The Great Return

Well, we're back!

We went camping with the Boy Scouts; it was a Pack-wide thing, but of course the Dens kind of kept together.

We got there very, VERY late (did anyone notice that employment in the tech industry looks very much like indentured servitude these days? Seems like Daddy works all day, every evening, and every weekend to one extent or another) and had to set up our tents in the dark. (Not as hard as it sounds, somebody had a heck of a good lantern to work by, plus the tents were easy.)

We were ready for most of it; we knew it would be cold, so we had closed-cell insulating pads to sleep on, plus cushy foam to go on top. We had cold-weather sleeping bags, we brought heavy clothes, wool socks and hats. (See, 48 degrees in a tent is way different than 48 degrees from the inside of a house. Ahem.)

We were at a campsite at Cuivre State Park. After we got tents put up, we cooked some hot dogs over the fire (much to the total delight of the kids), and shortly after that, the kids announced that they were tired and wanted to go to bed. We were shocked, but bundled them up for bed and put them into their sleeping bags. David insisted on sleeping in the small tent himself, while were going to share with Lauren. They both konked out in no time at all.

The adults probably stayed up only 30 or 60 minutes later than the kids, and then everyone sort of disappeared. Doug and I looked at each other with wide eyes and said, "It's only 10 o'clock...what are we going to DO?!?!" (Hey, YOU try going to bed a good four hours early and see how ready to sleep you are!) Of course there was no way we either could or would go anyplace (what, and leave the kids alone? On their first big Scout trip? I don't think so!), so we resigned ourselves to sleep, or something like it.

In all, I'd say the night was completely impossible for both adults, pretty good for Lauren, and just peachy-great for David. I considered getting up at 4 a.m. and just building a &*^%$! fire and sitting out there, but stayed put anyway. I probably got a whole hour of sleep, if that. I was a little cold, but it was the painfully hard sleeping surface that did me in the most. I heard two people get up and then crawled out myself. I heard David unzip his sleeping bag at the same time and come out, and he looked surprised to see me. The sun wasn't quite up yet.

I grabbed a cold frappuccino which I'd set outside the tent (automatic refrigeration, and I figured I'd need caffeine in the morning, anyway) and went over to what I expected to be a warm campfire. Nada.

The guy was trying to light a pile of charcoal (charcoal?) with a dead butane lighter. "Do you happen to have any matches?" he asked rather sheepishly. "This thing...kinda...ran out of juice."
"You bet," I said, and went and fetched my little fire stash: 15 BBQ matches and a handful of Duraflame bricks (in case of wet wood) in a plastic ziplock baggie. He examined it with some interest and then pulled out a match and tried to convince the fire to start. This had extremely limited success, so he then started to pour lighter fluid all over the charcoal to get it going.

At this point, half of me is just totally confused (why in heaven's name is he using charcoal? Who uses charcoal to start a campfire?) and the other half is biting my tongue over the totally non-self-sufficient method this is teaching the kids. If you're stranded in the woods, you sure as hell aren't likely to have charcoal, butane lighters, or 24 ounces of lighter fluid on you! I concluded I was being far too much of a purist, and told myself to shut up. Just let the man make a fire.

It eventually got going, and he put a grate over the thing and started putting pots and pans on the grate. He was the only one, however, who was going to actually cook. The rest of us copped out with apples, bananas and granola bars for breakfast. (We weren't sure if this was going to be car camping or hiking several miles into the woods camping, so we were trying to keep it light.)

The kids snarfed down the granola bars, and David was insanely interested in the fire...he ran all around the campsite looking for tiny sticks to throw into the fire. Eventually we convinced him to just start putting the sticks into the firewood pile for kindling. We also sort of got in trouble (really, really minor trouble) for letting him toss in sticks and push wood into the fire. Apparently the safety rule is that kids aren't allowed to set foot into the fire ring, only the adults. So reaching the fire becomes problematic for the kids, since the fire ring in the campsite is HUGE!! This makes a lot of sense, of course, but then our kids have had more experience with fires than most other kids, so we didn't feel a real for him to keep his distance.

Most of the kids got up pretty quickly, and took off through the bracken and down the hill. ??? Apparently there was a dry creek bed down there which was being utilized as a play area. David asked if he could go play, and I said, "Well, can you see where they are down there?" A fellow Scout dad said, "Oh, I know where they are. C'mon, David, want me to show you?" He was giddy with excitement and followed right along. Lauren gave me a desperate look and said, "I want go, too!" "Alright, go ahead," I said and she spun around and ran after them.

After a bit one of the other dads came up and said, "Uh...Lauren really wants to cross the bridge down there. We've been trying to talk her out of it, but then she started to negotiate with us." I decided to go find out what the bridge was and what was going on. On the way down I ran into one of dads carrying Lauren back up the hill.
"I hear you've discovered our daughter is a little lawyer," I said.
"Huh?"
"She'll argue and negotiate to a ridiculous level."
"Oh, well, yeah."
"Mommy, I want go across the bridge!" says Lauren.
"Well, let's go back to camp first and then we'll see about doing that later on, ok?"
"Oh. Ok."

There were probably 10-15 boys down there, and they had some huge scenario all cooked up. There was a tree which had fallen across the creek bed, so this was the "bridge," and I don't know exactly what the deal was, but part of the creek bed was a "mine" and some workers were required to haul rocks to the bridge, and others were "digging up dinosaur bones" on a hillside with a bunch of sticks. There was a bridge guard, somebody had put themselves in charge and they were busy directing everyone else. It didn't take long before Doug and Lauren came down, too, and I looked at Doug and said, "What IS it with boys and sticks? Every one of them has a stick. Look." One older boy hoisted a good-sized log onto his shoulder and announced loudly, "I found a bazooka!"
"Sticks rock," said Doug. "They're weapons. They're hiking staffs. They're everything."
The Den Leader was standing nearby and laughed. "There you go," he said, "Let's get some pugil sticks down here, let 'em knock each other off the bridge."
"Oh, good," I said. "Give 'em each a quarterstaff and them have at it?"
"Jeeze! At least I let them have some padding!"
"Wasn't that a Daffy Duck thing when we were kids? 'Oh, hee, ha-ha...uh..."
"Yeah! ...Guard, turn, parry, dodge, spin...uh..."
"...Thrust, whap!' How scary. We've all been warped!"

We all remember more from Saturday morning cartoons than we remember from our days at school!

The kids stayed down there having a good time until about 10 a.m., at which point they were rounded up and taken on a voluntary two-mile hike. This eventually led them to the top of a 120-foot high bluff, where we stopped David's Den and took their photo (see above). Even Lauren took this hike, and both kids did amazingly well for going two whole miles without a break. David kept up extremely well, and never complained at all. Lauren lagged a little bit, but considering her age, she did REALLY well, too! This not only fulfilled one of the Tiger Cub requirements, but also got them one step closer to the Outdoor Activity Award. At this point all he needs is two more activities to get it, which is pretty cool, IMO. He's up for his Bobcat Badge this Wednesday, assuming the paperwork all goes through.

The only other news is that I got out of class early. It was a midterm, and we were given a bunch of photos and told exactly what kind of site to put together. I got to work on it, and noticed that the guy next to me got bogged down and stuck. Since it was a midterm, I couldn't help him out. After an hour or so, I had almost all of it completed...I just needed to make five or six links I'd have it done. It became apparent that everyone else...and I mean every, single person in the class, was stuck and could not finish the test. The professor went through the class person by person and asked how they were doing.
"Stuck."
"Stuck."
"Stuck."
"Stuck."
He got to me.
"15 more minutes and I'm done."
"For real?"
"For real."
"Alright, go for it. The rest of you, look up here."
I finished the project, double-checked that it worked properly, saved it onto my Flash drive. The professor decided that since everyone would fail, this project wouldn't be a midterm, but would be worth a grade.
"Kel, are you done?"
"Done."
"Ok, get out of here, have a good rest of the day."

I considered myself ahead of the rest of them, but not THAT far ahead.