And So We Camped

This is what I mean when I say we went camping:

We slept in a tent. All eight of us. In some sort of rotating hodge podge leg over leg arm in your face fashion.

Kids peed in the woods. Some kids pooped in the woods.

We only had the water we carried in and there was no electrical outlet nearby. Which was fine as we had no need of any item requiring electricity.

Jamal gave us a hammock.  It seemed to be the highlight of our camping spot.  It was rarely empty.  (Thank you Jamal.  Thank you!)

Inside the tent the kids played card games.

A short walk through the woods brought us to a super secluded beach area that reminded me all weekend of Lord of the Flies. I think I referred to my children as Piggy or Jack and made them take their shirts off and burn leaves with the reflection from their glasses.  No.  I really didn’t do that.  But the secluded beach part was real.

Big rocks to climb on.

Mountains to rest your eyes upon.

A lot of fishing happened.

Kevin took the kids night fishing and apparently I missed the weekend’s biggest drama – Bergen’s catching a two plus footer channel cat. A creature I thought was separate from a catfish. It is not.  They are the same. A fish with two names. Who knew?

After an epic post-eleven p.m. battle that involved Hawkeye’s fishing rod being yanked from his grasp and Kevin diving in fully clothed into the lake in the night the fish was recovered. Said fish was brought back up through the trail in the dark to share with those of us attempting to convince a two-year-old and a four-year-old that they were in fact not missing the prime of their lives by being obedient and lying down in the toasty tent with Mommy. At the precise point of sleep overtaking the exhausted young bodies, the fishing explorers returned, boldly ignoring the state park’s quiet hours.  (Seriously state park – don’t you think you have enough rules anyway?  It’s nature for goodness sake- why you always gotta be telling me how to live in it?)

At any rate, we all (yes, even the previously asleep children) admired the giant victory catch and eventually succumbed back to sleep.

Although I have more stories to share and a cache of adorable camp photos, I have officially run out of real-life computer time.

All in all, it was a wonderful beginning to our Keigley Campaign: A Year of State Park Adventures.

And I’ll tell you more about that later too!