Chatter Boxes

This is John posting today.

I had promised Seth and Colin a camping trip this Spring and when I realized that I had Good Friday off work, it seemed like the perfect opportunity.  As we got closer to the event it was questionable as to whether all of the snow would be melted by then, but we were too excited for the first camping trip of the year for that to intimidate us.  We ended up with a trip that was a little wet and muddy, but a lot of fun, and lots of adventures.

Packing Up

One of the fun things about camping, is planning the camping trip, deciding what you're going to take, and thinking about all of your wonderful camping gear.  This includes fun things like setting up the tent in the basement, having the boys lay end to end to see if they can sleep in one big bag (they could), and thinking up creative new ways to cook.

Here is the final gear list all laid out.  I will go through some of the items as they come up in the story.
That's it folks.  That's all we took for three people spending the night in the great outdoors.  I am pretty zealous about taking as little as possible because we carry it all in on our bikes.

Speaking of bikes, Colin does not want to ride in his trailer anymore, he is happy with his tandem attachment on the back of my bike.  In the same way, Seth never wants to ride the tandem, but only his own bike.  That's growing up for you.  It all works out in my favor because it's less load for me.

Setting Out

Just like I love seeing the boys take on bigger challenges, I love seeing the boys take more responsibility.  Here they are getting their bikes ready for the trip.  They are cleaning their chains, scrubbing them with oil using an old toothbrush.
I also love to see them work together, Seth turning the crank while Colin holds the brush.

Once all of the gear was loaded up, the boys and I changed clothes and got on our bikes to head out.

Heading to the Campsite

It was a beautiful ride to the campsite.  The temperature climbed into the 60's and we all quickly shed our sweatshirts.  We worked our way through a series of back-roads on our 10 mile trip to the lake.  The creeks that we crossed frequently were all bubbling happily along and we often stopped and took a break to throw rocks in the water.

Seth did a good job riding the distance on his own bike and he took turns with Colin carrying a backpack.

At the Campsite

We arrived at the campsite to find the place completely deserted.  There are usually lots of people there occupying both RV and tent camping sites.  This time even the space for the host RV was vacant.

Feeling a bit strange we picked out a tent camping site and set up for the night.  Once the tent was up and we had gathered the driest firewood we could find, we set out to go fishing.  I have never tried fishing on one of these camping trips before and thought it would be fun to give it a shot.  We hiked down to the lake and started walking along the beach.  The boys were exploring and throwing rocks while I cast out into the water at likely spots. 


The weather was perfect, and it was fun to see the things that washed up on the beach.  We found two nice bass fishing lures, which was good because I hung my plastic worm on a submerged log and lost it and had to fish with one of the lures we found for the rest of the time.

We also had one of the quintessential Father-Son times when I took Seth and Colin into the woods along the shore and showed them how to find worms under rotten logs.  We baited the extra hook, line, and bobber that I brought and tied it onto a stick for Seth and he fished with that for a while.

We didn't catch anything, but I'm still glad I brought the fishing pole and the extra line.  None of it weighed very much or took up much room, and we had fun being by the water.  I think the boys' favorite part of the whole trip may have been kicking off their shoes and wading in a stream that flowed across the windsurfer beach into the lake.

Dinner and Bedtime

Jerry was meeting us for dinner and was kind enough to pick us up at our campsite and give us a ride to Hillsdale Bank BBQ.  One of the great things about biking is that it makes you really hungry and that makes even normal food taste amazing.  Doubly so for great food like Hillsdale Bank BBQ's wood fired pizza.

After dinner Jerry dropped us off back at the campsite.  I spent the next hour trying to get a decent fire going.  All of the wood was too wet and it never really made a good fire.

The boys went into their tent and snuggled up together.  I tried to put them with their heads at opposite ends of the tent (as rehearsed in the basement) but they tossed and turned and got the sleeping bag all mixed up.  So I had to zip them in with their heads next to each other.  The zipper is important to containing squirelly kids.

I then laid down on top of the picnic table with my minimal sleeping kit.  I brought my mylar bivy bag which is supposed to protect against the wind and rain, and reflect body heat back onto me.  (It's the small orange bag in the gear picture.  All rolled up it's the size of a large apple.  Inside of that I had my fleece sleeping bag liner.  It's too thin by itself, but I thought with the mylar it would keep me warm.  And it did.  At first.

Then my fire died.  And the wind picked up.  And the temperature dropped.  And then my feet got cold.  Also my nose was running really badly from allergies and the coyotes started howling really close by.

Around 1:30am I moved to the ground.  Ah, much nicer.  Out of the wind.  The mylar wasn't crinkling and crackling as much.  (My biggest complaint is how loud it is when the wind hits it, or I move a millimeter.)

Then the cold of the ground soaked in and I had to get up.

Finally I sat on the picnic bench and worked on the fire again for another 30 minutes or so.

Then I laid back down on the picnic bench, this time with the backpack wrapped around my feet inside of everything else.  Still cold.

When you don't take much on your camping trips you are in a sense very materialistic, in the sense that everything you have is super important to you.  One of the most important things that got me through the night was my orange Browning hoodie that my mom bought for me.  Specifically, the night all came down to the fact that the hood on the hoodie had not just regular drawstrings, but drawstrings with clamps that let me cinch it tight around my face like a mummy bag.  Thanks Mom!  That hoodie got me through the worst of the night.

Colin had asked me if Coyotes would eat us.  I told him that was ridiculous.  Coyotes are afraid of fire and of people.

Around 3am, in a way I cannot explain, one sound set off an alarm in my brain "Something is close!", I thought.  I sat bolt upright and turned to see a patchy light brown form turn and run and melt into the shadows.  A coyote was about 30 feet from me!

So I did some research.  According to urbancoyoteresearch.com, between 1960 and 2006 there have been 159 people bitten by coyotes and about 19% of those people were sleeping outside in sleeping bags.  I had no idea!  On the plus side, most people who were attacked were able to fend off the coyote by "yelling" or other non-physical methods.  Also, may favorite line from the report is "This figure includes the incident in which a victim was hand-feeding the coyote that subsequently bit him."

Anyway, after the coyote, I crammed myself into the tiny one-man tent with the boys and probably got another 30 minutes of sleep in the next 3 hours of the night.  Rather than being upset with me for crashing the party the boys welcomed me into the tent.  It felt good.


Then it started raining, so at 6:30am we grabbed all of our stuff and dashed through the rain to the camp shelter.

Now this all may not sound like much fun.  But as the boys were huddled next to me under the sleeping back in the shelter, and they were both quiet and trusting that I was going to take care of them... and as they put their heads on my lap and listened as I sang them cowboy songs... that to me is what camping is all about.  Because the main reason I take Seth and Colin camping is so they learn that we can have adventures together, and their daddy is strong enough to keep them safe.

To be continued...