On Wednesday afternoon the whole family left for a camping trip to "Fall kreek falls " in Tennessee, just about two hours away from Nashville. L. thought a camping vacation would be great fun for everyone and also cheaper than a regular vacation...oh, well...they had to buy a big family tent (600$), mats to sleep on, a cooker, dishes, shoes, bagpacks and many other little things that just kept adding up!
This was a very short trip (4 days) to try everything out, see how camping works out and get away for a bit. But when I say they whole family went, I mean EVERYBODY: the parents, three boys, the baby, me, grandpa and the two dogs.
Before the big day things had to be bought, tried out, repacked, cleaned, organized...so L. was washing laundry non-stop and just being busy, busy, busy...
Of course, by the title, you can guess that things did not go as planned... All the camping stuff was in the garden airing out, when it started to rain ! Naturally we were all out of the house and everything, from the tent to underwear, was WET!
The next day we wanted to leave after lunch....done that, left at about 5pm...why? One of the reasons was that the rental car the family had for the trip decided to break down on a last-minute trip to the supermarket...
We arrived way too late to still set up tent, so everybody slept in the hotel.
The next couple of days are a blur of rain, rain, rain, fear of drowning in my own little (30 year old) tent, which was -what a suprise- not waterproof! At least not for the amount and strength of the everlasting rain! At one point I found myself alone and responsible for three 9 year olds, a 6 month old baby and a 70something grandfather who kept talking angrily in a strong eastern european accent about how he had told them where to put the tent... yep, the family tent got flooded too...
The parents just went down (did I mention we camped in the middle of the woods, far away from any...oh, well, not THAT far, but still!) to get firewood when this rain started, but when they returned I was SO glad! Fears about the baby swallowing something or grandpa slipping were just too much for me!
Of course the fun did not stop there! One of the dogs jumped after another dog and went flying of a cliff, hanging on a harness, suspended in mid air until it fell into poison ivy, L. locked the car keys inside the car with the lights on and had to get a park ranger to break into the car, H. broke a finger, Tilly got bitten by spiders...
BUT-there were good times too! Roasting marshmallows over the fire and...well, really, that's it ;-)
2 comments:
Goodness, what a story (I'll just pretend this is news for me as well, nobody will know)! Going away on a nice trip and then this horror scenario enfolds. I know the weather can be bad over here, but over there this apparently only happens when people go camping. Sun all the other days, as you tell me almost every day about to the pool with the boys. Well, another adventure you could post on this blog, too bad it wasn't the best adventure, but it has a happy ending, so end good all good I'd say. Hope you have a lot more adventures, but then with the amount of happy/sad things exactly the other way around. Love you!
LOL LOL LOL
That is so hilarious. So, cheap 4-day camping trip not so worth it, eh? Somehow we glamourize being connected to the outdoors, hiking in the woods, sitting by a campfire and forget all the work and organization that goes into. Plus, all those kids!! No way, I wouldn't volunteer for that again anytime soon. :-)
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