Camping 2010 - The Non-Reader's Digest Version

We decided to check out a new place - Davis Mountains State Park - in the middle of nowhere in Western Texas.

It took us 9 hours to get there.

The drive to the park was great. We started out super early (3:40am) to beat the rushhour traffic in San Antonio. And we did. It was so nice to just drive on through, realizing that at 6:45am we were already a third of the way there.

West of San Antonio the landscape started to change. It wasn't the flat land we were used to. It started getting hilly. We were excited.

Megan is starting to reach and touch things now. It was perfect timing for a long car trip.

We stopped in Fort Stockton for lunch. There was a McDonalds with a HUGE playland. The kids had a blast getting their wiggles out. Megan had a blowout. The weather was cooler. Billy and I got even more excited.

The hills became taller and taller as we drove. It felt as if we were just driving away from all civilization. The last stretch of the drive felt like driving through the gorge by St. George, except it was grassy. We arrived around 2:30pm. We got registered and drove to our campsite. As we started to pull things out of the car, it started to rain. :) We quickly got back in and drove around the park until the rain stopped.

We set up camp and enjoyed the evening.

At dusk we saw at least 5 javelinas searching for food in the campsite across from ours. There were also some turkey vultures. They cleaned up all the food Matthew dropped on the ground, the minute we were out of sight. :) I rescued our hotdog buns from them Tuesday afternoon.

Our tent, which we thought was ENORMOUS when we bought it a few years ago, was filled to the brim.

Tuesday morning was beautiful. We had breakfast and headed out for a hike. We climbed up the side of a mountain and enjoyed the cool air and scenery. On the way back, I almost stepped on a tarantula. You know, like the ones you see at the zoo. Except it was just there on the rock I was going to step on. I let out a little, "WHOA!" but kept my cool as the kids were with us. The tarantula quickly rushed away.

The kids LOVED drinking hot chocolate every morning.

The best picture we could get of the tarantula as it ran away.

 

Tuesday afternoon was nice too. We played games, the babies napped and we explored some more. We found big yellow ants and praying mantises. The kids also loved running around the huge grasshoppers and making them jump away. Jacob had grasshoppers "hop" into his face at least three times. :) Around dinner-time, the clouds rolled in and just as we were talking about starting the fire for dinner, it started to pour. Finally at 7:30pm, Billy decided enough was enough and went out in the rain, which wasn't pouring anymore, but still coming down, and roasted our hotdogs and marshmallows for us. When we went to bed, the rain had just stopped.

Wednesday morning was overcast and Matthew woke with a fever, so we decided we'd tried our best and packed up for home. :) (We did stop to play with some walking sticks though.) I wondered how it would be traveling with the kids awake all day long, but they really were fabulous. We stopped for lunch in Ozona, which we decided was a town our Uncle Ty would love. Ozona is obsessed with Davy Crockett. And hunting.

Jacob and one of the walking sticks we found.

Buc-ee's was our last stop. I had never been there before. I think it was the nicest "truck stop" I've ever seen. We had dinner and headed home.

We all happily took showers and baths upon arrival and dropped into bed.

Lessons learned:

*We thought it would be easier than the last time we went camping when I had morning sickness. WRONG. It was harder. I felt great, but Megan is so young that one of us was holding her pretty much the entire time. It slowed us down (with food prep, setting up, packing up, etc...)

*We ran out of time to buy wood before we left, so we figured we'd get it there. NOT SMART. It was much more expensive, and then coupled with the rain, we didn't even get to use it all. Talk about burning through money...literally.

*Take a big pot to boil water for hot chocolate, oatmeal and whatever else. Our family is getting too big to just be using the little pots in mess kits.

*Take some towels. We did, thinking we might go swimming. We didn't end up swimming, but the towels still came in handy, because everything got so wet from the rain. :)

*You can never have enough snacks when you're camping. Last time we didn't have enough. This time we had more than enough and the kids were so happy. :)

*The front carrier for the baby worked fabulous!

*Camping is hard work. But it was so worth it. We loved being together and exploring a new place. We're definitely glad we went. (And we appreciated our beds so much more when we came home!) :)