The Elusive Camping Trip

Ahhhh, now I have time I can sit down and write about our camping trip. Let me just start off by saying that I do NOT care for camping at all! I don't like the bugs, I don't like sleeping in a tent, I don't like having to walk 1/2 mile to the bathrooms. I want a nice bed (even in an RV would be okay), I want a toilet nearby, I want a shower, I want a stove, I want electricty. I want the comforts of home. Sure, I like sitting around a campfire, talking, laughing and such, eatins S'mores, but that's about it. I went up there for two reasons, to scatter my mom's ashes and to see my family. And I'll put up with just about anything to see my family. Not anything, but just about.....

Okay, back to the story......

We left our house about 3:30 a.m. for our 6 - 6 1/2 hour trek up to Mammoth Mountain. Ugh...... I tried to sleep on the way, but I just couldn't. Oh well, I'll sleep later. I called my youngest sister about 6 a.m., once we got on the 395 to ask her where she was. Lone Pine! Damn!!! She was at least 2 hours ahead of me, and she left about the same time I did! Well, she is closer. She was so excited to get up there!

First day of camping is always the set up. Hubby was busy setting up the tent, while I was busy carrying EVERYTHING ELSE in the campsite! Hmmm....makes me wonder if he was "taking his time" setting up that tent.........

I was SOOOOOOO fucking tired that day!! I think I took a nap, I can't remember. Did I? Or did I take one the next day, or did I take one each day? Damn, I was so tired those days, I really can't remember!

Now we had all tried to coordinate who was bringing things, that way we would have everything when we all got up there. I would say that for the most part, we did have everything. Of course everyone made fun of me, because if they didn't have it, it was like "Oh, I'm sure Tina has it!" My eldest thought they were being a little mean when they were saying that, but they really weren't, I told her. They all just know that I wanted to come prepared. I brought a full sized broom for Pete's sake to sweep out my tent! I brought a standing shower tent so I could take a shower. I brought enough baby wipes to clean everyone off for a month. Enough paper plates for everyone. What can I say? Gotta love COSTCO!! And if they were being mean, well, you know what? Don't care! Bite me! I love my family!!! :D

Hubby set up the horseshoes that he brought, and the men DEFINITELY loved that! He took my eldest fishing with him, he got to relax some, read a book, watched a video on his video Ipod, and so on......

My eldest wasn't so keen on the camping when she first got there, but grew to like it after a couple of days, especially spending time with her cousin and our family.

My youngest??? Well, that's a different story alltogether! Let me first start off by saying that she is one that likes routine. She wants to know what we're doing days in advance, and will keep asking sometimes throughout the day. When her routine doesn't go as planned and there's not enough advance warning with it all, she can break down. And now while I don't think she is autistic, I do think she may have some autistic tendencies sometimes. I need to research that more though. Now, she can have a problem with dogs. That's not an autistic tendency, it's just a little girl not liking some dogs. Back at Easter, when we were up at my aunt's house, she was terrified of their german shepard, Burbank. She would be outside, and Burbank would be inside looking out the back door and she would freak out and start crying because Burbank was looking at her. Yikes! I did sit down with her and we sat next to Burbank for a long time and she got used to him, and now she just loves him! I think the size of Burbank scared her the most, because Burbank does NOT jump on people. He's a very mellow dog. Okay, back to camping.........

My aunt brought Burbank, my sister brought her dalmation, Lucky (which she liked right away), and then my youngest sister brought her dog, Clyde. Clyde is part Rhodesian Ridgeback, has some pit bull in him (but is a VERY NICE dog), and something else. Well, I guess Clyde was excited to see people, and came too eagerly to see my youngest and scared the living shit out of her. That was it. She wanted him no where NEAR her. Now, my sister couldn't keep her dog tied up the WHOLE time, and let's face it, my youngest needed to get to be more comfortable with Clyde. Not that I wanted to FORCE Clyde upon her.... but she did give Clyde a hug when we left, but of course someone was holding Clyde and daddy was holding her.........

The second night up there, was probably the best night I had sleeping up there. Too tired to freak out about mice and bears, got through the first night of no mice or bears, more used to sleeping in the tent. I did have a nap that second day were were up there too, now that I think about it, because my youngest sister saw me sleeping in the tent, pulled my other sister over to me and they both saw that I was sleeping the way mom slept when she took naps up there. Awwwwwww........... :)

Forward to the third day. Okay, now I'm in the groove, getting more used to it, even decided on not taking a shower in our shower stall. (It actually was a PAIN IN THE ASS to do that, the shower bag we had took up the majority of the top part of the tent stall, and to get the water to flow freely out of the hose on you (or should I say the TOP 1/2 of you), you had to squat down really low. Yea, nice picture, huh? Oh, and also the shower bag had sprung a leak so it was taped up with duct tape. Hey, at least we gave it a shot for the first two days!

So anyway, I just wiped myself down with baby wipes (lord know I brought enough of them!), used my sister's squirt bottle (and what a cute one it was too! She always has the cutest little gadgets. Even the spatula she brought was cute. I knew it was hers right off the bat!) to wet down my hair, and put my hair up again.

We all went up the mountain to sight see. My, what beautiful lakes and scenery they had up there! Here are a couple of pictures:


We went hiking down to the waterfall:



And hiked back up. That was a nice workout there though!

Afterwards, hubby and I took our girls, along with our two nieces to lunch. We thought we'd treat our nieces, since we don't see them that often.

Then we made our way back to the campsite. Hung around for a little bit, and my aunt and I drive back into town to get dinner. We decided to have hot dogs. Found hot dogs alright, but when we went to go get the buns, there were none! Yikes! My aunt was like, "Well, we'll just have to use bread." I wasn't giving up yet. I asked one of the clerks to look in the back to see if they had any buns, and after a short while, and him talking with a couple of people, magically he came out with enough buns for us! Yea! I KNEW my youngest would not be eating a hot dog on a piece of bread! So we made our way back to the campsite.

That's when things started going downhill. Shortly thereafter, it started raining. At first we thought, no big deal, we've been dealing with this every day since we've been here. It rains a little bit, then it clears up. Did that happen in this case? Of course not! It decided to keep on raining! UGH! I don't care for rain as it is, and I certainly don't care for it when I can't get under some decent shelter to stay away from it, AND be able to go to the bathroom without being in the rain! (As you can tell, I have bathroom issues and want the convenience of them!) (And yes, I even brought an umbrella!) So we made dinner in the rain (thank goodness we had two tarps to cover the picnic tables, for the most part), we were all wet though. I was just miserable by then. I wanted to go home right then and there! Of course I didn't. And, of course right after I went to bed (very early, I might add), it stopped raining! Go figure.........

Now we're on the last day of us being there (because I was going home THAT day - Monday - and I wasn't staying another night longer and have that possibility of more rain again!) Slept crappy that night too, but I did get to sleep in even more, thanks to my youngest child sleeping in as well! Hubby and I slowly packed up everything throughout the day, since we didn't leave until the afternoon. We left our tent for my sister and her family, since her tent leaked and they all had to sleep in the car the rainy night! :( We also ended up giving them the tent too because, as my husband put it to me, "Okay, Tina, now really, when is the next time YOU are going to go camping, and in a tent?!" Yes, he was right. It would be a long time, if ever, before I would go camping in a tent again. Give me an RV, a cabin, or even better yet, a HOTEL, anyday! LOL!!

We left our stove there too for them to use. My youngest sister will just bring it down next time she comes down. Oh! I forgot about the stove fiasco!!! Okay, 2nd morning we're there....I was using one of the stoves (we brought one and my youngest sister had brought my mom's) for something, and I needed to use the other stove, my mom's, which hadn't been used in a few years. Well, no one had used it yet, so we hooked up a propane to it and started using it. Well, part of it caught on fire a little bit. No big deal, we thought at first, it was just burning something off. Well, noooooooooo, that wasn't the case. We turned it off, and it was still on fire! AAAAAAAUUUUGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!! My husband grabbed it, threw it out in the open and yelled to everyone that it was going to explode! HOLY SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Well, after a minute, it didn't so we started grabbing the dishpans and filling them up with water to douse the damn thing! Finally got it put out, and thank god it didn't blow up! Shit.......................................

Okay, back to the last day.........we then scattered my mom's ashes (see post below).........and then made our way back home, but not before stopping at the local t-shirt place to get our Mammoth sweatshirts. (Because you know you HAVE to get those while you're up there!) We were going to get the pull-over kind, because that's, you know, the "ones to have", but then we saw they had zip up ones and we all really liked those much better because we're more of a zip-up kind of family. (Yea, and a bunch of geeks to boot!)

Got home around 11 p.m., brought our stuff in the house and then I went to bed.

So there you have it. My, probably-last-one-I'll-ever-have-in-a-tent-without-electricity-a-bathroom-VERY-close-by, camping trip.

Ahhh......back to the real world...............................showers, a bed, a refrigerator, air conditioning, a bathroom in the same house I'm in, and most of all ELECTRICITY, E-LEC-TRI-CITY, ELECTRICITY................ :D Yea, I know, I'm a wimp. Bite Me.