Camp Town Races

We're going camping soon and as it is going to be Little Lizzy's first trip, and as Big Guy Ty has gone a few times before, we felt that we were ready to try it tent style. The first time we went we took an overcab camper on the old brown truck (RIP), and have gone in Tent Trailers, and even stayed in a cabin once, but never have made it in just a tent. I know some of you feel that the only way to camp is to take a pup tent, a mummy bag, some dehydrated prunes and call it a great time out. I'm not inclined to feel that way. Yes I suppose that it gets you more in tune with nature, but after being in to many pit toilets, well, I don't like that music. So we bought our first tent at the greatest camping store ever, K-mart. Ok, so they're not the best store ever, but they had the tent on sale. It is not actually called a tent, it is known as a Family Vacation Cabin. And, boy is it ever.As you can see it is quite large, 16' x 14' to be exact with a 90" clearance in the middle. It has a port for electrical, comes with a remote tent light, there's a closet in the back, a doormat included, a screened front porch attached, three total rooms and sleeps ten. So of course, this is how I thought we were going to rough it in the wild. Then during our pre-trip attempt to assemble this tent, we discovered that it was going to be a little too rough to get this monster up and also watch two small people. And as I can't get it up all on my lonesome, it went back. We have since ordered a trailer hitch for the most awesome minivan and hope to have that on Tuesday. An attempt will be made to attach that without professional help on Wednesday or Thursday, and of course we'll have to hook up the electrical and then take the Trailer out to make sure everything works before our trip. So we'll see how that all goes. It's only supposed to take a half hour to actually attach the hitch to the van and as everything is pre-drilled, we're hoping that that's the case. I'm just glad that it stays late until 9:30 or so and we'll have enough daylight in case it doesn't quite work out as easily as I hope it does.

Big Guy Ty is excited to go and he's picked out his very own fishing pole, a Spiderman one. He's been practicing out in whatever yard he's in for the past couple weeks now, I think he's just trying to throw that little practice fish over the neighbors fence. I had to get a fishing license to take him fishing, and 37.50 later, I better catch a few whoppers. We're planning to have Miller's hot dogs our second night there, but if Ty and I can get our limit, we'll be having fish sticks instead.

I returned an air mattress that we bought when we thought we'd be in a tent and the lady said that we should rough it at least once. "Do it the hard way" she says. I say that going camping to a new place that's supposed to get up to 96 degrees with two kids under the age of 4, then that is rough, and as such, counts as roughing it. Tent or not, ready or not, look out wildlife, we're a-comin.