Notes From The Weekend

You know what?

I have more ideas for blog posts than I have time for writing said blog posts.

Seems I am always out of time lately.

And that’s alright for now.

Nighttime choices often determine the course of my quiet hours usually reserved for writing.

So it’s very late and I am stealing a few minutes where I can.

This weekend we went camping – we ventured out with some good friends and headed all the way to the ocean.

There was a lot of bittersweet on this particular camping jaunt, but I think my brain and my heart can only handle focusing on the sweet for now.

Mosely and I unrolled the tent and wondered if we could manage it.

The set up turned out to be pretty manageable.

(The take down, on the other hand, not quite so manageable.  Well.  Actually, the takedown wasn’t the problem – it was the fitting-this-giant-mess-of-tarp-and-screen-and-mesh into a small rectangular container that was the doozy.  No need to lie here.  That tent is still not back in its carrying case.  It probably never will return, as a matter of fact.  I seriously considered leaving the whole gigantic dusty pile right there at the campsite with a sign that read “free to good home”.)

The campsite was right beside the marsh on Edisto Island.

The marsh – which constantly called out to the children to climb across its marshy thick black muddy spaces.  The marsh – with its creepy bazillions of fiddler crabs.  The marsh – with its unexpected inhabitants known as raccoons.

Raccoons that cleverly opened our cooler during the night.  Raccoons that absolutely feasted on eight hard boiled eggs, two bags of chocolate chip cookies, six delectable homemade oatmeal cream pies, two blocks of cheese, an entire bag of lettuce and whatever else their tricky little raccoon fingers could acquire.  Raccoons that made the insides of our cooler and the tablecloth filthy with little dirty evidence of their dark night handiwork.

Fortunately, we all found the sneaky night time animal escapades kind of amusing and we weren’t camping far from civilization so a trip to a restaurant for burgers solved the food dilemma pretty tidily.

For lunch I introduced the kids to an Eibert rite of passage in the food world.  (And a “meal” impervious to the tomfoolery of raccoon bandits.)

Beanie Weenees.  The spelling is weird and the food is……you know – processed.

But man, give a half dozen kids a can with its own pop top and tell them they can eat the entire contents by themselves with a spoon – directly from the can – and they think they’ve just won the lottery.  (If they knew what the lottery was.)

Last time Dad had passed through not only had he purchased those iconic little Beanie Weenie cans, he had also bought a flat cast iron skillet for me.  I hadn’t had the opportunity to use it so I thought a campfire would be a perfect place to give it an inaugural run.

Thankfully, the pancake batter was stored in a giant mason jar so the little raccoons couldn’t open up that breakfast prize.

The kids gathered a plethora of palm fronds (real wood was pretty scarce) and Jacob made a sweet little fire from our available resources and the pancake baking took off.

Believe it or not – that was the first time I’d tried pancakes while camping.  We’re usually an eggs for breakfast kind of camping family.  (And then the next morning a granola bars and fruit kind of breakfasting people.)

I was pretty pleased with my success.  And grateful that the raccoons hadn’t made off with the syrup too.

The camping excursion turned out to be pleasant and refreshing and all around filled with good times.

Later this week I’ll fill in some gaps – we took a kind of disappointing hike that deserves its own telling and we enjoyed surf and sand and waves.  Plus, we adored our simply fabulous boat ride with dolphin sightings galore.  (But those stories will wait for another late night.)