Camping

I started an entry yesterday but was interrupted by a phone call from Matt. Then Abby woke up from her nap. I lost my train of thought and momentum so I deleted it and decided to start fresh later. It's now later.

A couple of weeks ago we watched the National Parks series on PBS by Ken Burns. Despite lagging behind in a few spots and the environmental commentary being overdone in other spots, overall we liked the series and were entranced by all the amazing scenery. We discovered that you can buy passports and have them stamped at all the National Parks, Monuments and Historic Sites just like you would a real passport going overseas. And since it's now...November...we both have the travel bug really bad. That's normal for us this time of year. Staring at the same four walls makes a person a little stir crazy. Anyway, we bought passports for ourselves and both of the girls. They'll be keepsakes for both of them when they're older.

To get into the mood for being in the outdoors, Matt proposed that we go camping overnight at the local state park. I know my side of the family thinks it's completely ridiculous the idea of me camping, but I have gone camping before twice! The twist this time was that we were taking the girls. The previous times we camped were before we had the girls.

Katelynn was so excited, she was beside herself. I looked around the campsite. It was bare except for one tree, a picnic table and a firepit. Other than that, not much to look at. But this was a completely novel thing to Katelynn. She played in the tent and then ran around outside in our site and then back to the tent. We roasted hot dogs and made smores. Katelynn liked the marshmallows and chocolate, but wasn't sure what to do with the graham crackers. Evidentally she dropped some food on the ground as we had an unwelcome visitor show up interested in the crumbs and the container of water we kept by the fire in order to put the fire out in case something happened. Matt was trying to get Katelynn to go to sleep in the tent and I wanted one last toasted marshmallow. I had put the tongs down when I heard a rustling. Looking up, there stood a raccoon, mere feet from me, very interested in our water bucket. I jumped to my feet, made lots of noise and it sort of backed up slowly, looking at me with a "What's your problem?" expression on its face. Matt asked what was wrong and I told him we had raccoon. We scared it off and quickly put away all the food into the cooler and put the cooler into the car. We had citronella candles and the water bucket still out and we thought it was gone. It came back again and again.

As you can imagine, this didn't help Katelynn in her quest to go to sleep. Can we say that she was hyper-stimulated? She wasn't being bad or ornery, just too excited to sleep. Finally Matt called a ranger to see if there was anything else we could do. Dump the water was the last thing we could do, which we did. The raccoon sauntered off in search for food and water elsewhere. Throughout the campground you could hear different sites where all of the sudden, people started yelling and making commotion. It was kind of amusing. Our raccoon visited us 4 or 5 times, eventually becoming disinterested in us. The creature was not afraid of us at all and didn't seem bothered by us.

About 9:30 or so, Katelynn asked us if we could go home. We asked her if she wanted to go to sleep and reluctantly she said yes. But she wanted me to stay with her as she went to sleep, so in the tent we went. She was asleep within minutes. However I noticed that my ankles felt kind of itchy. I dismissed this since whenever I do the weeding outside I get kind of itchy and it goes away. Besides with the smoke from the fire and the citronella candles the mosquitos stayed away. I rejoined Matt outside to enjoy the fire for a little while longer, but then was too tired to stay up anymore. So I went to bed.

Abby was a trooper throughout all of this, by the way. She went to sleep about her normal time but was woken up with our quest to rid ourselves of the raccoon. I had to lay with her for a while after that to get her back to sleep, which helped. About 4:30 in the morning she woke up for her nightly feeding and BOING...you know who was wide awake. "I want to go outside with Daddy!" was Katelynn's cry as Matt went out to the car to get a bottle for Abby. It took about a half hour I think to get Katelynn to go back to sleep. By this point I was super itchy and I could feel the welts on my back, calves & ankles and all over my arms. I had been attacked by the dreaded "no-see-ums". You can't see them and apparently you can't feel them either. I had no idea I was being bit when I was outside.

Eventually all four of us fell back asleep and got some decent rest, although we think Abby got the best night's sleep of all. Matt made us breakfast and after cleaning up, we broke camp and came home. I tried counting the welts and give or take a dozen, I think I have over 100. I've been taking Benadryl pretty much round the clock and putting hydrocortizone creme on and doing my best to not scratch.

So would I do it again? An overnight trip, yes probably. I would definitely douse myself in insect repellant before leaving though. Abby was barely bit. Katelynn & Matt had some bites, but they're not too bad. Matt wants to go camping in the Everglades this winter. I don't mind visiting that National Park, but I think I'll pass on the camping proposal in the Everglades for now. I think I'd like to camp somewhere up north the next time. :)