Camp Last Hurrah was Thursday – last week. It was a very busy day, kicked off by a vigorous ride (on Emmy), hay-bale throwing, mucking, then camping. I didn’t stop moving – literally – for 24 hours. At 2:46 pm on Friday (after all the below adventures) I laid down for a rare (like once every 4 years) nap so I could be human when Dave got home. I turned the ringers off, put the boys in their bunks (they were exhausted as well) and was lights out for an hour. When I woke up at 4pm, I felt like I’d been run over by a train. Truly every muscle hurt and it was reminiscent of delivering Sam 10 years ago… But I wouldn’t have traded that 24 hours for anything in the world. Read on to find out why…Some of the stories are classified – you’ll have to ask me for the rest sometime 🙂
Dad has over 50 years of camping experience. It was a real treat to camp out with him again and pick up a few refreshers 🙂 Sammy enjoyed himself as always 🙂 He is a good little camper! A whole bunch of pictures are up (click on photo above). We’re off to Shark’s Cove for snorkeling today.
Mom, Sam and I decided to sneak away for a little camping trip while Dave is away. We wanted to check out a park we’d heard was a good, safe place to camp. While you don’t have to worry about bears or snakes here on the island, you do have to worry a bit about crime – car break-ins and noisy walk-ins hanging out in the campground. Maleakahana has 24 hr security, so we felt it would be a good place to check out. We had a wonderful time! Turns out this is the windy time of year (Mar-Apr) so we lost a lot of food to the camp chickens (who apparently eat centipedes live!). This juicy little fact is pertinent because our camping neighbors found a centipede in their tent – yikes! So those roving chickens are actually pretty helpful.
Dave didn’t grow up camping as a kid, so he is remarkable in that he’s really taking to it as an adult. However, he likes to be comfortable and have a few amenities, whereas I’m pretty happy as long as I have fire at night and coffee in the morning. So after experiencing a wild night camping out for Sam’s 2nd birthday (we selected what we thought would be a quiet spot at the end of the campground on the Marine Corps base, but our site ended up being adjacent to a group of about 40 drunk Marines who blasted Metallica until we chased them off at about 3 in the morning), and this centipede story (along with a few others I can’t mention here), Dave is really wondering about the merits of camping! Please post your reflections on memorable camping trips so he can appreciate what an indelible mark camping makes on your life 🙂 Sam has a great time and grows up more each time we go. It really seems to make him feel like a wee man. And I appreciate the opportunity to get totally filthy, sleep very little (because there’s always some intrigue going on at night, whether it’s your toddler doing 360’s in bed next to you and putting his feet in your face, or the aforementioned drunk Marines, or centipedes or whatever) and come home to really relish a shower and having all your cooking tools handy 🙂
There are a bunch of photos in the album (the picture above links you to them), and I posted a review of the campground at Outdoor Ohana, a new website Dave and I launched for like-minded families. Let us know what you think!