Camping

Last weekend The Brain and I took off for an impromptu overnight campout. It was a blast. I love driving in the mountains, and I think it's fun to occasionally sleep in a tent.

The Brain is a camper. He has been a scout leader for a long time, and has lots of gear. At least enough to fill the back of our vehicle. Apparently there are two things you learn when you camp a lot with 12 year old boys.

First, follow the scout motto: Be Prepared.

Second, no matter how wet your tennis shoes get, putting them even closer to the fire will only result in disaster, NOT dry shoes.

So since he's a true scouter he believes in being prepared and brought, well not EVERYTHING, but lots. We reached the area, chose our campsite, and we began to unload the plethora of things in the back of the vehicle. In his defense, I will say that we needed a lot of it. On the other hand, we had 7 sleeping bags.

We got the tent set up, and started on the mattress. We had several options here; as in, we had 3 different mattresses. We chose the air mattress, got it all blown up and into the tent. Now, the only problem with the air mattress is that it's uninsulated. Which means that when the mountain air gets cold, the mattress air also gets cold. Hard to stay warm that way. But WAIT! We had 7 sleeping bags!

We lined 5 of them across the mattress horizontally, took the last 2 and zipped them together, and put the double wide sleeping bag on top of the whole thing. We were feeling pret-ty proud of our handiwork. Until it was time for bed.

We got into bed, and if quickly became apparent that the tent area we had chosen was not as flat as we originally thought. Our heads were quite a bit higher than our feet. And as the sleeping bag I was in started to slip down across the other sleeping bags on the mattress, I deja-vou'd back to a ride I once had on a giant slide, where I had to sit on a burlap bag.

We decided it would help to turn the mattress. Now I was on the uphill side, trying not to roll or slide onto The Brain, thus sliding him off the end, which was not going to work. But WAIT! We had 2 foam mattresses! So he got up and took both of those thin little mattresses and shoved them under his side of the air mattress, trying to raise that side. Yeah. Now we had a taco bed. But barring actually getting up and moving the tent in the dark, we figured that was as good as it was going to get. And it was. Well, for me.

I woke up in the middle of the night to the unpleasant feeling of the hard ground on my hip. I realized that the mattress must have been leaking, so I tried to reposition myself, and went back to sleep.

The next time I woke up, the mattress had lost enough air that I could feel a large rock or stump directly under my knees. I maneuvered around it, and went back to sleep - kind of.

Now, I KNOW that if I had said anything in the night, he would have been up and rearranging things so that at least the sleeping arrangements were, um, equally comfy. But somewhere in my sleepy brain, I just figured that he was having the same trouble I was, and I did NOT want to be a whiner. Hey if he could tough it out, so could I.

Finally the dawn came! (hooray!) I pulled myself out of the sleeping bag and got up to start the hot water for breakfast. Had to be careful not to wake The Brain, as he was fully enjoying his sleep atop the foam mattresses I had forgotten about; completely oblivious to the airless air mattress.


Next time I want the downhill side.