Diamond Camping

Last Saturday we finally went camping -- real tent camping. We got a new tent earlier this year and real sleeping bags (not the grandma sleepover kind) for the girls. I've been excited to get out and use them. But we've been a little slow. When we first got the tent we were so excited to set it up and try it out, but then we realized we don't even have a room in our house big enough to hold it. That was sad. And our backyard wasn't exactly available -- until our landlord left! So, we set it up back there shortly before our recent trip, so we'd know what we're doing, but sure enough those pesky weeds all over the place pierced it and we got our first hole before we even used it. I patched it, so we're back in business.

We left Saturday and planned to spend 2 nights at Diamond Campground on our way to Moab (you'll hear more about that later). It was so hot after getting there. This was our first week of getting up into the 90's. We got the tent set up and tried to just lay there to cool off. That didn't help a whole lot, but we walked down to the river where it was nice and chilly. At least the water was. The girls did some gold panning. Still haven't found any :)

Sophie was insistent that I take a picture for a National Geographic contest she saw. That girl has far more faith in my abilities than is reasonable.

We became intrigued watching our campground neighbors, as more and more of them kept showing up. Apparently it was some kind of Latino church group. I didn't know you were allowed to shove that many people into one little campsite, but they did it. They held a program and sang a lot. I tried to brush up on my Spanish. They were really nice people, but they didn't believe in going to sleep very early. They woke me up after falling asleep -- some crazy kids were running right past out tent, through our campsite. As much as we'd like to be upset about it, they weren't trying to be annoying. The next morning they came over and offered us some breakfast, while Brandon was preparing the most delicious pancakes (they didn't even need syrup!). Then later they brought us some watermelon and water bottles.

Aside from being woken up in the night, we froze to death! I still have no clue how that happened when it was so hot just a short time before. I had to hop in Brandon's bag with him to keep each other warm, but it was still pretty chilly. We felt so bad for the girls, but in the morning they told us they were very cozy. I guess their bags paid off. Who knows?

On top of that, there was a fire that had started on the other side of the mountain we were staying on. We had just left the one burning in Eagle Mountain, and thought they about had it out. Well, this was a whole new one. It just kept getting worse. There was ash falling all over, the van was covered, I found some in our food as we were trying to eat, and the air was hurting my lungs. So after all that we finally decided to call it a day. Oh yeah, and I had also left an important appliance at home that I needed for Moab. The fire was just the last straw. So, we started planning to pack up and just head home when the camp host came over to apologize for the rowdy neighbors. We tried to tell him they weren't that bad, but that we were going home so he offered us a credit. He was just going to give us the one remaining night to come back to that same campground, but then he ended up giving us one good for 2 nights at any campground run by his same company.

Perhaps we'll go back, or maybe we'll try someplace different. We still need to get a lot of use out of our new gear!