As most of you know (because I've mentioned it before), I'm not the biggest fan of camping. SOOO when my in-laws said they were taking a week-long camping trip on the Rim and wanted to do everything they could to get us (specifically me) to come along (and enjoy myself) I felt a little bit of pressure to bear down and make the most of it. We made all of the preparations... which means we borrowed a bunch of camping stuff, and packed ourselves into the Malibu Monday morning and headed up to Jones Crossing, a campsite about 50 miles north of Payson. I told Ammon that I would give it two days and if I wasn't really enjoying myself, we would go home. If we ended up having a great time, we would stay until Friday. My thought process at the time was: 85% chance of a Wednesday trip home.
Anyway, so we took the trip up during Kaleb's midday nap. We figured he would travel better if most of his time was spent sleeping. Here he is tucked amongst our bags and pillows, so comfy!!
However, Kaleb's nap was cut short when we got stuck behind a street-painting truck. All the breaking jarred him awake and well, just made all of us kinda cranky. Most of the 20 miles between Strawberry and the campsite was spent traveling 9 miles an hour. TORTUROUS!!! At least we, the miserable, loved the company of the thirty cars that backed up behind us.
So we got there eventually, without any harm, so could we complain? Not with 70 degree pine air whipping us in the face. The area in which we stayed was beautiful!!!! It truly was a little bit of paradise. We set up our tent and got ourselves situated just in time for some dinner. (My in-laws provided all of the meals, a port-a-potty type of set-up and a bunch of other accommodations to make our stay a little more comfortable). It was a great start to our trip. We made a fire and Kaleb went to sleep so easily, I thought, "This is going to be so awesome!!"
Oh cont rare!! At 11:30pm Kaleb woke up SCREAMING! The cold air (40 degrees) and strange surroundings seemed to really bother him and there was nothing we could do to get him back to sleep. HOURS were spent cuddling him into our beds where he would get warm, start to doze off then wake up screaming again! After four hours with no relief, I got so sick of it, I decided to try to 'rock' him to sleep in the car... the one place he will always sleep!! However, after several trips around the trails in the car, I realized our heater doesn't work and Kaleb would not be duped!!
I got desperate. I parked the car in front of our tent and I bowed my head to pray. Unfortunately when I did that I accidentally honked the horn, which brought Ammon a-running. I told him to grab my suitcase and the playpen cuz I was gonna find a hotel for the rest of the morning. MY BABY NEEDED TO SLEEP!!! He rolled his eyes his disgust, grabbed everything and said, "Well I'm not gonna let my wife travel alone at this time of night so let me drive"
Long story short, we now know there are no hotels open after 7pm except in Payson and by the time we reached that cozy little town, the sun was starting to come up and I had regained a few of my senses... well, at least my I-don't-wanna-pay-$50-for-5-hours-sense anyway. I bought a McDonald's burrito (yuck) and a Diet Coke and was allowed by my husband to drive back to the campsite. Kaleb finally fell asleep around 4:30 am. Here he is during our night-time rendezvous
The following day proved no more promising as far as hotel-rooms were concerned. We couldn't find a single one that was cheap enough for us to stay more than one night. We did however purchase a small propane-powered space heater that ended up working beautifully, keeping our tent about 15 degrees or more warmer than the outside temperature. Kaleb slept 7 hours the next night, then 9, then 10. It was a God-send because this camping trip ended up being a fantastic time!!
Here is a photograph of the meadow near our campground, taken practically outside our tent door.
Here I am all makeup-less and acting like I want my picture taken.
Most of our time was spent napping, chasing after Kaleb or playing a bunch of different group games, like Catch Phrase, Skipbo, Five Crowns, Bupkiss, etc.
Ammon enjoyed finding other uses for his time. Like chopping wood for the fires:
Whippin' It!
He has a whip, oh yes, he does, and he was not afraid to use it at least once a day to teach those offensive Dandolions a lesson. In all honestly, I find it kinda cool!!
Ammon's sister and dad also brought up a bunch of paintball gear, so they had a little free-for-all. What? Why didn't I play? I'm sorry do I look like someone who likes pain?
Ammon and Kaleb also had a lot of bonding time. Kaleb, overall seemed to have a lot of fun! However, it was hard for him to get around. The ground was very uneven and covered in prickly pine-needles, so falling down was less fun. Plus, we would often try to get him to stick with us while we were trying to play games but the only fun thing to play with was paper-products and other off-limit items (I'm mean other than his toys we brought up).
Anyway, Kaleb enjoyed sitting around the fire each evening, getting passed from person to person.
He enjoyed giving people kisses... or getting eaten by Daddy
He improved his whipping skills!!
He got to roll around in a hammock
He broke out of jail several times
He explored nature
One of my favorite things was when Ammon's Dad would take Kaleb without question or any chance for refusal and they would go for little walks. Usually these times would correspond with the times in which Kaleb or I were the most frustrated with eachother. I was able to get a couple of really special pictures of them together
And of course, Kaleb discovered dirt. He ate it!
He spat it out!
And then he wore it!
I have to say the best part about the trip was the food. My mother-in-law and sis-in-law making peach cobbler!!
One night we even had steak, Kaleb tried some and of course, being a Teller bear, loved it!!!
The last night we were there, we made smores with Ammon's seven foot homemade skewers.
Hmmmm Hmmmm GOOD!!!
Here's Kaleb waking up at 6:30 Friday morning.
I would say the rest of the trip (after that horrible first night) was great, but that wouldn't be the whole truth. Thursday night (our last night) I spent most of the night sick with what I can only guess was food poisoning (though nobody else in the camp got sick). Wouldn't have been so bad except the make-shift bathroom was about 100 yards uphill from our tent. Made for a very unpleasant situation. Not to mention that our battery was dead that morning, so Ammon's dad had to jump it. Ammon so wonderfully and willingly packed up everything by himself (since I was so sick) and then somehow locked both our keys in the car. He and his dad found a way to pry the front door open and retrieve the keys with a twisted bit of wire, so it could have been worse. Oh well, made for som interesting stories!
As I said, I thought Kaleb had a pretty good time, but when we got home and took his shoes off he got so excited! All he could do was walk around our cluttered living room shouting for joy. Here's a little video:
Would I do it again? OH YEAH... just give me a couple of months to recover!!
