Gone Camping ~ Prep and Day 1

With Josh having spent the majority of the summer preaching on Saturday evenings, we didn't really get to camp this year.  So, on a kind of a whim, we decided a week beforehand to go camping over Labor Day weekend.

The fun began even before the weekend.  That Wednesday evening Josh tells me that Ty is going to try to "negotiate" his way out of going.  What on earth gave him the idea that this was negotiable?  We were planning on spending 3 nights over an hour away.  Why would he think he was going to be able to convince me to let him stay home?  He said he was going to offer to clean the whole house.  In 3 day he'd better have scrubbed every wall, dusted every book on every shelf and then the shelves themselves, washed anything that even resembled laundry, pulled every dish out of every cupboard and scrubbed them till they sparkled ~ and that would have been just Friday evening.  On Saturday, he would have to scrub the bathrooms with a toothbrush, scrub the carpet in his bedroom, scoop and scrub litter boxes, prime and paint the hall upstairs...  You get the point.  There was no way he was staying home.  Let the pouting, grumbling and surly attitude begin.

Then Josh and I talked about the camping menu.  I told him that we were pretty broke but if we used food we already had, and maybe picked up a few extras that are always camping favorites, we could probably swing it.  The suggested menu involved picking up more than I had anticipated, and when I brought up the need to scale it back a little Josh was put out.  More pouting.  I offered to let him get everything he wanted if he could find a way to make the money appear.  I think he may have sold his soul, but somehow he came up with it.

Friday was CRAZY.  I spent all of my day in packing and prep.  Because we hadn't really been camping this season, there was a lot of replacing odd supplies ~ paper products, broken tent pegs, and the like.  The only other time we camped this year was with a group of friends at a nearby state park ~ the the storms were WICKED.  Almost frightening.  The rain pounded pretty hard and I swear lightning struck out site.  We found out that the seams on our tent needed to be resealed.  Two stores didn't have the sealer, and I finally ended up at a sporting goods store just to get this one item.  It was worth it, though.

We get all packed up and hit the road, Josh and myself quite happy about finally going camping.  It was somewhere around 90 degrees when we got to the campgrounds Friday evening, and setting up camp in the heat was laborious.  But finally, FINALLY we were there and enjoying the anticipation of just chilling for a few days.