Camping Trip Part 3

Part 1 and Part 2.

So Sunday morning dawned bright and beautiful. It was Doug's actual birthday, so like any loving family we immediately put him to work making breakfast.... I'm not kidding.

But don't worry, I was his trusty partner and helped as much as I could...... and he's just better at cooking outside AND at cooking breakfast.

After we ate and Doug opened the rest of his gifts we relaxed and watched almost everyone else leave. Usually Doug's parents leave on Sunday but we all had Monday off so we were staying for another day, so we just watched almost everyone else leave. It got really empty there.

Later in the afternoon we went geocaching. Are you familiar with this? Basically you look up caches in your are online, put them into your handheld gps, and then go find them. Doug had programed in ones that were nearby, so we set off in the truck to go find them. We looked for 4 I think and had no luck with any of them. There was just nothing to be found for 2 of them, we couldn't easily get to 1, and the 4th one was supposedly in an area that was incredibly overgrown. So we ended up just driving around.

After we got back to the campground we saw on the weather that storms were expected, so we ran around getting everything put away and a tarp on the tent...... and then it didn't rain for about 5 hours.

I made dinner that night and Doug made his cake - a pineapple upside down dump cake, which I hope to have up on Central Cooking soon. It was really good and it's a fond memory for Doug- they used to make it at Boy Scout camp.

It ended up starting to rain around 9pm and rained pretty much all night. We sat in the camper for a while watching the Tonys because it was raining so hard outside.

It was a challenge getting into the tent to go to bed because the added tarp made it really hard to open and close the flap - so midnight bathroom trips were totally out of the question - lol. But we made it in and I fought the zipper and actually won!

We all woke up Monday morning to gray skies and incoming storms, so we hurried to get everything taken down, totally skipping breakfast in favor of just getting the heck out of there.

In a rare moment of genius I suggested we take the tent down so we did - and literally as we finished rolling everything up it started to poor. So yay for not having to set everything back up in our basement to let it all dry!

We got everything thrown into the trucks and then Doug's parents got the camper all hooked up to the truck in the pouring rain, then his dad got all the tanks emptied in the pouring rain, then they played the back-and-forth game of backing the camper into it's storage unit in the pouring rain (fil backs it up, mil shouts directions at him from the back end)..... and as soon as it was finally in the garage the pouring rain stopped and the sun came out - figures.

After that we went back to the inlaw's house, sorted out all our stuff and we finally came home, where we proceeded to take showers, unpack and just generally try to not smell like a campfire any more.

Overall it was a fun trip and Doug really enjoyed it, so that's all that matters :)

Camping Trip Part 2

You can check out part 1 here.

So, we went to bed Friday night about 10pm.... but I didn't fall asleep until after 1am. And then I literally woke up at the crack of dawn. All of a sudden I just jerked awake and the tent was bright and the birds were chirping. I looked at my phone and it said 5:25.... I later saw on the news that sunrise was... yep, you guessed it, 5:25. grrr

So I grabbed my flip flops, threw myself through the tent flap and decided to walk to the shower house, the one you couldn't shower in because there was no hot water. Then I walked back to the site and tried to go back to sleep.... no such luck though.

So I got up, threw on my tennis shoes, threw myself out of the tent again and went for a 40 minute walk. It was really quiet still... not sure what I expected at 6 am. There was one older man setting up for breakfast and a father and son out eating with the little boy asking why they couldn't go do something yet and the father responding that no one else was up. Then I went back to the site and did some yoga.

I've never done yoga outside before and I felt kinda dumb, but I just kind of hid between our trucks to where no one could see me. It felt awesome to stretch out after trying to sleep on the air mattress. My back was so stiff :(

Then I tried to figure out what to do since everyone else was still asleep. I read a magazine for a little while before I decided I couldn't take it anymore and I needed a shower - stat.

So I crawled back into the tent, grabbed my stuff, told Doug where I was going and headed to the truck. I threw in my shower bag, my wallet and my keys and set off.

Ok, did anyone catch that. Think about this. I took with me: 1. my wallet 2. my keys 3. my shower bag with shampoo, soap, etc in it.

What didn't I take?? Go ahead and think, I'll wait.

::Jeopardy music plays::

Anyone? That's right, a towel or a washcloth. Yep, I went to take a shower towel-less. Wouldn't have been so bad except I didn't realize this until AFTER I had gotten under the water. I have never felt so dumb. So I quickly finished my shower and then ended up drying myself off with my shirt.

I drove back over to the site and proceeded to tell Doug what I had done. I'm not sure he has laughed at me that much in a long time :)

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. We ran into town, sat around and read, and fought the crazy wind that was trying to blow everything away. I took a little tour with my camera for you :)

Doug's parent's camper and our picnic table.

Our tent.

The other main thing we did was play bags. This is a set that we (mainly Doug) actually built. I think I'll do a big post about bags and how we built this later, since I know at least one person who reads this isn't familiar with the game :)

Do you see the bag up at the top? Oh and those are Doug's parents.

There it is again. Our game is in the University of Illinois Fighting Illini colors. They're Doug's (well and everyone around here) favorite team.

That just left making dinner and Doug making his cake. I hope to get these posts up on Central Cooking soon, but here's a teaser for you.

Basically the rest of the night we just sat around the fire. After it got too dark to read I turned to my trusty cell phone to pass the time. I had signed up for a 24 hour Internet pass earlier in the day because we thought the weather might get bad. So I used the phone to get on Twitter and follow the DMB concert playlists and the IRL race. I get bored really easily and there was really nothing to do, so the phone and Twitter totally kept me from going crazy :)

Ok, I think there will be one more camping trip post. Not sure when though, probably Thursday because we're going to look at a house tomorrow!

Camping Trip Part 1

So I've been really bad about getting this up! The first weekend in June we went camping to celebrate Doug's 27th birthday. It was us and his parents, we stayed in a tent and they stayed in their camper.


I was kind of worried because I've never really been a camper. I had been 4 times in my life before this trip: twice with Girl Scouts and twice with Doug and his parents. So needless to say I still have a lot to learn.


Doug went over early on Friday afternoon and I rode over with his parents after we all got off work. We camp at a park next to one of the bigger lakes here that is about 20-25 minutes or so away from our hometown.


Doug already had everything set up and had dinner going. We had burgers, coleslaw, and potato salad, then we had a chocolate cake with peanut butter icing that I had picked up.


Funny story on the cake. Doug's mom and I both had asked him what kind of cake he wanted, he told us he'd make his own in the dutch oven his parents got him for his birthday. Cut to 4pm Friday, I'm on my way from work to the inlaws' house talking to Doug when he asks if I have a cake. I reply "no, you said not to make one" and he responds "oh, ok" in a super sad voice. So I felt bad and made a stop by the grocery store before meeting the inlaws. I grabbed a cake I knew we'd all like because it was really similar to the groom's cake from our wedding. As we ate the cake we both told Doug that if he ever pulled this again he'd be sol and without a cake, lol :)

After cake Doug got to open a couple presents (his birthday was actually Sunday but we stretched it out). I got him Lewis Black's latest book, Oh Me of Little Faith. He loves Lewis and I wanted him to be able to read it over the weekend. He totally loved it :)

The rest of the night was pretty uneventful. I did have to get a lesson on how to open the tent, I've never stayed in a regular tent, just the big ones at camp. I felt pretty dumb.

Doug and I took a little walk down to the shower house and discovered that our campsite had no hot water. That made me totally sad :(

We sat around the campfire and just relaxed the rest of the night, while I went back and forth between freezing and sweating.

We went to bed about 10pm......and I proceeded to stay awake for hours. It was just too quiet, I'm so used to cars going by and semis flying over the train tracks. Geese "talking" and deer walking around outside freaked me out!

Around 12:15 I realized that I needed to run to the bathroom, this was not going to be fun - the inlaws have a small bathroom in their camper, but it required getting to it. So I struggled out of my sleeping bag/sheet combo, flipped myself off my air mattress, had a fight with the zipper and flung myself out onto the ground, grabbing my flip flops on the way. So then I managed to make it across the site without running into the picnic table or stumbling on any deer. I opened the door, stepped inside, started to walk to the bathroom and suddenly Doug's mom goes "hi". I seriously almost peed my pants, I had not expected any one to be awake! I somehow managed to make it back to the tent, unzip the flap, launch myself inside and get it zipped up. And then I was awake for another hour :(

More to come tomorrow, with pictures! I'll show you all what bags/cornhole looks like. Is anyone else familiar with this game?