You would think that after our maiden voyage of camping in Yellowstone - and, you know, living in Montana for the last several years - our second attempt at foraging the outdoors would have been a piece of cake. Unfortunately, our over-confidence replaced any sort of good planning and preparedness, leaving our camping adventure at West Rosebud Creek as one of those we roll our eyes and chuckle about later.The thing that put a major kink in our camping plans that we didn't even think about until it was too late was that we happened be to going on a weekend. When we went to Yellowstone, it was busy, but it was also the middle of the week, guaranteeing that we would be seeing about 90-percent less people than if we had gone on a weekend. This go around, we simply took for granted that the rest of the world has the weekend off and that's when *they* head into the woods. So after driving two-hours from home, it was another two hours of driving slowly around various tents, 4x4 trucks, trailers the size of small houses, and ATVs before we finally found a space to set up camp. And - of course - it was at 10 o'clock at night during a season when our part of the earth is light until about 9:30pm; clearly, things were not on our side from the get-go.
Pitching a tent in the dark is pretty much a staple of my childhood. I can hold a flashlight steady and hand over stakes like nobody's business (and if I were a boy that would be a euphemism), but Zoey is still in the learning phase so while I unloaded the car in the dark, tried to keep the fire from going out, made sure Louis didn't go wandering off, and started the car every few minutes to keep the headlights on, Zoey was making everyone nauseous with the flashlight. Holden was fast asleep in the car, and by the time Jacob had set up the tent, Zoey was ready for sleep, so it was just the two of us, the fire, the stars, wine, and every giant camper in the site with their "porch" light on.
Our original plan was to camp out, make breakfast the next morning, then do the hike we had originally planned for our Fourth of July outing. But Jacob and I had un-winded with just a bit too much wine the night before and were feelin' it the next morning. It was all Jacob could do to take the tent down without his coffee coming back up to say hello. So we took our time getting packed up, drove back home, and spent an easy summer Sunday evening at home. Even still, we enjoyed ourselves, let the kids make S'mores for breakfast, and appreciated our surroundings. And, above all, learned to never again go camping on the weekend.
"Mom, can I please keep this sample of lichen?" Word. For. Word. Which, of course, I let her do, but Professor accidentally misplaced her sample before arriving back at her laboratory.
Our second time out, we felt we were deserving of some Montana camping mugs.
