We took our first camping trip as a little family over the 4th of July weekend. As we were driving up the canyon, about a half mile from the campground, I kid you not, I saw a brown bear running up the side of the road. I was in shock. I had never seen a bear in the wild before. I stared at it intently as we drove passed and I could have sworn it even looked me in the eye. From that moment on I was a little leery of our camping excursion, especially when we pulled into our camp site less than a minute later. "Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see? I see a Savi looking at me." Everything in our lives are somehow tied back into Radcliff's books...
Anyway, here I am typing, so safe and sound we stayed. The bear played it cool with us.
Rad had so much fun helping Wren set the tent up and throwing sticks in to start the fire. We went on a little nature walk and roasted s'more, after s'more, after s'more. After we moved into the tent to go to bed, Rad was really nervous and kept saying, "I'm scared of bears!" It's so funny how kids hear everything, he had heard my minor freak out on the way up and remembered it once nestled in our dark little tent. Well about five minutes later, I think all the sugar hit Rad and all he wanted to do was laugh and wrestle. Scary bearsies were a thing of the past. He thought it was hilarious being smashed in between Wren and I in our little two man tent. We were all hysterically laughing at our slightly delirious little man. Once he finally hit the hay, he kept flailing his arms and legs out of the sleeping bag and all I heard from then on out were swooshes the rest of the night. Rad would flail out, and Wren would immediately push all his limbs back in so he wouldn't get cold. That Wren, he's a good Dad. So between the swooshing, the images of the brown bear creeping around our tent, and the me having to pee every 45 minutes due to pregnancy (and having more images of the bear pulling me sneakily into the bushes never to be found again), I realized it was 4:00 A.M. and I had still not fallen asleep. I looked over at Wren, and he hadn't either. After much deliberation, we decided to head home to get a little shut eye before my Grandpa's funereal the next day at noon, forgoing the awesome breakfast we were going to make in the morning up there. Wren carried Rad to the car in his sleeping bag and Rad laughed as we buckled him into his car seat in the middle of the night. He kept saying, "Ohhhh! This is funny!" Thank the heavens he went right back to sleep when we got home!
It really was a ton of fun, despite the minor set backs, and we are excited to do it again! Camping family? I think given a little practice (Tylenol PM and Depends), I think we just could be!
