The Craziest Camping Trip!

Friday, June 27:

So at the last minute Clayton decided he wanted to go camping to escape the 3 digit temperatures in Boise. He tried to make reservations at a campground at Warm Lake (there are 3 there) but you have to give 3days prior notice. He checked the reservations that were already made and there were only a few so we thought we'd drive out there and give it a shot.

We left our house at 4:30, stopped by Fred Meyers to pick up a few extra things and headed out. at 5:30 we finally made it out of Eagle and were on our way up Highway 55. Yikes! It took us an hour to just get out of town! That's not really a big deal, though, since it's only about 2 hrs away.

As we're driving up the road to Warm Lake we're thinking that there sure are ALOT of cars driving up here too, uh oh! We find the campgrounds and they're all FULL. Great. We look at the map and see that there's another campground a little ways up the mountain and so we head up there. There's a spot! Yeah....lets camp! Only...wait a second...AHHHH shut the DOOR! There are mosquito's EVERYWHERE! They instantly swarm the open door of the truck and we end up with about 20 buzzing around in the cab. Lets re-think camping here....Back down the mountain we go.

We stop to talk to one of the camp hosts to make sure that they really are full. Yes they are, you could've had your pick last week...but this weekend it filled up early. He says they set out Port-o-potty's along the Salmon river for the Salmon fisherman so we might try finding a place out there.

We think, "Why not?" It's getting sort of late and we're all getting tired and hungry. Luckily we stopped and got Evelyn a cheeseburger on the way out of town (Clayton and I had some sushi...yum...) and miracle of miracles! She actually ate most of it! Plus 2 of my yummy smoked salmon rolls with avacado. So we're not compleatly starving. We drive down that road and encounter, "Mushroom picker campground" YIKES! It's a shanty town! Full of mushroom-pickers! Plus there was a fire a few years (or even last year) and it's now kind of burned out woods...not too fun to camp in. We soon turn around and head back down the mountain to Donelly and Cascade Lake. There are about 8 campgrounds spread around Lake Cascade...surely there's 1 spot left! Granted Lake cascade is HUGE, and the campgrounds are all around the lake, but there must be something!

We try the first 3, all full, we drive around in the dark and finally find 1 spot empty! YUREKA! Oh great...we only have 1 flashlight...hmmm. Oh well, take the keys, leave Evelyn and Monty in the truck (just in case there are mosquito's here too) rummage around in the bag for long pants and a sweatshirt and set up the tent. Our really big, nice, new tent from Cabelas that we bought a year ago and haven't used yet. Hope it's easy! It's not too bad, we quickly set up our beds and hop in the tent. There are lots of bugs but I don't think they're mosquitos...at any rate, they're still bugs!

Get Evelyn in bed, make Monty lay down and turn off the flashlight. Ahhh sleep at last, it's now 10:45pm...wait, "It's dark! Turn on the light!" It's supposed to be dark, it's time to sleep. Repeat 4 or 5 times. Ahh sleep at last.

Sat. June 28

"I'm hungry! Wake up!" at 6:25am. Ugh. Oh well, who needs sleep? Get up take Evelyn (and myself, of course) to the Pit Toliets that suprisingly aren't too smelly! Evelyn refuses to go due to bad pit toliet experience on the way back from Oregon. Notice sign on campsite post." RESERVED 6/27 -6/30. OOOPS! We've accidently squated on someone elses campsite. Quick! Pack up! Run away! (I honestly don't think that they showed up on friday night because we would've heard them.) Oh well, at least we had one night free and we didn't have to drive back to Boise.

We then decide to drive around the top part of the lake to the other campgrounds. The 1st 5 were full. Oh no! But the last 2 had spots! That weren't reserved yet! Yes! Set up camp (again) then realize that Ooops! I forgot the spatula so we can't have previously planned breakfast of hashbrowns and eggs....No biggie we'll just eat hot dogs for breakfast, go get a spatula, and then eat eggs for lunch (although by this time it's getting suspiciously close to lunch time anyway). Open Cooler and...Oh no! I forgot to put the hot dogs in ( in my defense I THOUGHT Clayton was filling up the cooler, and so I didn't think to check it. in Clayton's defense...he THOUGHT I was dooing it. It's a wonder we had any food at all!) We can handle this, Grab a bag of chips, hand it to Evelyn, pile in the truck and head to McCall to find a grocery store.

Evelyn falls asleep on the way back, cook breakfast at 11:30 and wait for Evelyn to wake up. When she does, take her to the bathroom (screaming, remember the pit toliet experince) only to discover, Hurrah~ FLUSH toliets! Hold her on toliet screeming till she finally goes potty. Then head down the lake to do some Fishing. Yes, we went fishing again not catching, but Monty had a great time jumping in the lake and chasing sticks!

Go back to camp, make new camping friends....and enemies. There were a couple of teenage (around 13 -14) girls who were using the toliet as their own personal smoke shop... I took Evelyn to the bathroom and the 2 stall room was compleatly full of smoke and they were sitting on the floor in there, as soon as they heard us coming they flushed the toliet and made a run for it with my, "Please stop smoking in here, it's disgusting" comment trailing after them. After Evelyn was finished, I told Clayton so he went over to their camp (it was the second time I'd caught them at it) to let one of their parents know. The girls, of course, denied it, the dad looked disgusted, but didn't say a word and later all 4 of them (the mom included this time) came to "confront" us and say we had no business telling them what to do, when clearly in pictoral diagrams so language and reading skills are a non-issue, it states on the bathroom doors: No DOGS and NO SMOKING! But Evelyn did make friends with a cute little boy who's 6 and lives in Boise. His parents were really nice too so now we have random camping friends!

We decided to drive back to McCall to get some Ice cream, it was soooo good!

Eat dinner, make samores, go to bed. Ahhh she fell asleep! Nite, Nite. Wake up at 12:25AM to hysterical screaming. Evelyn won't tell us what's wrong, she's not making sense, she keeps pushing us away. Finally have to throw her in the truck to keep from waking up everyone, take a drive, finally understand her enough to hear, " I want to go camping, I want to sleep in the tent" drive back to the campground. She finally stops crying, she gets in my sleeping bag. It's now 12:45AM. Asleep again, only now I can't sleep because I feel like I'm going to fall off the air mattress. Oh well...I don't need to sleep.

Sunday June 29

I wake up at 7:45ish and Clayton and I make breakfast. Evelyn is dead to the world. We enjoy a quiet morning. Evelyn finally wakes up at 9:45! She eats breakfast. We pack up camp (well really, Clayton packs up, and Evelyn and I walk with our new camp buddies around the campground) Then drive a different way home. We get home at 4pm and can finally RELAX! Yuck it's 103* in Boise when we get back.

Sorry for the novel but my cousin was joking that we have "mommy blogs" not real ones with words. So I thought I'd humor her and make her read! This is for you Joy! End of camping from Hell.

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