Weekend at the Pinnacles

We survived a family first this past weekend: camping! Admittedly, we had a rough start Friday evening that involved getting the tent halfway up only to have it start really raining. The tent was assembled successfully, but Daddy and I and the inside of the tent were pretty soaked (the girls watched this process from the car). We decided to do a little exploring of the park via car while praying that the rain would stop. It did . . . kinda. Enough to get a fire going and roast hot dogs; although the s'mores that followed were a bit damp since a light rain kept coming and going. The girls were SO excited about cooking their own hot dogs and marshmallows though! Daddy also took them for a walk after dinner with a break to listen to the ranger talk  about the local wildlife we might see. (I stayed at the campsite to "tend the fire," i.e., enjoy a little peace and quiet.) They definitely paid attention to the ranger because the next morning they successfully identified a large bird outside the nature center as a condor! A mountain lion had apparently left a deer carcass in a nearby creek bed overnight, and the condors were feasting on Saturday.

Fortunately, the rain clouds cleared up, and Saturday was gorgeous and wonderful! These girls proved themselves little troopers once again! We spent the morning/early afternoon completing a 4 mile hike--only Goose had to be carried and only for the last tenth of a mile. For this weekend and future adventures, we got the girls each their own "hiking pack" (adult fanny pack re-purposed as a kid's shoulder bag), equipped with their own water bottle, snack, lightweight waterproof jacket, headlamp, mirror, whistle, and signal light. We explained that those last three items in particular were in case they got lost and made sure they knew how to use them. Having their own hiking packs and survival gear definitely upped the seriousness of the expedition for them and added to the sense of accomplishment. They even got to use their new headlamps, since the trail we hiked involved walking/crawling/climbing through a series of unlit talus caves. The trail took us up to a beautiful reservoir where we admired the scenery and observed (but did not feed) an incredibly brave ground squirrel. At a few points along the trail we stopped to watch some rock climbers, and the girls were inspired to do their own bouldering along the way.

That hike really wore everybody out, and we happily spent the rest of the afternoon/evening just hanging out at the campsite. It's always fun to listen in on the girls playing, and this weekend proved particular interesting since we didn't bring any toys--there were no complaints; they relied entirely on their imaginations fed by good stories and good lessons to entertain themselves: They gathered little pebbles and pretended to be Hansel and Gretel dropping the little white stones around the campsite. They pretended the woods were full of Leafmen, and that Queen Tara (from Epic) joined forces with Queen Elsa (from Frozen) to fight off the bad guys with their combined powers. They noted the similarities and differences between our tent and the Tabernacle; at some point I'm pretty sure I even heard them staging a sacrifice (don't worry, no actual animals were harmed in this reenactment). They formed their own Native American tribe, danced around the campfire, and invented their own language. They pretended to be the ducks from Make Way for Ducklings and followed Daddy around in a nice neat line quacking as loud as they could. They observed a colony of ants consuming something and tried to figure out where the anthill was. They adopted a rather large rock, which they carried around for awhile in whatever play they were doing. Et cetera, et cetera.

They learned all kinds of other useful things: how to open and close the bear safe and why we put things in there, how to light and thoroughly douse a campfire, how to roast hot dogs and marshmallows and what to do if they catch on fire (blow them out and eat them anyway), how to make a s'more, how to properly enter and exit the tent in order to get the least amount of dirt possible in it, the importance of the "leave it better than you found it" principle, and how to find your way out of a sleeping bag (poor Goose was quite distressed when she woke to discover she had burrowed herself into the foot of it), that campsites are awesome places for star gazing (we located the big dipper and decided we needed to learn more constellations before we go camping again), and that Daddy is really good with a small air rifle but that the rest of us could use some practice (Monkey was the one other person who succeeded in knocking a little juice bottle off the tree branch. We even let Goose sit in my lap and shoot off a few pellets--she was pretty excited).

We made pancakes and packed up Sunday morning, and made it home by lunch time. Overall, a great trip! The girls are already excited about next time!