Our First Camping Trip

I mentioned in my Things I Love August post that Casey and I recently went on our first camping trip! So here I am sharing more about it.

Here's the thing: I'm NOT the camping type of girl. The last time I went camping I was 14 or 15 and it was horrible. I refused to potty in the woods (we were gone for like 24 hours). It was freezing cold. And whoever grabbed what they thought was the bag of blankets had accidentally instead grabbed a bag of fabric scraps. So it was freezing and we had NO covers. And I had to pee and just couldn't make myself use a tree.

So when Casey mentioned one day that he wanted to go camping I was like, "Ummm... how about not?" After some discussion, we finally decided to compromise: I'd give camping a shot as long as there was a bathroom around. Which basically narrows it down to state parks. Thankfully we have a few in our area!

A few days after coming to this conclusion, Casey came home with a tent. I figured he was excited about the potential future camping trip. What I wasn't expecting was to go camping two days later!

Our church was having "Family Week" and encouraged every family to go on an adventure. He came home one evening and I asked, "So what should our adventure be?" And Casey said, "How about camping?" Casey, Oxford, and I were on the road an our later to a park Casey had already picked out. (Tigger was not happy about staying home by himself. He hates being alone.)

After setting up our tent and piling up some wood to use for our fire later, we went for a hike. It was gorgeous! First through the woods and then through this beautiful swamp and beach area. The wind was blowing and it felt wonderful!

Then we went back to the camp to make dinner. We'd brought a lighter, but forgot it takes actual skills to build a fire and keep it going. As I was piling up the logs and trying to get the darn pile of sticks to actually catch fire, Casey managed to cut his finger with a knife. I saw some large drops of blood, but he covered his finger with a nearby towel. I was so afraid he'd cut his hand to the bone, despite the fact he was telling me he was fine. (The boy has a high pain tolerance, so you can see why I was just sure it was far worse than he was telling me.)

As he held his fingers wrapped, head on table because blood, I turned around and noticed Oxford had wandered off a little... and was facing off three ginormous wild pigs. I yelled, trying to get Oxford to come back to me. Y'all, this dog is afraid of everything. Loud noises, other dogs, you name it. So why he suddenly decided to be brave and face off these pigs I have no idea. He probably was trying to protect me. Thankfully, I got him to come back and the pigs wandered away, but Oxford was then put on his leash (which he was supposed to be on in the first place... but no one else was around and he loves to walk around without his leash).

Casey's hand was totally fine. Literally just a scratch but there was initially more blood than would suggest a scratch.

It began to get really dark and we were struggling with the fire. Turns out, wood burns faster than we anticipated, and we hadn't piled up enough. We couldn't go searching for more because we were dumb and didn't bring flashlights. Also there were spider webs and very large spiders between many of the trees. We had to be so careful everywhere we walked because we did NOT want to run into those guys. Since we couldn't' see them in the dark, we basically decided to not go into the woods.

Despite the fire debacle, we DID get our dinner cooked. Hot dogs for the win. But once the fire went out, that was that and we decided to get in the tent.

It. Was. Hot.

So hot we couldn't sleep. Did sleeping on the ground bother us? Not a big. But the heat? Dear goodness, it was miserable. As we were leaving the next morning, Casey admitted that at one point during the night he'd considered making the drive home, getting some sleep, and coming back the next day to pack up camp.

We made it through the night and Casey wanted to pack up and get breakfast somewhere. I told him no, the camping wasn't over until after breakfast. I cooked up some sausage and bacon, as he packed up, and we ate before we finally left. We were both so tired for the rest of the day.

I know that my describing it doesn't SOUND like we had a lot of fun, but we truly did and we made some special memories we won't forget. Honestly, I just like doing anything with him. Things become fun because we're together.

I'm actually really glad that our first trip was spur of the moment. I think I would have been overthinking everything had I had time to plan. But I didn't have time to overthink. I just quickly packed a bunch of things I thought we might need, and, as we realized what we SHOULD have brought, we made a list of things we'd like to bring next time. (On that list: flashlights, battery operated fan, first aid kit, coffee...)

We already can't wait for cooler weather to try out a second camping trip!