Camping

T and I are about to celebrate our second wedding anniversary this week, so we decided to go camping for the first time in our five-plus years together.  The planning stage was interesting, since we come from two very different camping backgrounds.

I went camping for the first time when I was about 5 or 6 with my best friend, Sara, and her family.  I remember staying overnight, roasting marshmallows, and sleeping in an RV.  The next time I went camping was when I was in college.  And then I think there was another gap of about 5 years before I went again.  I finally started camping on a regular basis when I was first living in California, as I hung out with my kayaker friends most weekends during the summer.  I learned to camp at this point in my life from a hardcore backpacker, so I was taught to take as little with me as possible, pick a spot in the middle of nowhere and camp for free, look down on RVs and campsites as not "real camping," and bring food that you can cook in a single pot on a folding backpacker's stove.

Cara keeping watch for squirrels

T, on the other hand, has had a lot of experience camping from childhood onward, and almost all of it in trailers, campers and fifth wheels.  His philosophy is, he loves the great outdoors, but why not be comfortable while you're there?  And, as it turns out, I think I like that philosophy a little better.  (Maybe it's because I'm not quite as young and tough as I used to be.)  We basically split the difference -- stay at a campsite, sleep in a tent, buy a comfortable air mattress, bring a borrowed two-burner stove and try to cook decent meals.

Marshmallows!

We drove up to a campsite near the Smith and Moorehouse Reservoir on Thursday afternoon, and found a nice spot that had a large clearing heading back from out parking area.  Fortunately the fire danger was set at yellow, so we could still have a campfire, as long as it was in the official fire ring. 

The creek

We set up our tent on a flat spot in the shade, and watched the dogs run in a triangle from tree to tree for hours as tiny, cute red squirrels told them off in turn.  Diezel was also chasing butterfly shadows (yes, he prefers the shadows to the butterflies themselves), and hunting flies and bees, which he snaps out of the air and kills with his front teeth.  Cara didn't care about the butterflies, but she was very concerned about the flies and bees -- she spent most of her time underfoot, tripping us as she tried to keep her butt protected up against our legs so the bugs couldn't land on it.  We don't know why she feels this way about bugs -- we've never seen her get stung by a bee, but it seems like one of them must have gotten her in the backside at some point, based on her paranoia about protecting her butt.  T and I hung out, reading our respective books, and then got some firewood from the campsite host.  T built a fire while I cooked us a one-pot dinner, and then for dessert we roasted marshmallows. 

The reservoir

And that was how we spent two days.  Reading, relaxing, chasing chipmunks and butterflies.  We did go down to the reservoir a few times and let the dogs splash around, and we also followed a trail that ran through our site and back to a creek that wound its way through the campground.  Diezel hurt his ankle as we walked along the creek, so he was a little more mellow the second day, but that was about it.  The nights were quite chilly, and our sleeping arangements weren't the most comfortable, so we were pretty sleepy by the second day, but otherwise it was splendid.

Diezel was cracking us up most of the trip with his chipmunk and butterfly antics, but the funniest moment was when he decided that he wanted to turn a pine sapling on the edge of camp into his bed.  He tried several times to ruck the poor thing's lowest branches into a shape that he wanted them to be in so that he could lay on them.  He was so funny, and tried it so often, we were actually able to catch it on tape.

Eventually he was successful, and we were able to immortalize that on camera too.

Diezel in his pine bough bed

Cara decided on day two that the safest place to keep her butt fly-free was the tent.  She started trying to shove her way in while it was zipped up in the morning, and after a family afternoon nap in the tent, we gave in and just left the lower corner of the door unzipped for her.  She would come out for a few minutes, and then something would touch her butt, and she would jump up, spin around, and run back into the tent.  Unfortunately, we didn't manage to get that on tape, but it was sadly hilarious.

But the best part of the trip was the unexpected wildlife.  Friday morning, while I was in the camp toilet, a baby moose wandered down the middle of the road.  As I came out, I saw a mom showing her kids something in the trees, but I didn't see a thing.  T got as good look, however, and was impressed by the little guy.  Then that evening, as we were sitting around reading, T all of a sudden turned to me and said, "Um...?"  When I looked over at him, a full-size moose was standing about 6 feet away from him.  It looked at us as if to say, "So sorry, I had no idea this site was already taken..." and then took off across the road and into the trees.  The dogs really wanted to chase it once it was going, but we managed to keep them back.  T said he and the moose were looking at each other in surprise for several seconds before he got my attention.  I only wish I could have gotten a photo of that!

Now we just need to figure out when we can go camping again.  And wonder to ourselves, what took us so long to go in the first place?