Camping In Wine Country: The Party's Over

The nice thing about my kids is that, while they wake up earlier than I'd prefer, they don't wake up ugly early. Like other kids do, anyway. The earliest they seem to wake up is about 7 am. Sometimes it's a little early, but they were so incredibly wiped out Saturday night, and they'd stayed up pretty late, so they didn't wake up too early on Sunday morning.

But I did. I woke up at some point in the 6:00 hour when I heard other families waking up and moving about. I did try to go back to sleep. My family was all still asleep. DaddyDoc was still sawing some wood. But I really didn't sleep. I had to go. It was getting worse. And I just could not face that portapotty again. It was bad enough having to walk by the horrendously hideous stench of the two yucky toilets, but the fresh smelling toilet was no longer fresh. 

Finally as it approached 7 am, I didn't care that the boys were still asleep. I got dressed, I grabbed the car keys, and I bailed. The Camp Store was already open so I lucked out and didn't have to drive too far. Later in the morning I told another parent that it was worth every penny of gas I spent to go to the camp store to do my business and I wasn't apologizing for it. A few minutes later, I saw his family in their car.

In Scouting there is a sort of prayer service called "Scouts Own." It's designed to be a time when scouts, out camping on the Sabbath, stop to reflect to honor the Sabbath, before continuing with their day. With previous pack leaders, this wasn't something we did. I think that a big part of the reason was that most people packed up and got back to town so early that most of them could attend church if they wanted to. But last year, our leader attempted to hold a Scouts Own on Sunday morning of camp. He announced that once we packed up, we'd have it.

The problem was that no one stuck around. Some of us take a tad longer than others to pack. And they who packed quickly, had no desire to stick around and wait for the rest of us to finish. They came, they camped, the left. (Ahhh, that's two Pixar references in one short camping trip report...)

This time, DaddyDoc decided to set a time for the service at 8:00 and another leader led a reflection and his den led the pack in singing Amazing Grace. What was kind of funny was that the topic he chose was, essentially "Gratitude." He never said gratitude but what he said was that people spend a lot of time complaining about what they don't have and not appreciating what they do have, so maybe we should do some more appreciating. He said it nicer than that, though. And he gave examples of obstacles that aren't really as bad as you might think they are or situations that could always be worse. I kept waiting for him to say "You know, pit toilets aren't bad. You can survive Pit Toilets for two days and be grateful that you get to go home to flushers..." Afterwards I told him that I thought he really missed the boat not using the Pit Toilet example. He laughed and admitted that he thought about it.

Eventually we got everything packed up. Daddy Doc had been responsible for so many of the group activities that it took us longer to clean up. We had to clean out the dutch ovens and pack up the Ham radio antenna before we even started on our personal campsite. One parent stuck around and helped DD pack up our tent, which was very sweet.

On our way out of the camp, we stopped by the main gate and they claimed that the toilets were drained on Mondays. 

Yeah, sure they were. 

We got home, everyone showered and we got back to regular life.

It really was a pretty decent weekend. Many parents commented that the only really, truly unpleasant part of the campsite was that the toilets were so bad. Everyone agreed that if we'd had three ok pit toilets even, it would've been fine. Even with some of the less than thrilling aspects of the campsite, the advantages of it were pretty decent. No one's in a rush to go back but it wasn't the worst campsite ever and everyone had fun.

On our way home I had a bit of inspiration for an event we'll host next spring. There are now at least three families in the pack who have cast iron dutch ovens, probably a couple more. There are three families who are planning to buy cast iron dutch ovens, based on this weekend's experience. I suggested to DD that we have a Dutch Oven event. We may do it at our Spring Campout - everyone with a dutch oven will bring theirs. We'll plan out several "courses" and ask our fellow leader who's the true "expert in the field" to guide our cooking times and techniques. It will be a great for newer DO owners to learn a bit more about the craft of DO cooking. In the end we could serve a big "potluck" dinner for all of the families who participate in the event. We already approached the other leader about it and he loved the idea. We might even invite some members of the Dutch Oven society to join us. (It's what they love to do.) Even if we're camping, they'd probably be willing to come out just for the afternoon/evening for dinner!

But we'll see how that goes. I think that no matter how we execute it, we'll have fun.