Just like Dora and her friends sing at the end of every episode, “We did it, We did it, Lo hicimos!,” so am I walking around the house feeling very proud of myself for surviving the Gutierrez Gang’s very first camping trip! Yay! I had my moments of cringing when the kid’s faces got increasingly crustier, and when our tent and shoes and children were instantly dusty, but for the most part, I think I handled this weekend with great aplomb (thank you, Andy Bernard for the new vocab word)
We got to our campsite on Friday afternoon, an hour after we had said everyone should meet. We were the second people there. No one else showed up until our campsite was completely set up, and I think the last people to arrive rolled in about 5 hours after that. I really do think we belong to the right church. No matter how late we are, someone else is always waaay later than us. We felt a little slighted because the campground was about 10 minutes from our house, and our site overlooked the city. It was beautiful at night, but did take away from that whole living simply without any sign of life feeling that makes people love camping. On the other side of our site was a man-made lake. It was pretty, but again, not quite natural. I was commenting to Nathaniel that the fishing there was a little like one of those little kids’ games where you throw the fishing pole over the sheet and someone sticks a piece of candy to your pole because all of the fish in there were planted by the rangers. Maybe it’s just me, but it kinda’ takes the fun out of it knowing that those fish didn’t have to swim upstream to get there. Anyways, you can’t have it all, right.
Oh, and we really had nothing to worry about with our tent being too big. There were way bigger ones there, which we didn’t mind, we were thankful for. I was a little concerned that I might come off as a princess if I brought too much stuff, you know, because I had made comments earlier that instead of camping as a church, we should all go stay in a hotel as a church. Everyone laughed, so I pretended like it was a joke. So I just packed a few little things, leaving even my makeup at home (I realize that if I was still in high school that would be impressive, but it still felt like a small victory even though I am now a confident adult woman). But let me tell you, we were the only ones there without air mattresses, and my face was the least made-up in the morning. I was proud to sleep on the ground, especially since everyone else thought we were crazy for it. But hey, if you’re gonna pretend you are homeless, you kind of need to go all out. It was actually one of the best night’s sleep I have gotten in a while, well, once I was confident that there were no snakes coiled up in the bottom of my sleeping bag. I guess the biggest princess moment I had was once it got dark, I subconsciously thought to myself, “ugh, why doesn’t someone turn on a light in here.” Good thing thoughts stay on the inside. Usually.
We were also a little embarassed about the food we had brought. I’ll give you a hint. It was in a can, it was red, and it had a little Italian chef on the front. But to be fair, this was our first time camping, and all we had was that small little stove. But, worried that the family next to us who were like professional campers and had just survived a week-long camping trip was going to pull out some kind of fancy carne asada or something, we ate our food in secret while everyone else was on a hike. It wasn’t until that same family showed up at the devotional time with their cup of noodles in hand that we realized we had nothing to be worried about and that we hadn’t damaged our children by having them eat that for dinner (ha, who am I kidding, like we only eat that kind of stuff when camping!) Maybe the professional campers are the ones who have the most simple meals.
We even survived public restrooms with toilets that had no seat or lights in the bathroom. I brought just the right amount of clothes for each person. We had enough liquid to hydrate everyone properly. We set up our tent with no problems. This kids stayed safe the whole time. We didn’t get a single mosquito bite. No snakes slithered into our tent (that we know of). We were all very ready to go home when it was all over. Annnnd, everything is put away and there is very little sign (other than laundry) that we just spent the weekend in the woods. All in all, it was a very sucessful camping trip, and we are starting to think about talking about when our next one will be.
Lo hicimos!
