3 Things You Should NEVER Do When Camping
Sometimes we tent camp, sometimes we cabin camp, sometimes we don't camp, but sometimes we do. (That sounds like the beginning of a country song.) I've loved tents since I was a little girl and saw this tent-living community located near a river. I always loved having my family drive by it so I could just daydream and stare. I was so impressed that they all lived in tents and seemed really happy about it. I'm sure there was some little boy getting in trouble for peeing too close to the picnic table, like my son got in trouble for this weekend, but...for the most part, everyone was skipping and linking arms. They just must have been.
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| Camp toilet w/ a peek-a-booty floor. This was from a place we went camping at a couple of years ago. |
The boys absolutely, positively and absolutely again love every last minute of camping. We are camping this summer, but every time we do camp, you'd think we were camping off of Paradise Avenue in heaven. This picture below is from when we camped right off the Guadalupe River in New Braunfels, Texas. Up the road a few miles was Canyon Lake, which is also absolutely beautiful. It was boy heaven with the unlimited sticks, rocks, bugs, water, food and dirt everywhere.
This is my husband and two boys walking in Canyon Lake.
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| I go to great lengths to hide my sons' identity. I made them wear those basketballs the whole time they were in the crystal clear, turquoise-tinged water. The balls floated, so it was kind of like a life jacket. |
That camping trip to New Braunfels taught me a few things. It taught me that you should NEVER...
...forget to check the eggs, for goodness sakes.
...put the dirty clothes in the same type of bag as you put the trash. I mean, really.
The tent & the disgusting tree that was supposed
to be watching our clothes. DON'T TRUST TREES!!
Because I thought it was only my husband I needed to tell, I made clear to him that our dirty clothes bag was hanging by the tent and our trash bag was hanging by the table. When we got back from a little tubing excursion, both bags were gone. My husband ran up to the owners, Mr. and Mrs. Smoke-A-Lot, and they informed him that both bags were in the camp dump. Thankfully, the official trash man had not been by to pick it all up yet. Buried underneath lots of cigarette ashes was our clothes bag. It's ironic, because I just switched to a new Tide fragrance called Cigarette Ashes, so I wasn't really all that upset.
...act like a nincompoop when you fall out of your boat.
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| That's me in the blue raft. You can't see my boys because I'm an elephant and they're hidden underneath my elephant body. |
My two little dudes REALLY wanted to go down the river in an inflatable kayak. The water level was somewhat low and our little happy boat kept getting stuck on rocks in the rapids area. My husband, Chris, always got out of the boat and kept us floating down the river. After a while, though, I started feeling bad for squatting there like an elephant while he struggled to move us off the dang rocks. Like any good elephant, I decided to lug myself out of the boat and help him. The current was swift, however, and my shoes slipped on the rocks, my oar went floating down the river, my mouth started opening and swallowing water and I started yelping like a newborn puppy dropped into a raging sea grasping at anything at all to keep me afloat. Meanwhile, Chris yells out, "KELLEY, YOU'RE IN 2 FEET OF WATER!". After I recovered, I got back in the boat and sat there like a mute elephant again.
Do you have any dos and don'ts to add?
*This was first published 2 years ago. I modified it a little.