Calamitous Camping

I was going to head to Portland for my birthday this weekend even taking Sunday off. It was to be a little escape for Momma for less than 49 hours. Plans fell through. I decided that I wanted to so something, as I did not want us to be sitting here on Saturday or Sunday wondering what we should do after the day has already passed.

I decided since the weather was nice, we should go camping. Good weather, break in the Eurovan, and we could take Cina.  Marc grabbed a California Camping book from the library ( I won't even link to it so as to not waste your time.)  And he chose a camp site fairly close near Colfax.  It was rated as one of the writer's favorites.

We packed up.  Sleeping bags, cooking necessities, food, diapers, chairs, and more all filled the van. It was a beautiful day.  Sid got a nap the whole way there and Lola was beyond excited for camping.  Even Cina was delighted as she gazed out the window of the van.

It only took us about an hour and a half to get there.  After a very narrow, winding road we were in a canyon next to the North Fork of the American River.  It was very beautiful.  We pulled in.  Finally, after some confusion, found our site.  The first problem was that our table and fire pit were on one side of the road and van parked on the other.  This would be fine, except we were sleeping in our van and all traffic (mainly a lot of foot traffic) went right through our camp.  I don't think this site would be appropriate for even for tent sleepers as there was no good place for a tent.  We had a toilet pit close that was infested with bugs until the maintenance crew came by and sprayed it out.  But Lola refused to use it, even after clean up.  She had to go a number of times and took it upon herself to just start peeing near the big rocks at our site.

We set up, ate, and then decided to take a hike down to the river. Off we went down a dirt path and then right into rugged, rocky terrain.  Huge rocks to try and maneuver over with dog, toddler and baby on my back. Not fun and we couldn't get very far.  So we headed to the other side of the campsite. This is where there were kayakers and rafters getting in and out of the water on a very small beach type area. We headed over a bridge and it ended into the road we had come in on. We couldn't hike in the other directions as we were were in a very deep canyon with very steep sides. So we headed back into camp.

I asked Marc what time it was thinking somewhere around 3pm.  Nope. 1:30.  We had been there only a little over an hour and had seen all we could really see.  Ugh.  Two young kids - one that needed another nap shortly and the other who took to greeting everyone that trekked by.  It was......well, boring.  It would have been great to have been able to go further on a walk or hike or at least an area where you could get near the water.  Nope.  Nothing.  Marc and I chatted about the idea of leaving, but we had put some time into getting ready.  Did we really want to pack it all up and head home?  We thought we could stick it out.

I got Sid to sleep and put him in the camper across the road. Lola and I headed down to try and find some better vantage points to get to the water. It was still very rocky and I wouldn't even let her hand go for a second fearing she would fall in. As we walked back to camp, some Indian type drumming started from the other end of camp.  Loud drumming and chanting.  We got back just in time to see Sid being extracted from the van after a very short 15 minute nap. Then I asked what time it was....again.

I love life. I like free time. I do not like the idea of wasting time or wishing it by. It really had come to a point of waiting to make dinner, start a fire and go to bed which were all hours away.

It was time to go home. I was ready.  I felt defeated.  Weird banging, boredom and aggravation of nowhere to go.

We were home by 6pm. it was still fun, just not a good place to take the kiddies. We were tired. We cooked our intended camping dinner on the electric stove and the grill. Even cooked our intended breakfast on the very same stove!

I am in no way giving up on camping. I am looking forward to doing a lot of it this summer. It just will require a bit more investigation.