over and gone back to sleep. I found it interesting that John was fine during the day, eating normally, drinking water, etc. but every night we were out there he threw up.

Saturday morning I realized that somewhere between making the menu plan and actually packing the food, I hadn't packed anything for breakfast that morning. (They were the same ingredients as we'd had for other meals... but I hadn't packed enough for two meals...) Anyway, we had hot chocolate for breakfast, took down the tents, packed up and drove home. We were done.

This campout will be memorable, if only for how unprepared we were.







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