Last weekend, our family went camping for the first time, overnight, in the woods, in a borrowed tent. I was, how shall I put this? OK, I was so not looking forward to it that I was looking backward to it, but it was a planned outing with the other families from our daughter’s home preschool group, and it did turn out to be fun.
A couple of nights before, as I was putting Emily to bed, I warned her that ‘it’ll be really different from being here at home, like there won’t be a TV or VCR,’ and she had a good long cry because ‘I want to watch Caillou!’ – I guess I’m just mean that way.
There was plenty of other stuff to do up there, though. We went to a place around Soda Springs on the small, cold, but pretty, Kidd Lake, and we swam quite a bit and got a little sunburned. Well, Emily had on SPF 1024 sunblock or something, of course, because we’re such responsible parents, so her skin didn’t change color except for the blue lips.
I’d have to say the highlight of the trip was either a) the posted warning not to interact with the squirrels and chipmunks because they have the plague, or b) one of the other fathers, who’s a CHP officer, asking me if I’d ever sniffed a Johnson Pine – turns out they smell like pineapples and vanilla, which is quite a bit nicer a smell than it sounds.