This past weekend was fun. Friday night Jess decided to treat us by taking us all out for dinner. We went to Austie’s (local little eatery) and had a fine dinner of hamburgers and a hot dog for Jack. While we were talking the topic of what we should so for the weekend came up. We threw a few ideas around but wee didn’t want to do anything too expensive. I mentioned that I wish I knew what the farm looked like because we could do a nice overnight camp. When I mentioned that both of our eyes out up. We had been talking about going camping all summer and decided that we would eventually go on a fall trip once the warm weather is over. But we could still go camping even if we didn’t go down to our farm. We decided to head to Kmart after dinner and buy tent pegs. We were going to camp out over the weekend in the backyard to see how a jack would like it.
After acquiring new pegs we went home in search of our camping gear. It’s been 8 years since we’ve gone camping and while we thought we knew where everything was stored – it turns out that we didn’t. We found the lanterns, sleeping bags, sleeping mats, and the tent. The only things that were missing were the poles for the tent. You know, those things that hold the tent up so you can go inside of it. Yeah.
After another 30 minutes of searching all the nooks and crannies of our attic, Jess finally found them in a bag hanging on a nail behind a 6ft banquet table.
Anyway, by the time we found everything it was dusk and the sun was already lost in the horizon. I was unsure if I could get the tent setup before dark sine not only was it getting darker by the second, but I was the only one putting up the tent. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve put up that tent many times by myself. But now we had some new issues. Issue one was that I hadn’t put up the tent in 8 years and was a little rusty. Issue two was that all the elastic holding the chains that helped bind the multiple poles together were shot. That means that when you put a section of poles together they would fall right back apart. This was especially annoying on the ridge pole since I had to put it up literally at full height right off the bat. But in the end, I got it all done with some daylight to spare. I then rigged a nice light on the inside thanks to an extension cord from the basement and a CFL bulb and an old Chinese lantern.
Let’s just skip the play by play and tell you the weekend was a great success. You couldn’t get Jack out of the tent and he even demanded we all go to bed at 8pm Saturday night because he didn’t want to have a fire but just wanted to go to bed. So I think he’ll do just fine on a real camping trip.
