Camping

We went on our first camping trip of the year this past weekend. It was certainly a memorable one. Of course I don't have any pictures on our camera because as soon as I got it out to take pictures the batteries died and I didn't have any replacements. Jordon did take some with his phone, but I haven't got them from him yet. I'll post them when I do. We decided we'd stay somewhat close to home just because gas is so expensive. Because we have such small vehicles we couldn't fit all our needed supplies and all of the family into one car so we had to take both cars. We found a new campground (new to us) to try out that was only about 45 min. from home. I headed up earlier in the day with the kids so we could make sure we got a campsite. Jordon came up after he got off work at 5. The kids and I got to the campground at about 2 pm which was check in time. We found a nice spot and started setting up. The kids got the chairs set up and Ethan and I got the tent set up with the beds all made inside. About 3 o'clock a guy pulls up and says that the spot we were in was actually reserved by him and another one that was filled by someone else as well. He apologized and left to go talk to the forest ranger about it. I collapsed the tent and shoved (literally shoved) everything back into the car. We moved to the site right next to the one we were in because it was pretty much the only other one open. I waited a little while before reassembling the tent to see if someone would come kick us out of that spot too. After about an hour no one did so I set up the tent again. If was about then that I realized I hadn't packed toilet paper or matches. The bathrooms there didn't have toilet paper. So I sent Jordon a text (because we had limited service) and told him to bring those 2 things and to hurry since we couldn't start a fire until he got there with the matches. While waiting for him Ethan decided he was going to run up to the entrance to wait for him. After getting bored waiting he decided to head back down to our spot and tripped on the way. He ended up with skinned knees and road rash on one side of his face and a goose egg on his forehead. Poor kid. Because of that he was ready to go home that night. Jordon finally showed up and we got dinner done and eaten. The rest of the evening was pretty uneventful. We headed to bed and slept. I was the only one that got a little cold. The next day we spent hanging around camp for the most part. The kids loved climbing up the trails on the hill. Ethan made friends with some of the other boys in the campground and spent a lot of the day fishing in the river with them. He didn't catch any, but seemed to have fun. That evening he came back long enough to eat dinner and then was back hanging out with these boys. They took him on a 4-wheeler ride that night and invited him over for banana boats at their camp (which was the one we got kicked out of). We headed to bed somewhat early that night because it started to rain. We had covered our tent with a tarp and had one under our tent so we hoped we would stay somewhat dry. The rain stopped and started all through the night and when we woke up the next morning it was still raining. By then it had started to leak into the tent so we cleaned everything up and headed home. We were planning on going camping this weekend, but the weather was supposed to be raining again and we didn't want to deal with that so it looks like we will be staying home. Yesterday was a beautiful day though so we might consider it if it stays good weather the rest of the week. There are lots of campgrounds that are new to us that are close by for us to discover.