Our First Camping Adventure

For Father's Day, Tom wanted to go camping for a night. He mentioned it to the kids earlier in the Spring and Erin has been super excited about it for weeks. I'm not sure she understood really what camping was about, but she was definitely ready to give it a try.

We got to our tent site a little after noon. We decided not to go too far for our first trip so we just picked a campground up in the Shenandoah about 30 minutes away. Tom and I had practiced setting up the tent last weekend so we knew what we were doing when we got there. On the drive, Jeffrey had fallen asleep in his car seat so Erin and I cleared an area of the site for the tent while Tom unpacked everything from the car. After Tom and I got the tent up, with a little help from the kids (Jeffrey had woken up about 15 minutes after we got there) we encountered our first camping "issue."

Bugs. Yep little gnats around faces. Both kids, Jeffrey especially, would just stand there and scream about "All The Bugs", "Make Them Go Away". I brought some OFF which I sprayed into my hands and rubbed around their necks and faces. That helped somewhat. At least enough to create a placebo effect.

I Do NOT Like Bugs

After setting up Erin's little dome tent and having lesson 2 - PLEASE DO NOT just get in and out and in and out and in and out of the tents. If you leave them open the bugs will get in there too. So if you want to get in, that's fine but you need to stay in there for a while - we set out lunch. We'd packed sandwiches, chips, grapes and some gorp (lesson 3 - ju ju fish are NOT good in gorp). We had a nice lunch at the picnic table, although we still had to bribe Erin to finish her sandwich.

Fun in the Tent

We decided to take a walk and go exploring after lunch. We made sure to toss all the clothes and sleeping supplies in the big tent and the food back in the car (have to beware of bears). We headed out on our hike. We followed a long paved path down to the nearby visitor's center (about 1 mile). We talked about the ferns on the ground, picked up sticks, fell down and scraped knees (well at least Jeffrey - lesson 4 keep Cars band-aids on my person at all times), climbed on rocks, and spotted a deer in the woods across the road. We got to the Visitor's Center just in time as the storm that had been rumbling around us for 30 minutes opened up right on top of us.


We stayed out the storm for about an hour. Near the end, while Tom and Erin were checking out part of a Jr. Ranger program, Jeffrey and I sat by a huge windowed wall that looked over the nearby meadow (a meadow on top of a mountain is pretty cool). We spotted several deer who'd emerged after the rain. Then Jeffrey pointed out a Mommy, daddy and baby deer. He was right, there was a fawn with one of the other deer. We watched them wander around the meadow for a while. One of the rangers even lent us her binoculars so we could get a closer look at the fawn.


When Tom and Erin finished with the program, the sun was coming back out. We crossed the main road and started walking an access road through the meadow. We spotted probably close to 15 different deer across the meadow. They are very comfortable around humans. A few crossed the road right in front of us no more than 15 feet away. The kids thought that the deer were just fascinating. Tom was also able to show them deer tracks in the gravel road and Erin spent the next 15 minutes staring at the road, tripping over her feet, looking for more tracks.

One of the Many Deer We Saw

Checking Out Deer Tracks

After walking about 3/4 of a mile we decided to turn back. We got on the main path back to the campsite. Both kids were a little cranky, and Erin insisted on carrying this stick almost as tall as she was. About 1/2 a mile from the campsite we noticed a fog rolling down the road...literally. It's something neither Tom nor I had experienced before, but we were quickly engulfed in a thick fog (OK we're in the mountains..it was a cloud). Everything changed. The sounds deadened. The kids quieted. The smells changed. And then......

...It POURED (lesson 5 - when walking into a cloud in the mountains it means walk faster it's going to pour). Erin and I sprinted for the ranger station which was only a few hundred yards away. Tom tried to get Jeffrey to run, but he wouldn't. He just walked along, SCREAMING and SOBBING getting more and more soaked with every second. We stopped outside the campground ranger station to wait out this second deluge. I'd guess we were standing for 15 to 20 minutes. One of the rangers nicely let us borrow her poncho to use as a tarp to keep the rain from blowing on us.

Once it slowed down again we made for the campsite. What we found met our biggest fears. Everything was soaked. The tent was simply unable to withstand 2 torrential downpours in 2 hours and had about 6 inches of water on the "lower" side. Erin's little tent made out somewhat better but still was wet. Unfortunately, we'd decided to store all our things "IN" the tent so they were also soaked. That means sleeping bags, clothes, books (including a library book and several of the kids books) etc... Needless to say we had no choice but to pack everything up and head back down the mountain. Lesson 6 - Until you're certain the tent is waterproof if it looks like it's gonna rain...store stuff in the car.

Wet, Going Home and NOT Happy About It

Erin stood in the middle of the campsite sobbing that she really wanted to camp. Jeffrey ran around and jumped in every mud puddle he could find (as long as the rain was not coming down he had no issues with being wet). It took Tom and I about 20 minutes to get everything taken down and packed back up into the car.


We got back home a little after 6 PM. The kids got into some dry clothes while I took a hairdryer to the library book (all 490 pages of it). Tom got out the dinner we were going to make at the campsite and cooked it up. Needless to say everyone was pretty beat. After a hot shower and some down time in front of the Food Network everyone was ready for bed.

The First Night "Camping" (I count 7 aminals and 4 blankets in bed with him)

So this morning we're going to look into either resealing the seams in the tent or getting a new tent so we can try camping again in a few months. Maybe after thunderstorm season has passed.