Our first camping trip...

So after vacations of the more luxurious sort, we finally decided to try roughing it, although I'm sure my dear friend Andrea would laugh at me for calling camping in a campsite with hot showers less than a half mile away roughing it!

But to us, it was roughing it! We had to laugh at ourselves. Our shelter looked hysterically large compared to our tent. We had SO much stuff - a huge shelter, a
campsite table to hold our stove and lantern and that even had a cool sink, coolers,
chairs, and so on and so forth, that when we were trying to pack everything back into our Audi sudan the camp ranger was like, "it ain't going to fit." Then there was are very small two man tent...

My mom says they call it that because it was not designed for women. Daryl and I came to that conclusion on our own the first night when I awoke in a panic muttering or shouting, I'm not sure which, "I HAVE TO GET OUT OF THIS THING!" We had the fly on because it was raining, so I couldn't see out, I couldn't sit up or roll over because it was too small, and I was getting MUY clausteraphobic!

The next night I was fine because it didn't rain and so we didn't use the fly and I could see out and feel the fresh air.

We're leaving for another, longer camping trip on Wednesday morning which I am so excited about because lots of friends are going, but I'm hoping I don't get clausteraphobic again! Daryl and I are going to use that as our one final trial. We're going to see if I can handle the tent size or if we'll have to e-bay our tent and get a bigger one. It's so great though and he loves it so I hope we don't have to. Pray for me! :)

Anyways, here are some things we learned for our next trip:

1. Set up the shelter FIRST then unload all of our stuff from the car. This will ensure that we don't get everything soaked while trying to set up the shelter and a huge rain storm comes through.

2. Make sure we have large enough pots to cook our food in. That 5 piece set from Target just doesn't cut it.

3. Know the checkout time of your campsite so you don't look silly and surprised with a hot dog half way stuffed in your mouth when campers approach you saying they just got assigned your site.

4. Don't inflate my air mattress all the way. I just roll off and make myself closer to the top of the tent which does not appear to be beneficial for me.

5. Enjoy learning lessons - they are funny and make good memories.

Headed to make our camping menu....