First Weekend of Spring Camping Trip

This last weekend Manina was out-of-town at yet another girls trip. Jacob, Megan, and Katelyn had a church “mini-mission” activity that would keep them busy (and supervised) all Friday night and most of the day on Saturday. I was home with just Claire, Drew, and Ellie.

So, instead of sitting around and playing on iPods all weekend, we decided to borrow grandma Jan’s trailer (nicknamed Cousin Eddy) and head west and find a camping spot.

We went out to Manning canyon, out by Five Mile Pass. It’s a pretty easy place to get to, and we found a pretty good place to set up camp.

It was pretty chilly, so we got mostly stayed inside the trailer that night. We popped some popcorn over the stove in one of those tin-foil poppers (which was a big hit, and a great snack) and played a game of Candyland (Claire won by large margin).

I woke up at 6am and looked up at the thermometer – it was 20°F inside the trailer. So I cracked a couple vents open and turned on the heater. It was soon up to a manageable 40°F temperature. No one died of carbon monoxide poisoning, which was a bonus.

We ate powdered doughnuts, blueberries, and oatmeal for breakfast as we waited for the sun to keep warming up. Then we went outside and decided to go for a hike.

We made it to the top of the mountain and looked back down on our camp. The kids had fun looking for rocks, chasing crows, and looking for animals.

After our hike I cooked one of those take-n-bake pizzas in the trailer’s oven. It was a much more difficult process than it sounds because the oven is so “vintage” that it didn’t have any cooking racks. I managed to rig up a contraption to cook the pizza without burning it on either the top or the bottom, which may go down as one of the greatest engineering hacks in history destined for obscurity.

The kids ate the miracle pizza for lunch while I started cleaning and packing up. As I watched them play together I remembered why it’s important to be outside without the modern gadgets. It was fun to see their imagination and creativity come alive in a new setting. We had a great time on our first camping trip of 2016. Hopefully we will have many more to report.