Our Girl Scout Campout weekend finally arrived! There wasn't too much nagging to get people to sign up for food/equipment. We spent only 2 or 3 days shopping, packing and finding our camping gear. My girls were so excited they even spent the night prior to the campout in the tent in the backyard with the dog. (Turns out, you don't camp with Tonks. She runs circles around inside the tent while you try and sleep. She was swapped out for Sirius and the night proceeded much better)
Friday, Brian took off work at noon and we packed up the car and headed to the mountains. We arrived and the trouble began.
You see, there is a new registrar for Girl Scout camps. She unintentionally booked us on top of another Girl Scout group for the same camp, same weekend. Theirs involved 200 girls. The lady in charge was Crazy Red Hat Lady. She wanted to know how many girls. How many adults. She never allows that many adults. Parents only cause trouble. She was horrified that 4 of the adults were MEN. Yes, we do allow the girls' fathers along on the campouts. Despite the fact that they have penises, they seem to be capable of spending the weekend camping with their daughters and daughter's friends. Good grief!
Anyway, they found a spot for us in an "old" part of the camp. It was actually PERFECT. There were tabins (part cabin part tent - like a cabin w/canvas walls) we could use, something we wouldn't have had in our original spot. Plus we were far away from the Crazy Red Hat Lady and her uber organized, non-parent, non-penis group.
We got settled and grilled pizzas for dinner which was way fun. After that and some s'mores it was off to bed. The night was super windy and a bit rainy but the next morning looked like this:
 |
| View of the mountains from our campsite. |
 |
| Sandis in the sunshine. |
Beautiful, n'est pas?
It didn't last. The storm rolled in rather quickly. First there was fog.
Then rain. Lots of rain.
Lastly snow.
At this point I was able to convince the others to bail on the camping. We had young kids (12 youngsters from 6-12 yrs old) who were out of dry clothing and it was wet, cold and getting worse. The problem was that they all wanted to stay together. They were supposed to get two nights of sleeping (or not) together and they wanted BOTH of them. Angela, crazy and wonderful woman that she is, volunteered to have a sleepover in her basement with all the kids and whatever parents wanted to stay. So the girls got their sleepover and we got out of the miserable weather. (As an added bonus, there were enough parents that I didn't have to stay and Brian & I got an impromptu date night. I did get Angela some chocolate and Starbucks for doing this - she deserved that and more!)
For all the weather issues, the girls had soooo much fun! They got along, worked together, didn't have too much trouble with the "I want to sleep by X and she wants to sleep with Y" crap. Angela decided that SHE would make all the sleeping decisions which put an end to any hard feelings with the girls deciding. Of course my children BOTH decided at different times during the evening that they wanted to come back to our tent and not stay with the other girls. This was annoying for Brian & I but not really a big deal in the overall scheme of things.
So, all in all, not a bad weekend. Stay tuned to hear about our solar eclipse viewing on Sunday :)
0 comments: