I’m not sure I’ll ever go camping again. Ever. I know I’ve said stuff like that in the past before and some people got upset by my extremism when I was actually only joking. But this time, I think I mean it. For real. I’m done. I currently have two eight-person tents drying on my property. One is set up in the driveway, trying to take advantage of the half-hour of sunshine we have at the moment. The other is set up in my living room. You should have seen the leaves and spiders that fell out of it as we set it up this morning. I should probably fumigate my house when I’m done. As soon as I get this blog posted here (I have my priorities in order, for sure), I plan on vacuuming out the living room tent. Has anyone else ever vacuumed a tent before? I think it’s the best solution to getting all the dried mud out of that thing.
Honestly, it was a little bit of a hard weekend. It began with a total downpour Friday night, proceeded with a more than total downpour Saturday night, and continued with the downpour to end all downpours Sunday morning and afternoon. By that time, more than half of us brave souls admitted defeat. Rocky, Megan and Stephanie headed home with only one happy face in the bunch. Chris, Callie, Sadie and Grace headed home with a truckload of soaking wet towels, clothes, mattresses and sleeping bags while Grace burned up with a 102 degree fever. Dad, Mom, Wilmar, Carlee and I stuck it out until the end. Someone had to wait for a break in the weather to break camp, you know. By the time that break in the weather arrived (Sunday evening at 5:00), all three tents were completely flooded, with two of them sitting in about six inches of standing water. When we walked inside them to salvage what was salvageable, it was like walking on a water bed. We all five slept in my parents’ trailer that night. When I arrived home, twenty-four hours later, Grace’s temp was up to 103.5. She’s a little better today, but still feverish. I just finished my twenty-fifth load of laundry. I think I might be getting somewhere.
Oh well. There were some good times to be had in spite of it all. During the rain breaks, we cooked, ate, played games, rode bikes, played miniature golf, and even found some time for swimming and hot tubs. Crazy! In retrospect, it even sounds like we had fun…
Chris, cooking up dinner in his swim trunks and camping hat
Wilmar, aka Soy, aka Carlee’s boyfriend
Megan and her dog, Tootsie, who is not spoiled at all
Togo, wishing someone would feed him some cheetos
Me in my camping braids
Callie, Grace and Sadie, roasting marshmallows over a lighter fluid fire. The wood was so soaked, it wouldn’t stay lit. We had to pour lighter fluid over it every five minutes to get any kind of flame
If you’ve never been camping in Texas before, here is an example of what our neighbor’s campsites looked like:
Wilmar and Carlee, making a run for the car to drive themselves down to the restrooms – notice the clothes “drying” on top of the van
During the downpour
After the downpour
Wilmar and Dad, taking the bikes for a walk (???) Notice the plastic bags tied over the seats so that we didn’t get a bottom-soaking when we sat on them
Here’s what our campsite looked like by Monday morning. Left to right is my parents’ trailer, our tent, Carlee, Megan and Stephanie’s tent and Wilmar’s tent. Guess which one stayed dry?
When the sun came out, everything was brilliantly beautiful. There was even a complete circle-rainbow around the sun.
Fierce Peace 