In a miracle of discipline, I had everything all packed up and ready to go when Zac got home with the kids around 4:30. I'd even ordered our Chinese Food take out that we would pick up along the way and eat at the campsite for supper.
On the drive to the site, I checked the weather compulsively. There was a large front headed our way, but it looked like we might dodge a bullet because the storm was split apart and seemed like we could pull a Moses and have the storms split around us. But, when we arrived, I informed Zac that minutecast was predicting rain starting in about 15 minutes. I told him to set up the tent immediately, while I took the kids down to check out the beach and then got them started on supper.
We'd scouted this site (#129) out about two years ago and noted it because it was lake-front site with a large beach, nice swimming cove, and a nice woodsy lot as well. It was our first time at this site and it did not disappoint! The beach was lovely!
Then I hurried the kids back up to the picnic table and got them started on the Chinese food while Zac finished putting up the tent. Just as he finished, it started pouring down rain. We grabbed our food and had a picnic inside the tent (which luckily didn't have any of our stuff in it yet). When Alice was done eating, she kept jumping over the food so we put her in time out in the corner of the tent and didn't let her out until she read an entire fortune all by herself.
The rain was pretty intense, like a torrential downpour, and the tent started leaking a bit. But the rain soon let up, so we went back outside. I could see on the radar that another storm was coming in about an hour, so we figured we'd let the kids play at the beach a bit, then just get ready for bed early and be back in the tent by the time it came through.
The air was cool, but the water was so warm, that it took a while for the kids to realize they were freezing and turning blue. We got the kids out and dried off and into clean, warm clothes, and it started raining again just as we were getting ready for bed. We brushed our teeth under the shelter of the back van door.
It should be noted that Simon was extremely disappointed that we were camping but did not have a campfire on this first night. In his mind, the entire purpose in camping is to have a fire, so this was a bit baffling for him.
It should be noted that Simon was extremely disappointed that we were camping but did not have a campfire on this first night. In his mind, the entire purpose in camping is to have a fire, so this was a bit baffling for him.
Once in the tent, the kids were bonkers as we tried to set up the beds and make dams out of towels to contain the pools forming in each of the four corners of the tent. It was an adventure! The rain was so loud we had to wait a while before I could even read bedtime stories to the kids. Alice is actually a great little camper when it comes time to sleep. She gets right in her sleeping bag and seems to pass out immediately, or at least does a good job of staying still and not talking. Simon, on the other hand, is much better than the dive-bombing whirling dervish he was when we first took him camping two years ago, but he still wants to snuggle a lot, and lay on you, and squirm around and takes a long time to get situated. After an hour of trying to get him to sleep, he announced he needed to pee, so I took him out. After that, he soon fell asleep and eventually I did as well.
