Well my husband and I had been talking all last week that it would be fun to go fishing on Saturday. On Friday night it turned into, why not camp too. Since we would be driving all the way up to Mt Hood, we might as well stay the night. Gas is not cheap these days you know... so we decided it would be a good idea to stay the night and make it 2 day trip. Yeah... you get where I'm going with this before I even start huh?
Saturday started off innocent enough. It was going to be a very hot day so we tried to get started early with packing up the van with all our camping paraphenalia. We finally left our house at 10:30 and made a quick stop to pick up some bread and snacks at the store and we were on the road and out of town by 11am. We got up to Frog Lake on My Hood by 1pm. We ate our lunch on the way and both boys even got a nap. (Side note... my a/c in my van stopped working on the way up, so it was miserably hot in the "sauna" van) Upon our first view of the lake, we were stunned at the high level of the water. We had never seen it that high... like ever! There were no little tadpoles or frogs... at all. We were a bit sad. We had talked it up to be sooo cool to Josiah, so he was a little disappointed. This is the time of year that there should hundreds of little frogs in the lake but alas it was our first disappointment of the weekend. We still hiked around the lake and let the boys get nice and wet playing in the water... because our a/c is not working and we figured they would dry out quick. We figured correctly, they were dry in less than an hour.
We went from that lake and drove on down towards Timothy Lake. We decided to take a detour road (probably best decision of the weekend) around the lake because we saw several campgrounds listed on the map that way. We hadn't made reservations of course because this was a our last minute "get in the van and go trip." The first campground we got to was Little Crater Lake. They actually had 2 openings available. So we picked the best of the 2 and set up the tent. We decided instead of taking a chance on any other places we would just go there. It was a small and cozy campground but oh so lovely! Very family friendly. It was small hike to get to Little Crater Lake(no joke, it was LITTLE), which we did after dinner. You hiked through this magnificent meadow filled with Shooting Stars, wild Lupine, a few scattered pine trees, swaying grasses, and a meandering stream. I wish I would have taken a picture... DUH Jennifer! What was I thinking? This is
what I was thinking... Man, it is gorgeous out here, smack my arm, wow, look at the flowers, smack both my legs, better help Jacob walk he keeps falling and bonking his head, wave hands wildly over my head, call for Josiah who ran to far ahead of us on the trail, smack a bug on Jacob's head. UGH! Yes, if you haven't figured it out we were absolutely inundated with a pluthera of bloodsucking, quarter size mosquito's! If it weren't for those pesky bugs it would have been an awesome evening! We got back from our hike and had a nice campfire to try to ward off some of those fore-mentioned pesky bugs and talked and sang to the kids. I started attempting to put Jacob to bed at 9pm, already an hour past his normal bed-time and he was plenty tired. He proceeded to play and squirm and fuss for the next 2 hrs straight! It was utterly exhausting to say the least! We put Josiah to bed at 10 and he was alseep by 10:30. But Josiah, unlike Jacob, you tell him this is your bed, go to sleep here, and he will. WOW, what a novel concept huh? Yes, well, the rest of the night was... um... interesting to say the least. Josiah and Jonny were on the sides of the tent with Jacob and I in the middle. Probably not the best idea... as we were the squirmers and the other 2 got pushed to edges from all our wiggling around. We finally made it through the night and everyone was awake by 7am. We had breakfast, it was mighty tasty too, and then packed up hurriedly becuase a literal swarm of mosquito's set down on us and would not stop sucking our blood. We were out of the campground by 9:30 AM! That's proper motivation right there!For the rest of the morning we drove to another of our favorite lakes, Lake Harriet. We let Josiah throw his fishing pole in a few times and ate some sandwiches for lunch and the decided to head home. We all felt like we had a thick layer of shelac on us, consisting of bug spray and sunscreen. I'm sure we all smelled quite lovely. So off we headed home, looking forward to the wonderful thought a clean shower forthcoming and glorious rest in our own beds.
So that my friends, was Jacob's first camping trip in a tent, and Josiah's second. Aren't all babies first camping trip a little bit of a disaster? I wouldn't say the whole thing was, because we sure had some good memorable moments, but the sleeping part is what I could have done without. Overall, we are glad we went, I'm sure Josiah will have some good memories of this trip for some time to come. And if your next question is, "Will you go again?" my answer is yes, we definitely will, but after recovering and reflecting on what we can do better next time.
Blessings to you all!
