I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to post about our last camp out. It was with the Boy Scouts, not a family outing, and it was a combined Webeloree/Camporee– which simply means there were LOTS of Scouts running around. It was not peaceful.

It was, however, impressive. I love seeing a huge, empty field transformed into a tent city in a matter of minutes, literally. Our troop really has its act together, and we camped along with our pack, so there were lots of us crammed into one site. As you know by now, I’m a tentaholic, and I sure got my fix last weekend. In fact, in addition to all the tents I saw/helped with, I got to hear about a large canvas M*A*S*H army tent for sale locally that I absolutely salivated over, at least until my husband put his foot down with a resounding, “NO!”

There was one SuperMom there, Julie, who dealt with four tents in the time it took us to handle our one. Next time I’ll move quicker and help her (not that she needed it)– though I did manage to help her load her car at the end. One of her sons was the only casualty of the event; he ended up sick and his dad had to take him home.

It was very cold, for me (you’d scorn me if I actually mentioned the temperature, so I’ll skip that). I dealt with it okay except for my bathroom (port-a-potty) runs in the middle of the night, which sent me into paroxisms of teeth-chattering for twenty minutes or so afterward. Also, due to the fact that three hundred-some scouts were registered and over six hundred showed up, there were far too few johns and they got exceedingly gross fast. Eeeeew– I’ll spare you further description.

We made a killer beef stew in a dutch oven, and that was the highlight of our cuisine. Most of all, I enjoyed our troop’s/pack’s campfire on Saturday evening. It warmed me body and soul to spend that time with the kids and the other parents, enjoying s’mores and smalltalk. My son says that that campfire was also his favorite part of the weekend.

I plan to camp with the troop in January this year, but will lay in a supply of long johns and thick sweats beforehand. We are also (finally!) going to use the portable handicapped toilet from my great-grandmother in our tent, with wag bags. I’ve been trying to get the hubster to agree to that for some time now– I guess my teeth-chattering got to him!

All in all, it was fun. I do look forward to the next time we can camp as a family, though. It’ll be a lot quieter and I’ll manage to draw from nature, etc., as I like to do while camping.