Camping: The Recap (Finally!)

Today, for the first time since last Sunday, I can finally breathe through BOTH my nostrils. At once!! Whoot whoot! It's a little sad to think this is the highlight of the week, and rather indicative of the week that I had. I am still producing copious amounts of snot, and I should have bought shares in Kleenex for all the damn tissue that's been going through this house, but it FINALLY feels like I'm on the mend, and all I can say is thank goodness for that!

I had so much to tell y'all about our little camping adventure, but it seems that all the funny and witty that was in my brain last week has been blown out my nose with all the rest of the crap. I'll share a few antidotes anyway, but they may not be as humorous as I had composed them in my head last weekend before the snot hit.

I kind of had it in my head before we left that we were going on a holiday. I was horribly misled. I have no one to blame but myself. And this dude:
Do not for a moment ever let yourself think that camping with a toddler can be called a "holiday." "Vacation" maybe, as in vacation from the ordinary, vacation from the comfort and safety of 4 walls and the wonderful containing properties of baby gates. There are no baby gates at the campground. There are no walls. There is only room to run, run, RUN, and run the toddlers did! And run run run after the toddlers did we. Luckily, for the first few days Griffin's buddy Graham was there, and even though he was always running away from us and over to Graham's site to visit, at least there were other trustworthy supervising adults there. When Graham left on our 3rd day, Griffin just spent all his time running away from us and over to....strangers. Loud strangers, who were camped out where his little buddy had previously been. They weren't nearly as hospitable. (We had a few glorious days of sunshine and loveliness, before the dreaded rain hit. In fact, save for the last day, it was all glorious.)

There were a few minor casualties on the trip. The first one was, sadly, Cara and Devin's truck. There were many pluses to camping a mere 25 minutes from home, the most unexpected one being that when your neighbour's truck dies on your holiday, you can just drive them home to pick up their CAR, and be back in your comfy NEW! RED!! chairs before you can say boo.
We also had a bag of marshmallows go missing. There was much confusion - there WERE two bags of marshmallows, and suddenly, there was one. It was dark though, and we wrote it off as lost in the shuffle, or something. The next morning, when Dudley the wonderdawg blew chunks in the tent, and then started puking frothy white sticky puddles ALL OVER the campsite, we got our answer to the mystery of the missing marshmallows. We're fairly certain he ate the ENTIRE BAG, and quite possibly even the bag itself, since we never did find it's remains. Sure hope he enjoyed it!
Other than the marshmallow incident, Dudley was a superstar. We were a bit afraid totally terrified that he was going to be a complete jerk, since the five things he likes to bark at most are strangers, stranger's cars, stranger's children, stranger's dogs, and strangers on bikes. There tends to be a lot of those in campgrounds, but he thankfully proved us wrong
(The new red chairs proved to not only be excellent for drinking beer, fire watching, and cuddling, but made an excellent crib-in-a-pinch as well. Go red chairs, GO!)
Griffin too was pretty superstarish. He slept like a champ, in his very own makeshift bed, right next to ours. He loves the bike, he loves the beach, and he LOVED the hammock. We had a delightful 2 hour nap in the hammock one afternoon, strung up in view of the beach. It was easily the best moment of the entire trip.

Steve, my former non camping, "my idea of camping is a 3 star hotel instead of a 4 star" husband, has taken his passion for food and brought it to the outdoors. We ate like KINGS for 5 days, and I'm SO GLAD that he's embraced the camping spirit as much as I have. I'm pretty sure he knows he'll spend the summer alone if he doesn't, but I'm happy that he actually enjoys it while he's at it.
We WILL camp at this park again, it being so close to home is just too bloody convenient. And when it piss-poured rain on the last day, only having to drive 1/2 an hour instead of 3 hours in soaking wet clothes made it MORE than convenient. And when it poured rain on that morning, and it was just too wet and cold to even think about making breakfast, and Steve drove away from the campsite and returned less than 10 minutes later with piping hot Timmy's coffee and breakfast samiches....well, that sealed the deal right there.
The last casualty of the trip was, sadly, my camera. It didn't take well to being placed over night in a gear loft next to my toothbrush, where the extra little bit of toothpastey liquid that's always leftover on the brush dripped ever so softly down into the power button all night. BOOOO!!

When the husband returns, we'll be back to posting pictures, but for now, it's me and all me. But I'm well on the road to health, and happy to return to the regularly scheduled programming of sarcasm and blah blah blahing around here!