The boys have been looking forward to each year’s Fathers and Sons camp out, even though I typically don’t care for roughing it in the great outdoors. With the craziness of Rebecca’s camping trip, I figured we simply wouldn’t go, but she notified me that the little girls would have someone to watch them, so I prepared for the trip. Adam didn’t really know what was going on, but was thrilled to be in the small car with just his brothers.
This year, we went to Spanish Fork Canyon, which has been much nicer than the closer Willow Park campgrounds in Saratoga Springs. We had a neighbouring campground to last year’s, just up on top of the hill, surrounded by trees, but also providing flat grassy areas for tents, and a pavilion with benches. At the head of the pavilion was a large brick fireplace.
We weren’t first there, but when we arrived there was enough of a selection of tent sites that we could easily pick where to set up. I chose a place just north of the pavilion, close to the trees, to not be distracted at night by the lights and chatter once the kids started coming to bed. This was our first year using a giant tent we purchased at Costco, claiming to fit twelve people. It was quite impressive, with two rooms divided by a zipped wall, plus one of the rooms could have been opened into a mesh lined patio.
The older boys played around in it a bit, then wandered off to seek out activities to do. I basically spent the time following Adam to keep him out of trouble.
As the evening progressed, and more people showed up, our tent became a hit with the boys who wanted to come in and hang out. I didn’t mind, as long as they didn’t track dirt into it, and kept it zipped. More people set up in the pavilion, to eat and play. The fireplace was lit and some people started on their Dutch Oven desserts. A common theme at these campouts, is for some of the guys to bring their Magic The Gathering cards, and this time was no different. The pavilion had lights, at least, so the fireplace was mainly for entertainment use. The boys started to notice they could run off into the bushes and bring back weeds that they could throw into the fireplace, and they also found a mouse in the area, which they scared around the fireplace until it ran off.
Once it got dark, we started to wrap up the evening. I like how our ward has mainly young families, so most of the people who came had little kids, and wanted to go to bed early. Adam was starting to get cranky and noticeably tired, so I carried him to our tent and put him down for the night. I also started closing up the tent windows, and my ears picked up a faint scritching sound. At first, I thought that mouse from earlier, was trying to get inside the tent, but then I saw its shadow on the inside, crawling up the wall! And, with Adam sleeping and it being dark, I had limited options. I ended up using the flashlight feature on my mobile phone, chasing it around and using a shoe to try and knock it out, before my adventure woke Adam. Fortunately, he stayed asleep through the chaos. Unfortunately, it didn’t stop running until I had knocked it out with the shoe, so I grabbed a pair of shoes to pick it up, and tossed it outside the tent.
Ethan and Jeremy were in the pavilion, presumably watching some of the older guys play Magic and similar. I ended up falling alseep with Adam, waking later to find Ethan and Jeremy had wandered to bed on their own.
In the morning, we had typical Fathers and Sons breakfast, consisting of meat products, sausage and bacon, plus pancakes, all cooked on dutch oven griddles. Everyone ate their full and we were done with the event, as the campground needed to be cleared by 12:15. Everyone started packing up their tents, with ours being one of the last, and we left to return home and take a shower.