My goodness our pack campout was fun! Just ask the kids about Karl's 'Bacon Flambe' !!! Shall we say bacon grease over an open campfire creates quite the conflagration. We had about half dozen families last weekend who braved the iffy weather to camp at Bull Run Regional Park. Turned out the weather offered us lots and lots of rain, but nothing in the way of wind, lightning, or thunder. So we set up a screen room/canopy shelter type thing for the kitchen, tied a tarp to some trees, threw plastic over anything that was leaking, and we were in business!
Mind you we had a lot of scheduled activities that didn't happen as planned. For example I wanted to set up a sundial and have the kids track it every hour. Kinda hard to do that in the rain!! But we did put on our raincoats and took a hike in the rain. The orginial trail was a bit short, so I took a longcut. Is that a word? Went down the White Trail, then a bit down the Bull Run Occoquan Trail, then finished up on the Bluebell Trail. The kids saw deer, a toad, algae (in the creek), freshwater clam shells, knocked over trees, trees that made a triangle shape, wooden boardwalks, horse poop, spiders. All sorts of deep woods goodness for this time of year. OK, OK so they came back significantly more muddy than when they left. But it was worth it! By time we got back from the hike, more families arrived. The rain was pretty much on for good by then, so they were setting up their tents in the rain. The campfire was roaring quite well the whole day even in the rain so anyone who was cold did have a place to go. By evening some folks had steam coming off their clothes when it was heated up by the fire.
But I digress, the evening meal was 'foil food' Basically take aluminum foil, a hamburger patty, add chunks of potato, carrots, onion then close it all up in the foil. Chuck it into the fire for 20 minutes and enjoy. Matt brought some grilling spice that put salt and pepper to shame. After the dinner came the desserts: Smores and Campfire Banana Splits. Of course all the kids wanted to set fire to the marshmallows, and us, ahem, seasoned campers go for the nicely browned marshmallows.
All the night time games, skits, stories I had planned, well, that didn't happen. The kids pretty much made up their own games to play. So I said the heck with it, why try to have a 'fun' game when they are having fun all on their own. OK so a few adults had to make sure nobody ran full speed into the fire or tripped over tent lines. A plastic cup and a soccer ball let them come up with their own fun.
Somewhere around 9pm a few of the kids decided on their own that it was time to go to bed. So most of them crawled into their tents around then. The adults stood around the campfire trying to remember the words to such songs as Hong Kong Phooey and the Bananna Split Song.
By next morning, the rain was down to a trickle. Didn't even need a raincoat. Then sometime close to 11am, maybe noon, the sun came around to dry up everything. So everyone broke camp that morning and went home. Well I couldn't resist the Geocaching. The Scott's and the Bradley's went and found 3 geocaches. One of them was a really tiny thing hanging under the boardwalk. Was fun!
But then storing a wet tent is a recipe for mold smellyness. Or in my case, two wet tents, a wet shelter, wet plastic sheets, wet tarp were all things that I had to set up again in my backyard so they would dry. But dry they did. Now about that 2 ton pile of rainsoaked wet laundry.....
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