Annual Camping Trip

This past weekend we went on our annual New Year's camping trip. We met up with friends from Arizona. We only took a few pictures, and that with a "real" (film) camera, so you can wait a couple years for us to develop those pictures.

So we were hoping to camp in the Guadalupe Mtns. and go hiking. Unfortunately, National Parks don't like pets. So we had to scrap those plans and look for a place that allowed us to bring Uc. We settled onrequentl the Franklin Mtns, just outside of El Paso, TX. We had a 10 hr. drive (a few extra stops to potty the child and clean up the car sick dog), but still managed to arrive before our friends who had only a 5 hr drive. How did we do that?

Our "primitive" campsite had a grill and ramada and a leveled gravel area for our tents. Eirena had fun in the gravel. The first night was cold, but pretty nice. Eirena woke up in the middle of the night and wanted to chat with me. She was very excited to see her little friends from AZ and kept asking about them. Then she sang to herself and recited her books. She finally went back to sleep and slept pretty late (for camping).

The next day we planned to take a short hike with the three under 3 to some caves above our campsite, and then some people would take a longer hike in the afternoon. By the time we came down from the caves, the wind had picked up. In fact, it picked up a tent. So after staking things down better we ate lunch and tried to put the 3 kids to sleep. The 6 adults were in a big tent playing Cities and Knights of Catan while the children did not sleep.

The wind continued to pick up and even shifted staked down tents around. It was still sunny (sort of) but extremely windy and so was getting pretty cold. By evening, it was too windy to be outside and we only had one tent big enough for everyone to squeeze into, but the kids would be sleeping in it. We decided that since we had driven all this way to visit with friends, it didn't make sense to not be spending time together, each huddled in our own tents.

We took the wussy option and got a couple of motel rooms. While the kids slept we played Catan again and were all warm and full of amusement at discovering our dog can pee in her sleep. No really, she did. On Ryan's pants.

The next day we awoke and discovered that there were remains of a hail storm outside and I certainly felt better about our "wussing" out on the camping part. Unfortunately we did minimal camping and hiking, but it was great to see friends again and spend that time with them.