Over Memorial Day weekend we camped with the Coldirons at Camp Swatara. Love it there! A nice family-style campground. We didn't get to stay nearly as long as we would have liked due to Ben's work schedule, but we are definitely glad he has a summer job, so we'll take the occasional drawbacks his schedule incurs.
Packing wasn't bad this time. Nobody got mad enough to throw anything, and we didn't forget anything major. Remembered the camera, the tent, the food...but turns out we didn't need much of the food because we mooched off the Coldirons a LOT. Hey, I can't help it that they remember every minute detail! They even had flour for frying the freshly-caught fish! If they are this good while tenting, I can't imagine the stuff they'll bring when they graduate to their camper!
One of my favorite things to do that weekend was go out on the pond in the Coldirons' kayaks. I would love to get some of those of our own. I'd like to take them out on the lake at Gifford Pinchot. SOOOO peaceful while you're paddling out there on the water, and the kayaks are really manageable unlike a bulky canoe.
Another favorite thing was just sitting around the campfire with our friends. There's just something about the smell of the smoke and the crackling of the fire, which is blue and green because the boys have thrown things in it that make it burst into color! And of course there were s'mores the first night--with peanut butter, which again the Coldirons introduced us to. I nag Steve about being "rut boy" because he never wants to do anything daringly out of the ordinary, but I am 40 something and never put peanut butter on my s'mores before now! Sheesh, I wonder what else I am missing?!
And I loved all the picture-taking. Seems like everyone had a camera and was snapping pictures everywhere. Once I saw Jimmy lying flat on the pond deck to get a better shot of something out on the water. It's always fun, later, to see the photos arrive on FB and see the different perspectives that the various photographers had. I loved the picture of Caleb with the box turtle, and Greg appearing "headless" in the doorway of our tent in the morning! Or Ben, Jim, Caleb, and Mike enjoying the Coldirons' hammock. Wow, that thing never got a rest the entire weekend!
I was glad that I wasn't along when they found the copperheads. It seems that wherever the boys go, there go the copperheads too. They seriously seek those things out, I swear! I guess that's part of being a boy, because I had fun as a kid too but it never involved copperheads!
One reason I had so looked forward to camping was to get away from home and away from the computer for awhile. It's been a little stressful at work lately, just your typical end-of-year stuff I suppose. A little more worrying about things this year, and like one of the questions on that personality assessment I recently took--"Do you worry about things you can't change?" Yes, I always have! But when you can admit that you do that, it can also force you to think of ways that perhaps you CAN change something. In that case, you can stop worrying and start working to enact the change. So even though it is now mid-year, my New Year's resolution is to stop worrying so much and stop procrastinating too. Procrastination is something I am totally hung up on and need to get over. They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but this is something I'm quickly becoming convicted about. (Did I just end a sentence with a preposition??) In my life, procrastination tends to lead to mishaps that cause me to have something to worry about. (Preposition again!) So, to eliminate the worry, I have to eliminate the procrastination. Thanks for letting me talk through that on here!
So all in all, it was a great camping trip. The only way it could have improved would have been to make it a little longer. Of course Susan didn't stay much longer than we did, but I think that will change when she gets to bring her camper next time! I don't know though...I really like waking up on a sunny morning in the tent, bundled in a cozy sleeping bag. Unless there's a spider in the bag with me, which this time, luckily, there was not. I am hoping we can camp at least one more time this summer.
