Camping means the kids have fun

This is what I try to remind myself:  The kids have a blast on these scout camping trips.  If the kids are having fun, that means it is worth it, right?  RIGHT?

I barely slept Friday night.  Even when I doze off, I'm still aware of every noise.  Feet crunching on the gravel as someone treks off to the bathroom.  The wind rustling the leaves overhead.  Every. Single. Sound.

Somewhere around 5:45am, a whippoorwill decided our campsite looked like a good place to hang out and sing.  It was like a freaking alarm clock going off overhead.  Whip-poor-WILL... Whip-poor-WILL... Whip-poor-WILL... gah!  Where is the snooze button on that sucker?!?!?!

Around 6am, I heard movement outside.  Within half an hour, all we adults were stumbling out of our adirondacks or tents and looking at each other like, "What on earth are we doing here?"

There was much discussion about the bird that woke us all up.  At one point, someone suggested the "no weapons in camp" rule maybe needs to be broken when it comes to annoying early bird calls.  Then the Cubmaster brewed coffee and the talk of hunting down the offending bird seemed to taper off.

The kids eventually started waking up.  Breakfast was pancakes, sausage, and grapes, with a choice of milk or OJ to wash it down with.  I'm not sure what it is about being outside that makes you hungry, but I can tell you we went through some food.

The boys mostly hung out by the campfire until it was time to head out for the activities.  We made the kids group up for a photo op first.

The Cubmaster's youngest son is only 2.  He thinks Joshua is awesome.  Most little kids do.  Here he is walking between Joshua (because he insisted he needed to "hold Jah-wah hand!") and his mom.

First up, we stopped at the pavilion to do the leather craft.

I like to get this one out of the way early because the pounding hammers only get worse as the day goes on.

See what I mean?  I've been stuck volunteering at this activity before.  Imagine an hour of that.

Then we headed to the back half of the pavilion to do the other craft project.  They were teaching the kids to fold an origami "jumping frog".  It took a lot of adult hands working with the kids to get them all through it, but they enjoyed making the paper frog hop once they were done.  

Next we went toward the lake where they had the games set up.  First up was ladder ball.

Then we went to the other side of the lake for washer horseshoes (tossing a large washer toward a pan with a bowl in the middle... pan is worth 1 point and bowl is worth 5).

While we were waiting for our turn to play this game, our group sat down in the grass.  I taught the kids to make grass whistles.

Yeah, I'm sure the people around us were thrilled with that.  I didn't get any of the really loud blasts on that clip.

We circled back around the lake, stopping for a photo op on the marker rock.

We stopped at the porch in front of the Admin Building for the marbles tournament and let the kids play a few rounds.  By then it was lunch time, so we headed back to camp.  Lunch was sandwiches, chips, and apples with either tea or lemonade to drink.  Again, much food was consumed by all.

We grouped the kids up for a picture, again...

... and then headed off to see the Sons of the American Revolution presentation at the Dining Hall.

These people needed a quick course on how to talk to kids.  They gave long, rambling speeches about what life was like in the early days of our country.  These are 6 to 11 year old boys.  Hit the historical highlights and then blow something up.  It was hot and miserable and we didn't even stay to see them fire the cannon.  We had to leave to make our scheduled time on the range.

We made our way up the hill to the ranges and waited our turn for BBs.

We took one look at the line for archery and asked the kids if they wanted to wait.  This is at least the third trip for all of these kids, so they have all done these things before.  They all opted out of waiting in the hour plus line for archery.  Instead, we walked down to the trading post.  Who needs to wait an hour to shoot five arrows when you can get an Icee instead?

We enjoyed cooling off in the shade and pumping the kids full of sugar.  When they were done, we went to the last activity of the day...

... Sponge Wars.  If you ever need to make a group of kids happy on a hot day, fill a small wading pool with water and a ton of cheap sponges and tell them to have at it.

The result is silly fun and wet clothes.  They loved it.

We went back to camp to get the kids into dry clothes and still had some more time to kill before dinner, so we hiked up to the small waterfall that is on the property.

Afterwards, we went back to camp and started dinner.  Hotdogs, baked beans, and watermelon.

Since we had an early day planned for the next day, the kids and I packed up after dinner and headed home.

Now I don't have to think about camping again until October.  Whew!

Camping. Why did it have to be camping?

My boys are both scouts.  This is my fault.  I took Joshua to the informational meeting when he was in first grade and he got excited and wanted to join, so I signed him up.  Little did I know that I would wind up get sucked into leadership.  It's like volunteer quicksand.  You agree, grudgingly, to one thing and you slowly sink in from that point forward.

I also didn't think about the camping aspect of scouting.  Once upon a time in my younger years, I think I enjoyed camping.  Now the idea of sleeping in a bag holds about as much appeal as a trip to the dentist.  I enjoy most of the things involved in camping.  Being outdoors?  Great!  Cooking on a camp stove or grill or even an open fire?  Fine!  Hiking around or hanging out by the camp fire?  Fun!  But when it is time to go to sleep I long for home, or at least a hotel room.  I want walls, temperature control, and a bathroom when I go to bed... not to mention wanting the bed itself.

But, since this has become an important part of my son's lives, I've learned to suck it up and camp.  Dammit.

I spent a good portion of Friday gathering and then packed the truck with the minimal amount of supplies.  I've learned what we really need vs. what I thought we might need.  Since you have to unload your supplies and, in many cases, haul them a good distance to set up camp, I keep it simple now.  Picked up the kids from school and off we went.  It takes about an hour to get to the scout camp from where we live, but we stopped off in the closest town for dinner first.  Shhhh... don't tell anyone that we didn't wait to eat in camp.

After dinner we headed up the mountain and... sigh...

... we made it.  Yay?

We checked in at the Admin Building.  Nobody calls it the Administration Building.  It's Admin.  I don't know who started the shortened version, but it has stuck.  If you say the full word, people look at you funny.

We got our campsite assignment and slowly drove the truck into the camp.  How slow?  The posted speed limit is 7 mph.  On a mountain.  I have not found a way to accelerate up or ride my brake down those hills at 7 mph.  If I'm coasting on the flat areas, which there aren't many, I can do it.  I spend that whole trip hearing, "Mom!  You're speeding!"  Who taught those kids what the numbers on the dash mean anyway?  Sheesh.

Along the drive we encounter this.

Someone who has pulled over to unload.  That would be fine if they pulled over in one of the designated PULL OFF areas.  Nope.  They blocked the road.  I will give them credit for unloading as fast as possible once they realized they were blocking traffic, but that's about all the credit I'll give them.

We got to our campsite and found an empty adirondack.  That is both good news and bad news.  The good news is that we don't have to set up our tent.  The bad news is that the adirondacks need to be cleaned before I'm comfortable using them.  Good thing I brought a broom and a can of Lysol.

Friday night there are no scheduled activities, so we just build a campfire and the kids run around playing flashlight tag or whatever else they come up with.  The one good thing about that?

They are exhausted at bedtime.

I'll be back with Saturday's adventures in a bit.

Time to go HOME!

Once we left Universal Studios, we went in search of a quick place to eat dinner before we settled in for the night.  Chick-fil-a?  Yes, please!

It didn't take long to settle in.  Tired, but still smiling.  The sign of a good vacation.

Sunday, December 22nd -

One last search for Mac...

... and one last view out the window...

... and we were on the road north.  We gave the boys some fruit to munch on so that we could get a few miles behind us before stopping.  We made it north of the Turnpike and found a Bob Evans.

I do love it when we find a Bob Evans.  

Daniel still works out all the puzzles on the kids menu.  I was just waiting for my Sunshine Skillet.

Ah.  There it is!

We made it to the state line before there was a call for a bathroom break from the back seat.

One more stop south of Macon for lunch at Subway and to fill up the tank.

And then we found the rain we had left behind a week ago.

It made for a slow end to the drive, but we were home in plenty of time to unpack and start laundry before dinner.

It was so much fun, but this is The End.  For this trip anyway.  

The rest of Universal Studios

For lunch we opted to try out Monsters Café.

 



I liked the "weird science" feel while you are waiting in line to order.

 

Plus the kitschy look of the dining area with silly classic horror movie clips playing on the tv screens was just plain fun.

The portions are HUGE.  Seriously.  We could have bought two meals and split them between the four of us easily.

After lunch we realized that the Despicable Me character meet was about to start.  The best part about these is that they "parade" the characters out in the Hollywood section and then park where you can do your photo ops.  Vector drives out in this...

 

... and then the rest come out on this giant thing.

 

They are blasting "Boogie Fever" and the characters all start dancing around.

 

Then the bonus dancers start pulling kids out from the audience to join in.

 

Yeah, Joshua didn't hesitate.  That kid loves to perform! 

 

We got in line for Gru first, figuring he'd be the most popular.

 

Then worked our way around through the girls.

 

I was wrong, it turned out Agnes had the longest line.

 

We made it to Vector right as they were closing the lines. 

 

Whew!  A quick shot of the minion's car (that they went shopping for the "toy unicorn" in) and we were done. 

 

 

It appears that if you start with one character and work your way around, you can get to all of them before they close the lines... but barely.  I would recommend starting with Agnes.

 



 We checked out some of the Christmas decorations...

 

... on our way to the Transformers Ride.

 

Turns out, this ride is identical to Spiderman.  I mean motion-for-motion identical.  The only thing different is the storyline and what gets tossed at you.

 

As we left Transformers, the parade of Hop characters was happening.  I was surprised, but Joshua said he wanted to meet them.  Okay.

 Not as big a crowd for those guys, so it was no problem.

The crowds were starting to gather along the streets for the Macy's Holiday Parade.  We debated for less than a minute and decided that standing for a couple hours waiting for the parade at this point wasn't what we wanted to do.  So, we opted to leave the crowd behind and stroll through the shops on our way out.

 

 

It's so fluffy! 

 

What struck me as most amusing was that they sold boxes of cookies from Despicable Me.  The ones that Miss Hattie forced the girls to sell.

I also encountered someone that did not speak English well.  A fellow shopper in the store.  I guess I looked friendly enough because she tapped me on the arm, pointed to a minion shirt she was holding and then pointed to Daniel and said, "For him?"  Took me a minute to realize that she was asking about the sizes.  Was it a kid shirt or adult.  I took Daniel with me and pointed to a rack of clothes, showed her the label and underlined the word YOUTH.  I said, "These are children sizes" pointing to Daniel.  I pointed to another rack and underlined the word ADULT on the label and said, "These are for you or me" pointing my fingers back and forth between us.  Her eyes lit up and she gave me the "Thankyouverymuch" response.  I hope that was what she was asking anyway.  I may have accidentally traded myself and Daniel for a shirt.  I'm not sure which.