Camping Adventures – Life Off Headset

Weekly recap + What we ate: Fall Camping

The kids had two days off school this week. Monday was end of quarter grading, and Tuesday was election day. Schools close here on election day because a lot of schools are used as polling locations. So I did get my act together and took the two younger kids on a camping overnight. The oldest had been invited to a birthday party, so she did that.

We went to Burke Lake, about an hour away in Virginia. The main reason I chose this campground was that it was close and also one could book a single night stay. Most of our usual campgrounds require a two night stay. I hadn’t been to Burke Lake before, and found it is a pretty suburban campsite; I could hear the traffic from where we were. As expected, the place was pretty quiet. I imagine it’s a very popular destination in the summer – there is a lake for boating, with a nice trail around the perimeter, and there is also a carousel and ice cream stand and a train ride, none of which was open. I was a little nervous at how empty it was at first. We were the only ones at the campground when we arrived at 1pm, and I do sometimes wonder if camping by myself as a woman is the most prudent thing. But another group arrived late in the afternoon so I felt better.

It was a pretty relaxed camping trip, as these things go. I had thought that we could hike the trail around the lake, but once I had set the tent and the hammock up, the kids were happy just to swing in the hammock and play with their toy cars. We did go for a little woodsy stroll along the part of the lake trail that came past our campground. The weather was lovely – almost 80 degrees – and the afternoon sun was golden. The trees were almost all bare, leaving such a thick carpet of leaves for us to swish through.

This time of year, it gets dark so early, so I started dinner at 4pm. I also made a fire – that’s one of the kids’ favorite parts of camping. I made mac n cheese and we roasted hot dogs over the fire to put in our mac n cheese. We had ‘smores.

The sunset around 5:15pm, and it was dark. I remember looking at my watch as the sun was going down and thinking, “What am I going to do – there’ still three hours til bedtime.” Well, turns out, with my kids, once the sun went down, they were ready to turn in. I’m not sure if it was the lack of sunlight, the big day, or the end of daylights savings, but they were pretty tuckered out by 6:30pm. Maybe it was all three factors. We went to the bathhouse to brush our teeth, returned to the tent to put on our pjs, and I read them two chapters from Winnie the Pooh under the light of the lantern and they snuggled into their sleeping bags – Cocoons, they called them. I stayed up to read for a little bit, and then was asleep by 10:30pm – so early for me!

I was woken up by bright bright light streaming into the tent. I hadn’t set up the rainfly on the tent this time because the weather looked to be dry and I thought it would be nice to get some air into the tent and to be able to see the sky. In the middle of the night, this incandescent light pushed past my eyelids, and I opened my eyes, thinking I had forgotten to turn off the lantern. I hadn’t forgotten – it was the moon. The moon was practically full that night. I remembered seeing it during dinner as it came over the horizon, a huge glowing white disk. Now it was directly over the tent, bright as bright can be. When I’m at home in a house, it’s easy to forget how much light the moon can produce. I could see everything in the tent in the moonlight that came through the mesh roof of our tent.

Eventually I went back to bed and woke up around 6:00am. The kids were already up – I’m not sure how long they were up, or what they were doing, but the sounds of them chattering away to each other penetrated my sleep fog. That and the fall morning chill. Even though I objectively knew the second day was going to be colder (in the mid-50s according to the weather report), I was still unprepared for the reality of it. I hunkered in my sleeping bag as long as possible, but finally faced the reality that kids had to pee and forced myself to emerge.

We had bacon and eggs for breakfast. Then I slowly packed up the campsite with a pause for some hammock time. As I was driving in the day before, my sister-in-law called and we chatted, and I said to her, “What I really want to do is laze in the hammock and read my book.” I almost didn’t get a chance what with setting up the camp, and taking the kids on a walk and then making dinner and cleaning up dinner… but this morning, I decided that I was going to be sad if I didn’t find some hammock time. So after breakfast, and before I packed the car, I took half an hour and lazed in the hammock with a book. It was quite chilly so I packed the sleeping bags in the hammock and it was a super cozy thirty minutes.

After the car was packed up, we spent some time playing at the playground and wandering along another stretch of the lake trail, then we went home around 1pm since I didn’t want to get stuck in traffic. All in all a very relaxing 24 hours.

The rest of the week was pretty uneventful. I buckled down and got some errands done off my to do list. Finally mailed those sweaters off. Processed more returns – the leggings I ordered from Pact did not fit. Bummer. I liked that they were of a thicker material, but I think the thicker material make them less stretchy.

I did a tie dye experiment with some old sweaters. The experiment wasn’t entirely successful – I tried a technique called ice dying where you put ice over the clothes and sprinkle the tie dye powder over it, and as the ice melts, it saturates the dye into the clothes. I had ice left in the cooler from camping, which is what inspired the project. I sprinkled the dye unevenly, so the grey sweater just looks like it was in a laundry accident – also I think I should have chosen a different colour for the grey sweater – the blue didn’t really show up. Even so, I always love the look of tie dye and I think I’ll try it again since ice dying was a pretty hands off way of doing it.

I had one very frustrating day where on the way to work, there was construction and a poorly marked detour and I spent a half hour driving around trying to get to our parking garage. Driving downtown is always super confusing – the streets change direction at rush hour and if you miss a fork, you’re suddenly in Virginia and you can’t just pull a u-turn to get back on track. (I mean I guess you could – I’ve seen people do it – but I’m not that brave.) I felt particularly defeated because I had planned to get to work 45 minutes early so I could get a run in before starting my show duties, but the detour/getting lost in Virginia ate up all that time. This wrench in my plan almost had me in tears. But got to work and decided to salvage it by running ten minutes to the Wednesday farmer’s market and getting empanadas for dinner and kimchi from one of my favorite vendors. So I guess it wasn’t a frustrating day, just a frustrating, despair ridden 45 minutes.

Yesterday, being Veteran’s Day, the Husband had it off, so we went to Glenstone Museum. It was a rainy, drizzly day, but lovely nonetheless. I had been a few months ago with my mom and cousin, and we didn’t get to see all of the grounds on that visit, so I was glad to go back. We didn’t see everything this time either, but we were moving at a slow pace. We meandered the walkways, stopped for lunch at the cafe (where we also started planning our spring break trip!) and took in some of the galleries. I don’t always understand contemporary art, but the docents at Glenstone are always willing to talk to patrons about it in thoughtful ways, which I appreciate.

Not art, just the view through a drizzly window.

Grateful this week for:
-Our friends, avid campers, who loan us camp chairs and coolers.
– The nice person at FedEx who helped me sort out all the various forms for shipping back to Ireland the Irish sweaters that the Husband had bought me last Christmas. Finally checked that off the to-do list.
– The three year old’s teachers. We had a parent teacher conference for her today and she’s doing really well. I’m impressed by how many letters and numbers she knows. Apparently she needs to work on sharing and letting other kids be the line leader once in a while. I’m not surprised.
-My car, which just just crossed 180, 000 miles and still takes us where we need to go. I probably wouldn’t drive it across the country, all the same.
-A phone call from an old friend and colleague whom I worked with years ago in Colorado. She is a costume person, and had made the ten year old the cutest outfits when she was a baby. Anyhow, after we both left that company, we lost touch except a Christmas card. It was wonderful to catch up.

Hard things this week: Screen time struggles/strategies with the ten year old. We are generally pretty restrictive about screen time, but the ten year old has joined a writing club at school for National Novel Writing Month, which she seems to be enjoying. However, the school has issued Chromebooks to the students in writing club so they can work on their novels at home. There has been a lot of surreptitious screen time for non-novel writing things, and precious little actual novel writing, and I just don’t have the bandwidth to constantly monitor what she is doing. We’ve caught her with her Chromebook in bed a couple of nights too and so we’ve had blanket and dictatorial confiscation of the Chromebook – which I’m on the fence as to whether it’s the best strategy since it leads to a lot of tantrums and generally unpleasant behavior (on both our parts), but it’s the easiest tactic to implement. I think there just needs to be some kind of joint discussion about screen time and Chromebook use and expectations. Also maybe have her show us what she’s using the Chromebook for. I think right now, the parents are the enemy in the screen time battle, and I don’t like that dynamic.

Plans /Aspirations for this weekend:
– Drag Queen Story Hour at the Botanical Gardens. The three year old keeps calling it “Dragon Story Hour”. I hope she isn’t disappointed.
– Birthday Party at a bowling alley for a classmate of the five year old.
– Work. It’s closing night! I’m a little sad.
– Order a new planner for next year. I use a weekly planner and I just realize there are only six spreads left for this year. When I think of the rest of the year in terms of just six spreads, it seems like the year is fast disappearing.
– Run.
– Maybe a hike. Something outdoors for sure.
– Think/ Plan holiday/ end of year things.

Looking forward to:
-Happy Hour with my mom’s group next week. I think only one or two moms can make it this time, but it’s been a while since we had one, so I’m looking forward to it nonetheless.
– This is way in the future, but our Spring Break Trip!
– Another Date Day with the Husband. He took half a day off this week to work in his garden, and we spent half an hour watching Only Murders in the Building and eating chocolate bars. It felt very un-adult like. Looking forward to more like that.

What We Ate:
Saturday: I was solo with the kids, so we had snack dinner – Soy Sauce Eggs, Veggies, Fruit, Edemame, crackers and cheese. Eaten on the floor while watching Thundermans.

Sunday: I had a matinee show, so the Husband made dumplings and cut up some veggies for the kids. They saved me some dumplings, which I ate when I got home.

Monday: Camping. Trying to keep it super simple – boxed Mac n Cheese with hot dogs and broccoli mixed in. A tip I learned from my brother is to buy the Deluxe Mac N Cheese; it come with a cheese sauce rather than cheese powder, so it’s easier to make. And then of course ‘Smores for dessert.

Tuesday: The five year old requested veggie noodle soup, so I made Chickpea Noodle Soup from America’s Test Kitchen’s Vegan for Everyone Cookbook. It’s actually a great pantry soup.

Wednesday: I had to work so I had empanadas and dolmas from the Farmer’s Market by work. The Husband made some kind of hashbrown/peppers/egg skillet for the kids.

Thursday: This was the day that I kind of lost it and told the kids that if they didn’t empty the dishwasher, we’d have toast for dinner because I wasn’t going to dirty anymore dishes until I could put them in the dishwasher afterwards. Well, joke’s on me. The dishwasher did not get emptied in time so we had bagels and baba ghanoush, and carrots and cucumbers and hummus, and fruit. Everyone thought it was a great dinner. So much for natural consequences.

Friday: Pizza (take-out) and The Secret Lives of Super Pets, which was a pretty funny movie.

Shenendoah Camping – what we ate

I had drafted this post on what we ate while camping in the Shenandoahs this summer, but never finished it. So when I thought about maybe taking the kids camping next week when school is closed, it seemed like a good time to finish this post in anticipation of more camping food.

I spend a lot of time before camping and during camping thinking about food. Constantly figuring out when and what we are going to eat takes up 90% percent of my mental capacity while out in the woods. Camping makes Maslow’s hierarchy of needs very real for me. After all, keeping the kids fed is probably 95% of keeping kids (at least my kids) happy. And happy kids make happy campers.

When I meal plan for camping, I think about what might be easy to eat, require low amount of prep, but also tasty. Tasty is important. Spending three days in the woods is a hard sell for the kids if the food isn’t tasty. The challenging meal is always dinner. Breakfast is usually oatmeal or cereal, with one morning being something that involves bacon. Lunch is sandwiches. Dinner is the big meal. Dinner also has the potential to be the most fun too, so I like to keep it interesting and novel.

The other big challenge I find for meal planning while camping is to make sure we eat enough vegetables and fruit. Most food that will keep and that is easy to pack tend to be carbs or protein, things like crackers, bread, peanut butter, cheese, canned tuna. I have a fear of people being constipated, so I want to make sure they eat more than just carbs and protein. To that end, I try to pack a variety of fresh fruit and also veggies to be eaten raw, crudité style. Years ago, I realized that a veggie side could indeed be something as simple as cut up raw carrots; a veggie side didn’t need to be cooked. That was game changing in terms of how I thought of incorporating vegetables into a meal.

When we camp, I generally cook on a Coleman Camp Stove, and one night I will cook over the campfire. The camp stove is very easy to use and almost like being at home. Cooking over a campfire is very labor intensive (thank goodness for the luxury of modern kitchens!), but it is a special camping experience.

The food prep for camping involves lots of lists and shopping and prep. The night before we leave for our trip, I do a lot of food prep to make things easier when we get to the campground. I wash and cut fruit and put it into Ziploc bags so that it is simple to eat and we don’t have to deal with the trash of stems and cores. I make trail mix. I prep ingredients for foil packets for one dinner – parboil potatoes and chop and marinate veggies. This time I also made muesli and energy balls.

Here is my chicken scratch meal planning/ shopping list:

Here is what we actually ate for a three night camping trip:

Day 1:
Dinner – summer sausage, cheese, Triscuits, sliced apples.
This was the night that we got in and I didn’t finish setting up the tent until almost 8pm. So I wanted something easy, fun, and filling.

Day 2:
Breakfast – Meusli/Oatmeal with milk.
Lunch – Tuna wraps, apples, veggies (cucumbers, sugar snap peas, carrots) and Hummus
Dinner – leftover “turkey chili” eaten over Frito chips. Dessert – Almond Jelly with canned fruit.
-For the tuna wraps, I mashed canned tuna with avocado, sprinkled it with Everything but the Bagel seasoning, layered on some cheese and we ate it wrapped like a burrito. So simple and tasty!
-Almond Jelly was an impulse purchase at the Asian grocery store. It’s one of my favorite desserts, a jelly dessert that tastes like almond extract, eaten with canned fruit cocktail. It doesn’t require refrigeration to set since it is made of agar not gelatin, and this made it an ideal camping dessert. This was my first time bringing it, and I’m on the fence as to whether or not I would bring it on future trips – it’s an easy shelf stable dessert, but it don’t know that the rest of the family likes it as much as I do and we had a lot of it left over.
-The “Turkey chili” was the leftover filling from the zucchini boats we had for dinner the night before we left, basically ground turkey sauteed with black beans and a jar of salsa. I had read the camp meal idea of eating chili directly out of bags of Frito corn chips, and thought that might be fun. But in reality, I was a little wary of the mess of eating directly out of a bag, seeing as how we were in bear country and all. So we just had our chili and Fritos in bowls.

Day 3:
Breakfast: Bacon and egg breakfast burritos. Mango
Lunch: Summer Sausage, salami, cheese, Triscuits, apples, and carrots.
Dinner: Cooked over the campfire: Shrimp foil packets, Sausages. Baked Beans,. Bagged Caesar Salad. ‘Smores for dessert.
-We don’t eat a lot of bacon at home – I find it messy, plus it’s not the healthiest food. Despite that, I always bring bacon on camping trips. I cook up the bacon then fry the eggs in the leftover grease.
-Lunch was on the snack-y side because we took it on our very long hike, so I wanted something that we could pack easily but also eat easily with our hands.
-The shrimp packets were: potatoes, zucchini, corn, peppers, onions. Sprinkled with cajun seasoning. I packed the shrimp separately and assembled the packets at the camp site – on foil packet I put some kind of oil (usually butter or bacon grease) and then layer the veggies, shrimp, and some sausage. Some people say to assemble the packets at home but I find that makes things soggy especially since we weren’t eating them til the third night.

On the fire: Foil packets and baked beans and sausages

Day 4:
Breakfast: Cereal and pastries that the Husband had brought with him.

Snacks that I brought. (Snacking is a very important part of camping):
-Trail Mix – I like to make my own. I use mixed nuts (the Costco roasted unsalted nut mix), M&Ms (sometimes peanut ones), dried fruit (cherries, raisins, cranberries), pepitas, sunflower seeds, and pretzels for a bit of salty tang.
– Fruit. Apples, grapes, mango. I like mango because it keeps well without refrigeration and feel special so the kids are excited to eat it.
– Welches fruit snacks (Berry blend!) Also used as a bribe/ treat when the kids were getting tired on hikes.
– Shrimp chips and seaweed rice crackers. Basically I go to the Asian market and see what looks like it would be fun and crunchy and savory.
– banana chips
– String cheese
-energy balls – I made this recipe from Pinch of Yum for pecan pie energy bites. The rest of the family didn’t care for it, but I really liked them.
-jerky – turkey and beef.

The MVPs of this trip:
-Tortillas. I like the whole wheat tortillas from Trader Joe’s. In the past, I’ve always packed a loaf of bread for lunches, but I think I now prefer tortillas. They don’t take up much space to pack, they are dense, and I don’t have to worry about them getting crushed.
-Avocados, barely ripe. Avocados were great as a vegetable option, but also I mashed up avocado and used it instead of mayo mixed in with canned tuna for lunch. Really tasty.
– Trader Joe’s Everything But the Bagel Seasoning. I don’t bring a lot of herbs and spices when camping; mostly I just pack salt and pepper. I’m really happy that I tossed the Everything But the Bagel Seasoning in the bin at the last minute – it was an easy pop of flavor for a lot of things – tuna salad, breakfast wraps.
-Honey. It’s the only sweetener I bring and I love that it is so versatile. I mostly use it to sweeten the oatmeal and also to make Peanut Butter and Honey Sandwiches.

Other favorite camp meals (These I didn’t make on this trip, but I have in the past and I like them and they are very easy to make):
-Ramen. It is very versatile, but one of my favorite methods: I pack some miso our soup base with ginger and curry powder. In a separate container I pack diced onions, carrots, cabbage, whatever other veggies I like. At the camp site, I boil water, toss in the soup base/ginger/curry. When that is boiling and dissolved, I add the veggies and boil for a few minutes, then at the end I add the Ramen noodles.
-Mac n Cheese. Kraft makes a version where the sauce is already premixed so you don’t have to deal with the cheesy powder.
-Salmon – wrapped in foil and easy to cook over the fire, though ought to be eaten on the first night.
– Hot Dogs. cooked on sticks over the fire. Usually eaten with canned baked beans.
– Dehydrated backpacking meals. These aren’t necessarily the tastiest, but there is a lot of novelty in pouring hot water into a foil packet and having things like Mushroom Stroganoff emerge. They’re also good for keeping for the last meal of the trip since they don’t need to be kept in the cooler.

Well, that’s a big brain dump on how and what we eat while camping. I’m always on the look out for other food ideas to eat while camping! Currently we car camp, but I have dreams of going backpacking one day, and that is a whole other food ball game.

Shenandoah Camping- Day three and then home

To finish up the recaps from our July camping trip….

The second morning once again started with a 6:30am bathroom call. This morning, after bathroom call, I actually went back to sleep for an hour while the two kids played with their cars and figurines next to me in the tent. It was a kind of hazy shallow sleep, punctuated by their small voices making car noises and creating scenarios on the tent floor. Small figurines and cars always come with us when we go camping and we get a lot of mileage out of them.

Around 7:45- I got up and made breakfast- bacon and egg wraps. Which were tasty, although I think I should have bought thick cut bacon – it would have cooked more evenly and taken up less space in the frying pan.

A little after 9:00am, the Husband arrived with the 10 year old. They had left at around 6am to get to us and the ten year old was still a little sleepy. I thought they made good time given that they even stopped for donuts.

“Did you get to use the park pass?” was the first thing I asked them.

So the whole reason I chose to come to the Shenandoah over Western Maryland where we usually go camping was because every fourth grader in America gets a free National Park Pass good from September 1st to August 31st the year they are in fourth grade. Not one to turn down free stuff, I really wanted to use the pass and we planned two vacations around this park pass. However, we didn’t use the pass on our our Smoky Mountain National Park vacation because that park actually doesn’t charge a fee. So I was eager to use it on this trip. Except then the ten year old didn’t want to come with me. I realize that $30 is a small price to pay for entry into our National Parks, but I was super bummed not to be able to use the card. (Though it ended up being moot because when I drove in with the two littles, the entry gate was understaffed and unoccupied so I didn’t end up having to pay anyway.)

Anyhow, the Husband reassured me that they did in fact get to use the fourth grade park pass and I was pretty excited about that.

After everyone got to relax for a little bit and I got breakfast cleaned up, put away, and had hauled the dishwashing water to be dumped and come back, I wanted to go on a hike. So we packed a lunch and snacks and water in our backpacks and got in the car.

I chose the South River Falls Hike. It looked really doable in the hiking book, just 4.4 miles to the base of a waterfall and back. In my mind that was 2.2 miles to the waterfall, time for playing in the water and lunch, then 2.2 miles back. I figured it would take maybe four hours – ninety minutes there, thirty minutes at the waterfall and two hours back.

It took 6.5 hours and was much harder than I had anticipated.

Most of the difficulty was due to the elevation change throughout, some 1200 feet. The terrain in spots was a little rocky to get down to the waterfall and then back up to the trail so we had to go slow and careful with the kid. Even still, there were lots of things I really liked about the hike.

We saw lots of millipedes – which the kids loved to stop for… every single millipede.

two of the many many millipedes that we saw.

There were lots of moments to sit by the stream for a motivational snack break. (Gummy fruit snacks!)

There were rocky scrambles, one which ran over the stream and you could stand on the rocks and hear the trickle of water far below, even though you couldn’t actually see the stream.

There was running into a park ranger who talked us through the path to the base of the waterfall and answered all our questions of how they rescue people in case of emergency. I thought it was such a cool job to spend your day hiking and talking to park visitors.

There was the cool shade where we sat on rocks at the base of the waterfall and had our lunch of summer sausage, cheese, and fruit. And after lunch there was some refreshing wading.

And on the way back, we even saw some owls. It was almost magical! There is something mesmerizing about owls and their haunting call and swift noiseless flight.

Very blurry picture of one of the owls we saw.

Overall, the kids did okay with the hike, difficult as it was. There was a fair bit of protesting that they couldn’t possibly go any further, but the baby actually made it all but the last mile, at which point, I put her in the carrier and she fell asleep. The five year old stoically made it all the way to the waterfall and back with nary a word. He found a good sturdy stick and trudged along, stick in hand. Only afterwards did he say to me, “I like camping, but I don’t like long hikes.”

In the evening there was a fire, dinner cooked over said fire, and ‘smores. Then the Husband put the kids to bed. The ten year old decided that the tent was too crowded and wanted to sleep in the hammock. I hung a few glow sticks in hammock for her so that she wouldn’t be so in the dark. Truth be told, I was a little jealous – sleeping in a hammock seemed like it would have made for a soothing and refreshing night. Since the Husband was on kid duty and then retired soon after, I had the rest of the evening to myself. I sat by the fire, read my book and wrote in my journal as I tried to keep the flames alive as long as possible. The last log managed to burn for quite a long time and it was lovely to have a fire-lit evening to myself.

The next day, we woke up to fog and drizzle, which still seemed magical. The Husband and I packed up the campsite while the kids played. The five year old kept setting the camp chairs in a row, playing train:

The baby just tried to climb whatever she could:

She can make anything into her jungle gym!

On the way home, we stopped in Culpepper for lunch at a Bar-b-que place. The food did take a while to get to us, so when it became clear that the two little were feeling a little restless, I took them on a walk around the town. I feel like I need to have more tricks up my sleeve for the kids now that we are eating out more. I can’t expect them to sit still all the time in a restaurant if the service is slow and I don’t want them climbing all over things and behaving like indoor monkeys. At any rate, a walk around the block seemed like a good way to wait for the food to come. We even saw this piece of art:

And it seemed like every street we walked down was like taking a time machine back sixty years….

Eventually the husband texted that the food had arrived so we headed back to the restaurant. We ordered the family meal and it. came. in. a. garbage. can. lid. How fun is that?

The food was soooo good! When I go to BBQ, I had to admit, it’s all about the sides for me. Any place that doesn’t have collard greens is a disappointment in my book. This place not only had collard greens, but they also had hush puppies (which the kids tried for the first time and heartily approved of), fried okra and, something new to me, stewed apples. The stewed apples were so tasty, kind of like eating apple pie filling .

After lunch, we drove home, unloaded the camping gear from the car, and all took showers.

All in all, it was a great trip. I wish I could have stayed longer.

Some things that I really enjoyed about this camping trip:

Unplugging. Our campsite actually had pretty good cell service, but I needed my battery to last 3.5 days with minimal charging, so I kept it in airplane mode most of the time. I realized that this was actually a great way to limit my screen time. I would take my phone out of airplane mode three or four times a day, check my email and texts, respond to the ones that needed a response, text teh Husband proof of life pictures of me and the kids, then put the phone back in airplane mode. It made me realize that I don’t get messages of sufficient volume and importance to be checking my messages as much as I do. It was a good thing to realize. The one annoying thing was even though I had downloaded my books via the Libby app, for some reason the app wouldn’t open unless it had signal. So a couple times I had to take the phone off airplane mode just to get the app to open.

Hiking to views and to waterfalls.

Going to bed early.

Reading Roald Dahl’s The Enormous Crocodile out loud with the kids.

The hammock.

Simple meals of crackers, summer sausage, and cheese.

Seeing stars…

Shenandoah camping – Day two

One thing about camping with two small kid and no other adult is that when one kid wakes up at 6:30am and needs to use the restroom, you have to wake up the other kid as well because you can’t very well leave a sleeping toddler in a tent by themself. I know I should just instruct the five year old in the fine art of peeing in the woods- that would be the simplest solution. Yet, the mechanics of peeing while standing up still baffle me a little and everytime we try, pee goes all over. This instruction might be something I assign to the Husband.

At any rate early morning bathroom call was how the day began. A little earlier than I had wanted since the sleep the night before had been not terribly restful, as is typical for the first night of camping. But bladder and sunlight and a natural early riser meant that at 6:30am there was a bathroom run. And then we were up for the day.

We came back from the bathroom and I made everyone oatmeal from the musli that I had made while looking over trail maps to decide what I thought might be fun to do with the kids.

After breakfast we walked along a trail next to our campground that led to tbe campstore – I guess one could call it hiking, but it seemed more like a relaxes nature stroll. The path we took was part of the Appalachian Trail, which was kind of a cool thought- that we could get on this trail and walk south to Georgia or North to Maine. This stretch was pretty unremarkable, a path through the woods though we did see rocks and sticks and acorn, which the baby demanded that I put in my pocket to take home. And there was a millipede which the kids found fascinating. The first of many we would see.

Trail explorers along the Appalachian Trail.

We got to the campstore just as the misty rain became a downpour. In a bit of unfortunate oversight, I had left our hats, umbrellas and rain gear back at the camp site, so we just waited in the covered alleyway outside the campstore for the storm to pass. I felt ill equipped for this kind of waiting it out, but I did have a sack full of trail mix, water, and, in a bit of luck, a deck of BrainQuest cards. This last kept the kids occupied for a little bit, but then they spent the rest of the time running back and forth.

Eventually, after about an hour, the downpour lightened to a mist and we walked back to the campsite, and had lunch. To keep the kids occupied while I made lunch, I set up the hammock for them, including the rain fly in case it were to rain again. They always have great fun with the hammock- fun for swinging but also fun for lazing around.

After lunch was eaten and cleaned up, I decided to join them in the hammock to see if the baby would take a nap. Well, we all ended up asleep. I think that’s one of the lovely things about camping- the sleepless, restless first night is always offset by a lovely afternoon nap. I woke up about an hour later to the sound of rain tapping against the rain fly. Somewhere in the back of my head I remembered that I had left the windows to the car open in an effort to air the car out. This thought kept wafting into my groggy nap brain, but it was so hard to pull myself out of the gentle lull of a swinging hammock full of warm child snuggles!

In a fit of superhuman strength I untangled myself from the kids, went to shut the car windows and returned to the hammock. I spent another half hour reading The Splendid and the Vile among a tangle of children’s limbs until they woke up and reminded me of my promise to buy firewood and make a fire that evening. We got into the car and headed back to the camp store. After getting two bundles of wood, i decided there was still enough time in the day to sneak in a quick hike, so I drove us to the trailhead for Blackrock summit.

My guidebook said this was an easy hike with a rocky scramble to a great view. The baby has never met a rocky scramble that she didn’t like, so it sounded perfect. Plus the hike was only a mile long so it was just the right length for a late afternoon adventure.

The baby complained most of the way up the trail, (“I’m tired,” “My tummy hurts!”) but the moment she saw the rocky scramble at the top, she was happily off like a shot. The summit looks like a pile of construction rubble debris, but the placard at the trail head said that it was actually a rock shelf at the bottom of the ocean, when this area was an ocean. The ocean receded and eventually the rock shelf collapsed.

I know everyone is always amazed by their children, but I am truly in awe of how well the baby can climb- she looks at the situation, and plots where her toes and fingers can go and how to wedge her foot in just so to get leverage. She lifts with her legs and isn’t afraid to blindly drop to a lower level. It is so much fun to watch.

After our hike we went back to the campsite and had dinner and a little fire. I have become okay at making a fire, but I’m always surprised when it does work. My method mostly consists of making fire starters from newspaper and dryer lint and wood shavings. (the Husband, who does the laundry, saves dryer lint all year in a Ziploc bag so that I can have it for when I go camping). The weather had been so wet and rainy, so I didn’t really have any good twigs and branches to use for kindling. Surprisingly the fire still managed to catch rather quickly. I wanted to save the marshmallows and s’mores for when the ten year old and the Husband arrived the next day, so we just enjoyed the flickering flames

The fire eventually died down, I cleaned up dinner, we brushed our teeth, got into pjs, read the rest of The Enormous Crocodile, and then went to bed. It was only about 9:45p when everyone settled down to sleep, which was late for the kids but early for me. Clearly being in the woods without internet does wonders for my ability to go to bed early. I did stay up another half and hour to read and journal, but even still I was asleep much earlier than usual.

When I was planning this trip, I was a little nervous when I saw the rain in the forecast, but looking back, it didn’t end up being a big deal. Luckily we have good gear so we all stayed dry and the rain was pretty sporadic- two 90 minute showers. The rest of the day was mild and not so hot. I think the nice thing about camping is that I feel like I’m either having leisure time (book and hammock or hike) or doing essential things (feeding kids); there isn’t empty time or puttering time or aimless time. Having my time be black and white like that – relax with purpose or survival – takes away a lot of the restlessness I can feel when there are a billion small tasks to be done. While camping, I don’t have to think about activity registration or paying the bills or making social plans, or fixing that thing that needs to fixed (or thinking about fixing it…)… because I can’t tick those things off my to do list right then. I can think and plan, but the number of things that are actually achievable is actually quite limited.

Even though the time is filled and every tasks has many more steps than at home, somehow, I don’t feel busy. Having to unpack the camp stove for every meal, having to wash all the dishes right away, and then haul the dirty water to the bath house, having to put away all the food completely for fear of bears – that doesn’t feel busy to me. It is just essential. I think busy comes from feeling like there is soooo much to do that I am just going from one task to another, and it will never get done. Yet when camping there is just two things – enjoy being outside and feed everyone (Okay, there is also bathroom call and brush teeth, I suppose) – it doesn’t feel like I won’t get things done. Because of course we will eat. And then of course we will relax or go for a hike.

I once went camping with a friend and in the middle of one afternoon, while I was sitting reading a book, she came over and said to me, “It’s amazing how there is really nothing to do here.” And I thought, “Yes, isn’t that the beauty of it?”

Shenandoah Camping – Day 1

We just got back from a camping trip to Shenandoah National Park. Originally we were all going to go for three nights, but then at the last minute the Husband wanted to work. The ten year old declared that she wasn’t going if daddy wasn’t going… so I said fine. Camping with two young kids is a lot easier than camping with two young kids and one grumpy kid.

Camping is never as simple as I want it to be. In my head, camping is an exercise in acetic living- nature, shelter and food. But the simplicity of nature, shelter, and food is certainly complicated for me to pull off- it requires lists and supplies and plans and gear. Maybe if I were the type of person who camped every weekend, prepping for a camping trip would be down to a very efficient routine. But as it is, I feel like every time I go, I’m figuring things out again.

Take food, for example- Running out of food while camping is one of my worst fears. So I draw up a detailed meal plan and make a list of snacks to bring. I juxtapose the fun of cooking over the campfire with the ease of just making curry ramen on the camp stove. I try to figure out what is simple but highly flavorful. Also what can pack efficiently. I think of snacks that are nutritionally dense and tasty, but hopefully not so tasty that the kids blow through it all in one day. Also fun treats that can be used to bribe the kids when they just can’t anymore while hiking.

Then I spent two and a half hours grocery shopping the night before I was to leave. Much of the time I was having an internal debate with myself as to whether or not something would be good to bring camping. There is a balance I’m still trying to find between camping being an excuse to buy all the fun snack food and also realizing that being out in the woods and being active actually requires healthy, dense food choices. I was at Trader Joe’s and I can’t tell you how many times the dill pickle peanuts went into my cart, then back on the shelf, than into my cart. (spoiler: I did take end up buying them).

Then after I came home, I spent a few hours prepping said food- parboil potatoes, making trail mix and meusli and energy balls. Cutting up apples so that I won’t have to deal with the cores at the camp ground. Filling Ziploc bags full of cut and marinated veggies. Freezing meats and water jugs to help keep things in the cooler cold.

Part of me thinks that camp food should not require so much prep. That there should be a simple equation of fire + food+ eating in the open air = tasty meal. But, no… for me, it seems like it takes a lot of prep for easy camping meals. Unless, of course, one does the freeze dried backpacker meals. I’ve done those before and while I think they’re fine, it wasn’t really my favorite thing. (Although I do find the idea of them so fascinating that I spent thirty minutes in REI perusing the freeze dried meal aisle. Everything promised to be so tasty and filling. If it were really so easy to have such varied meals, we should all just be eating dehydrated meals! Ah those packets of gastronomical mystery in their opaque foil pouches!)

At any rate, my goal had been to leave by noon and we left at 3:30pm. (Well, we pulled out of the driveway at 3pm, but my watch had chosen to die on me at 2:30p that day so we made an emergency Target run.) It took four hours to pull all the camping gear out, pull together everything on my camping checklist and pack all the gear, clothes, and food into the car. I’m writing this here for next time, when I wonder how long it will take me to pack the car for camping… let the record show- 4 hours. <gavel strike> (I did pack the clothes the night before, so if I were starting from scratch, I would say 5 hours).

The 3 hour drive itself was fine save for the two kids in the back who fought constantly, about who knows what. From what I could decipher through the screaming and whining and tears, it involved grapes being thrown, and sunglasses being stolen and possession of the Vox books. (Vox books are these amazing books with an audio book feature built in so the kid can follow along. Kind of like those books when I was growing up that came with a cassette tape and there was a chime when it was time to turn the page.) The only time they were quiet was when I agreed to play two episodes of Laurie Berkner’s Song and Story Kitchen. Steep price to pay, perhaps. Otherwise we listened to the audiobook of Roald Dahl’s The BFG and the perennial favorite, Hamilton.

The kid’s squabbling was starting to really get to me, when I turned onto route… and I could see Shenandoah mountain- silhouetted against the late afternoon sky. Then I started to get so excited that I was going to get to spend the next couple of days in those mountains.

It was six thirty by the time we pulled up to the camp site, and it took another hour and a half to set ip the tent and sleeping arrangements. (Let the record show for future me: it takes 90 minutes for you to set up camp by yourself. <gavel strike>). The two kids were not entirely helpful- at one point the baby got into the toiletries box and I looked up to see half a container of floss unspooled across our camp site. I guess in truth there is very little a 5 year old and a 2.5 year old can do to help in putting up a tent, though they were eager to help by taking things randomly out of the car, and they did fight for the chance to hammer in the stakes for the tent. Some day they maybe can put up the whole tent by themselves

By the time the tent was up and staked, I abandoned my original meal plan to have the leftover ground turkey “chili” heated up and eaten with corn chips. Chili and corn chips had seemed a simple meal when I put it on the meal chart, but at 8:30pm it was not simple enough and I just fed the kids Triscuits, summer sausage, cheese, and apples for dinner- all eaten off the cutting board because I couldn’t even with plates by that point. Of course deviating from my meal plan caused a low level panic in my mind at my carefully crafted and rationed meal plan being blown to bits…

Then we were got out flashlights and headlamps for one last trip to the bathhouse to brush teeth and go to the bathroom. Back to the tent to change into pjs and then snuggled into our sleeping bags by 9:45p, reading another Dahl book, The Enormous Crocodile, by the light of the camp lantern before falling asleep.

So that was the first day. A little chaotic, a little exasperating, but now we were there.