I try to give the kids one last fun event before school starts each fall and this year was no different. Usually we try to do an overnight stay at a nearby water park, but after the expense of school registration, new gym shoes for all five kids and school clothes shopping, we had to figure out a less expensive "hurrah."
I decided to give the kids a taste of camping, an activity that my family did a lot of when I was a girl. A quick look at the calendar showed no free weekends before school started. Since my husband is not a huge fan of camping and didn't care to go, we decided to go in the middle of the week and I invited my sister-in-law, Lisa, along with her three kids.
Our little camping expedition was then planned for Tuesday, August 4 through Thursday, August 6. We could not have chosen a better time. There were major rain storms the weekend before and after, but our three days were perfect days of summer. Hot, sunny afternoons, pleasant mornings and evenings, and cool, bug free nights.
We arrived at Sugar Bottom Campground located on the Coralville Resavoir at mid-morning the first day and found an ideal location. It was centrally placed between bathhouse, playground, and beach area.
I was nervous about opening the back hatch door of our Suburban, because it was packed to the gills, if a vehicle had gills, anyway. I was afraid that due to shifting and settling during the drive, there might be a lot of pressure on the door and when opened might spew out the contents in an explosive heap. I made the kids stand back while I gingerly pulled on the handle. Amazingly, it all stayed put, packed tight as a jigsaw puzzle.
Unloading did not take a quarter of the time it had taken to pack it all, funny how that works. Since the tent went in first it was on the bottom and everything had to be unloaded to get to it. I had a large two-room tent for me and the girls while Walker got a little two-person pup tent to himself. Lisa had a large single room tent for her family.
After tents got set up, we reminded kids where the stakes were and cautioned them about tripping over the cords and collapsing tents. Lisa and I rigged up a clothesline running from the luggage rack on her vehicle to a tree close by. The campgrounds were quiet and mostly empty and after the long drive our kids were excited to be there.
As soon as the tents were up, we hiked down to the lake to check out the swimming area. The beach was completely deserted, and the sand was hot and the water inviting. We all charged back to the tents to change into swim wear anxious to get our last "hurrah" started. By the time Lisa and I had applied a sun screen to kids, spread towels on the sand, unfolded lounge chairs, unloaded sand toys, and blew up swim rings and float rafts, the kids had been in the water for about an hour. Judging by the goose bumps on the kids we knew it was gonna be a tough march into the water. Lisa came up with the best and most fun way to reduce the shock of cold water. The method was simple.
Grab a foam noodle with both hands, sprint from halfway up the beach at full speed into the water while screaming at top volume. By the time you go under, the last thing you're worrying about is the cold. We dubbed it the "Baywatch Run at Fast Speed."
We could do this and all sorts of other fun water aerobics because of the fact that we did not know any of the other campers.
The sand was a huge novelty for the kids. We buried each other, made elaborate sand castles and moats, sculpted chairs to sit in, and dug deep trenches. Whitney buried Kinzey from the waist down and fashioned a mermaid tail that could have won an art contest.
We floated on inner tubes and rafts and enjoyed the big waves that came washing in under us from the wakes of all the boats racing by pulling skiers and tubes. We had a big blow up dinosaur that Jaicey, Kinzey and my nephew Payton could all fit on at once. Walker would tow them around while his cousin Chancey tried to dunk him without success. We played "keep away" and "catch" with foam water balls and had races out to the buoys that marked out the swim area.
It was three blissful, peaceful days of sun, sand and play. We spent the majority of the days on the beach, while early mornings and evenings the kids took turns on all the various scooters and skateboards we had brought along.
Our lunch times were casual affairs of peanut butter and jelly or sliced meat sandwiches, pudding, chips, and veggies with dip. We went to more effort at supper and cooked hotdogs and hamburgers over the fire, while the kids played on the playground nearby. We tried taking snacks with us to the beach but inevitably sand would get kicked into the bags of licorice and fruit roll-ups and sand doesn't wash off of those items very easily. The boys didn't seem to mind and would just "wash" them off in the lake water.
After sundown, we roasted marshmallows and had s'mores and hot cocoa. BJ stopped in the second morning on his way to a job site in North Liberty, to check on us and bring us more firewood.
He built up a roaring fire that lasted the entire day and most of the night. I can safely assume that a campfire would be his favorite thing about camping. He stopped in again at the end of the day to play with the fire a little more and Whitney chose to go home with him. She enjoyed the day but sleeping in a tent with her mom and little sisters did not make her list of favorite things. She said she prefers convenience to roughing it and her idea of surviving in the wild is to use a G.P.S. system and cell phone to find the nearest Holiday Inn.
Another advantage of camping midweek meant no lines at the bathhouse. Although, that could also be due to the fact, that almost every other campsite had RV's with their own showers and bathrooms and we were the only group with tents.
The girls did well at keeping sand out of our tent by taking shoes off each time they went in, but I think Walker had about an inch deep layer on the floor of his tent by the time we were ready to pack up. I made him shake out his sleeping bag each night before bed, which created a small sandstorm through our campsite.
After I tucked the little girls in bed at dark, and Lisa and her kids had settled for the night in their tent, Walker and I would wrap in blankets and sit on our lounge chairs by the fire and watch the reflection of the full moon shimmer its way across the rippled black surface of the lake.
The only action on the lake was a slow-moving ranger boat quietly patrolling and the herons and geese that glided in on the night sky to settle close to shore. Walker and I picked out of the starry blanket above us what few constellations we knew and made a note to bring a telescope next time.
On Thursday as we packed up to leave, the campground was filling quickly around us for the coming weekend. The day started out beautifully, but thundershowers were rolling in and rain was in the forecast for the whole weekend. I thanked God he blessed our three days and two nights with beautiful weather, especially because, although our tent was roomy enough to sleep in, it would have gotten rather cramped to spend a rainy day inside it with eight children and two adults.
As we crammed in the last of the stuff-our gear seemed to have multiplied in the short time we were there-Lisa looked across at me and asked, "Same time, same place, next year?"
"Absolutely!" I agreed and a new annual summer tradition has been born. I am already so excited for next year and this time, we intend to schedule it before everything else gets penciled in on our calendars. Maybe we can get the husbands to join us. I have the feeling if they came along, by our third annual camp out, we might be in an RV!