Camping

We pulled the safety mats of home and headed for them there hills. Yes, we decided that it was high time that we spent our first night in a tent with Ezra and experienced the concept of camping with a baby. If you want the short version, here it is: most of the time it wasn’t nearly as hard as we thought it would be…but there were moments.

We left yesterday morning with a reservation for a tent site in the Rocky Mountain National Park (about 2.5 hours drive) and a car that seemed as packed as if we were trekking across country. It seems as though you add one person and you exponentially add more stuff (I think that sounds familiar). We stopped in Estes Park for a picnic by the small lake in town and then headed for our site to set up. We brought along our large tent, and a sun shade – which we used as a place for Ezra to play without sitting in the dirt…and it worked perfectly. After we set up camp, we headed back into town and hung out till dinner time. When we planned the trip, we gave up on trying to stay in camp for hours and hours then trying to cook dinner…we thought it would just be an easy meal to let someone else take care of while we got our feet wet with the experience.

We returned to camp, and started a fire with wood that the previous tenant of that spot left behind. We enjoyed being chased in circles by the smoke for nearly an hour before attempting to turn in for the night. We brought an air mattress to sleep on, which is great until anyone has to move. Our biggest mistake of the trip was trying to get Ezra to go to sleep before it was dark outside…he fought and fought it. He thought that being in the tent was just the coolest thing, and wanted to play with everything – which meant that he didn’t want to go to sleep. Once it became dark however, we were able to get him to sleep. Everyone slept fairly well throughout the night – as good as could be expected since it was our first night camping, we were on an air mattress, and it was 40 degrees outside.

We woke this morning and made some breakfast – eggs to be specific. It was great to see that all of our camping gear still worked as though it was used just last week; when in fact it has been two summers between uses. After breakfast, we joined about 10,000 mosquitos and hiked around Sprauge Lake and then a little up another trail before turning around because Ezra fell asleep while being carried. He stayed alseep all of the way back to the car, then until we drove down to Boulder, where we stopped for another picnic lunch.

The trip was good fun, and we are already planning our next excursion into the woods. We are hoping that after a couple of times, we are able to pair down what we are taking and streamline the operation. It’s not so much the packing or the space in the car as it is the unpacking….