scott's ravings: Camping Weekend

This weekend was camping weekend with our Cub Scout pack. It was the absolute perfect weekend for a campout, as it was completely sunny, cool, and totally bug free. (No kidding, not one single tick, not one single mosquito!)

Just before departing, we fed Quon Yin and then took off to drop Frank off at Jim and Lisa's house. On the way, we got behind a pickup truck with a pair of "colorful" stickers that caught the boys' attention. I was teasing Eddie and Luke about "Sexy Texy", when Becky announced that Real Cowgirls were not like that. Real Cowgirls worked hard, smelled bad and had manure on their boots. So, trying to salvage our joint fantasy, I said that real cowgirls were just fine once you got their boots off. At which, Eddie said, with a screwed up nose, "No, Dad, you gotta change their socks too." We all laughed. So true... so true.

When we arrived at Cunningham Falls again, we shared a campsite with the Pound family. We are now getting to be old pros at this. We have all of our stuff in two RubberMaid "Chuck Boxes." (So named because all you do is 'chuck' them in the back of your car and off you go!) Within 30 minutes, the tent was erected, the table clothed, and the fire started.

We made time on the first evening to take the boys fishing. Shane and I took Eddie, Luke, Liam, Alex and Andrew down to the lake to fish for bass. Didn't catch any bass of course, but we saw a cool beaver dam, and Shane and I spent all of our time freeing snagged lures and untangling botched lines. When one boy was repaired and ready to fish, the next would be calling, "Dad! Can you help me?" Shane and I never even brought our poles... we knew we wouldn't need them.

We ate hot dogs and chips, and then of course, we had smores. The boys played on the rocks in the forest around the site all day. Later that night, we had a show from Eddie and Gabi, Christian and the Poundses, and a rather chaotic cub scout sing-along. I think the highlight of the night was that Christian can do a perfect James Brown jump-into-a-splits thing. Man, it looked painful. He was the only kid to go home with dirt stains on his crotch!

The night was cool and perfect for sleeping. Once all the kids were in bed, and Becky was in bed, and the fire looked like it was pretty well contained, I doused the propane lantern and headed into the tent for bed. After undoing my hiking shoes and laces, getting totally undressed and ready to climb into my sleeping bag, I realized, Damn! I gotta pee! So I had to put it all back on again and head outside to the "bathroom." (Which consisted of the large oak tree just behind the tent...)

Thankfully, I didn't have to pee fourteen hundred more times in the night (as usual), especially since the real bathroom was in the next county (or so it seemed). We did get a car-alarm going off at 1:50am, but I only awoke enough to realize it wasn't mine, and went back to sleep. The boys never even budged.

In the morning, we had a simple breakfast of cereal and camp-stove coffee (the kind you have to chew on the last gulp). Then we had a nice 1.5 mile hike to Cunningham Falls and back. After a nice lunch at the local family restaurant with the Wolfes and the Daniels clan, we headed home.