We made it through our first camping adventure of the summer.  We learned a few things on this trip.

1.  We feel no remorse drinking a beer for breakfast when we’re camping.  A nice cold brewski from our nice friend the cooler.  This does not affect our ability to feed our children bacon and eggs.

2.  See this guy here in the picture?  See the camper behind him?

 

We learned that if you don’t set up the supporting poles correctly on your pop-up camper, you WILL tip over if you are laying in bed with your son and your husband tries to stand on your side of the camper with a baby in his arms.  And your child who was almost asleep will be scared shitless.

We also learned that if you give that man in the picture above enough beer and whiskey, he will throw a 6-foot tree trunk on the fire.  He calls it a “white man fire”.  You will be scared that you are about to engulf the whole National Forest in flames.  You worry about this for approximately five minutes, then you just open another beer.

A white man’s fire is about three times the size of this one:

 

3.  We learned that if you make enough noise and have a big enough fire and if you have an anal-retentive woman picking up all the garbage around camp, you will probably not see any bears.  The Sasquatch calls from the kids might have helped stave them off as well.

 

4.  We learned that it is probably not a good idea to dare our 7-year old son.  Especially when money is offered as an incentive.  Just to be clear, Fire Marshall Bill above was the one that offered $5 to the kid if he would submerge himself in the beautiful, but icy cold, mountain river.  Fire Marshall Bill totally lost five dollars.  I am scared for high school.

 

5.  We learned that weather can turn on a dime in the Uintah Mountains of eastern Utah.  We learned this by freezing our asses off Saturday night while bundled in at least five layers of strange clothing.  LESSON LEARNED, MOTHER NATURE.

 

6.  Marshmallows are a good dinner.  The best dinner for a two-year old.  And don’t forget to chase that dinner of marshmallows with a giraffe binkie and a cold-ass-camper-because-daddy-didn’t-button-the-canvas-flaps.

 

 

7.  We learned that all you need to entertain three young boys is a dull hatchet.  Because they will use the hatchet to chop down dead branches (and whole trees for that matter) and make themselves a kick-ass fort.

DON’T GET ALL JUDGEMENTAL – BECAUSE MY KID WASN’T THE ONE WIELDING THE HATCHET.

So there.

He was just sort of a branch dragger and firewood stealer.

 

Thank you, bears, for staying in the backyards of Park City.  You can go back to the woods now.

I think I need to go wash my hair now.   It still smells like campfire and it is now Tuesday.

That’s kind of sad, I know.