Camping Con't

 Camping...is there a better way to spend a beautiful weekend in early October?  Maybe  watching chick flicks and sipping hot toddies in a beautiful vacation home in the mountains with a few of your girlfriends while Merry Maids and a professional organizer work together to make your wreck of a house into a vision of cleanliness and neatly stacked sweaters?  While you are waiting your turn for a mani-pedi, a gift from your husband because you are so awesome? Yes, yes, I believe that would be better.  But that option was not offered to me, so I went camping.  Yippee! 

At sleeping bag #4,398, approximately two hours after our intended departure time, we seriously considered unpacking the van and catapulting all camping-related gear into the bed of the pick-up truck, but instead we just kept shoving and throwing things on top of the already buckled-in kids until there was only a minimal pile of unimportant stuff left forlorn in the driveway.

We drove up the mountain up a crazy curvy hwy 80 which I can't recommend to anyone prone to motion sickness and got to Black Mountain Campground right before nightfall.  Our friend had secured three spots all in a row for our three families, so we set up tents and thought longingly of supper.  We set up our little two-man tent for the kids, ate some hot dogs and s'mores and remarked at how much we loved a campfire.  I do love a campfire, my friend, and the brisk mountain air felt deliciously cool in my lungs.  We were loving it!  Even Jack the Anxious enjoyed playing UNO by lantern-light and burning marshmallows to a cinder, pawning them off on me.  Everyone knows moms like burnt marshmallows the best.

The Saturday morning wake-up campfire

The mob takes to a trail.

The leaves were just starting to change color.

The beautiful and talented Emma

That night our three brave kids slept by themselves in their own tent close to ours.  I took my Unisom, but it did not kick in, and I laid there listening to the owls hoot and waiting for someone to cry "Mom!" in fear.  But all of the pre-bedtime running around in the darkness had worked its magic, and I never heard a peep from any of them.