camping

For the past few weeks, Nate and I have been feeling the "itch" to get outside of Anthem, and so we decided to go camping! Why not? Asher is at a fun age and we are really missing cooler weather and green trees, so we chose Lynx Lake in Prescott as our destination. It is only about 45 min North of us and seemed promising- fishing, hikes around the lake, flush toilets, etc. Friday morning we loaded up the 4Runner and took off, feeling very excited. Even though we arrived by 2pm, there was only one campsite left and it was by no means secluded. We had a busy road on one side and lots of other campers on the other. Oh well! No problem! We set up camp...

And then decided to go for a little hike down to the lake so Nate could go fishing...Asher finally fell asleep- it was really quiet and peaceful there.We left after a while though because the fishing was pretty bad. That's when the fun began. :) We tried getting Asher to take a nap in the tent, but there was WAY too much to look at and hear for him to go to sleep despite the fact that he was beyond exhausted. Instead he crawled around all over the sleeping bags, occasionally poking his head out the tent flap to see what mom and dad were up to. We built a fire and got our tin foil dinners cooking. Asher was becoming more irrational and needed to be held throughout all that- not an easy task! By the time it was dark and we had toasted marshmallows, we were really tired, so we put pj's on and climbed into the tent for bed. WHY did I think that getting a teething baby to sleep outside would be easy and fun?? WHY did we have to get stuck with a campsite next to a loud, partying Hispanic family (complete with pinata and harmonica mariachi music)??
Finally, after what seemed like endless amounts of crying from Asher, we fell asleep to the sounds of "Ninos silencio!" and "donde esta ____". (On the hard ground, sloping downward I might add.)
Just when I was beginning to think that we would survive the night, Asher woke up screaming crying...there was nothing Nate or I could do to calm him down except take him outside and walk around. After taking several turns doing that, we finally decided that we were too tired and frustrated to continue our campout. We tossed everything in the back of the car and drove home at 12:30 am! :)
Looking back now, Nate and I realize how silly it was for us to take a teething 7 month old on a campout. We have vowed never to take a baby in that stage camping ever again. Nate and I both still love to camp, but are now a lot more grateful to our own parents for all the effort they put into family campouts when we were growing up- it really is a lot of work just to sleep and eat outside! haha!