How the Hearth does Camping....actual camping

I am going to start this post with the most vital piece of our camping puzzle.

 

The outhouse.  And when I say outhouse....I mean OUTHOUSE.  This thing is legit.  For real.  No foolin'.  I mean, I am actually afraid of falling in this puppy never to return.  Well, not really, I'm pretty sure if I fell in, sooner or later somebody would have to use the facilities and would find me. 

Rustic.

Old timey.

Torn up pieces of an old Sears Roebuck catalog for T.P.  I'm wondering if I can still order one of those permanent machines from them...

I actually spent a good portion of my nights (1 am....5 am...finally 7 am, phew, you can go on your own) hiking up here as My Oldest has a bladder the size of a dime and I don't want to restrict her from staying hydrated at 10,000 feet above SEA LEVEL!  Oh yeah.  If you need to practice breathing techniques to get to Everest, this is where you go.  I would whistle as we walked.  No sense running into a bear or coyote as we're going to the facilities.

And I'm just saying, if these fellas are up here, you KNOW there are other things that I just can't see.  Shhh, don't tell the kids.  I assured them there were no bears.  Then I made sure to clear the tent free of any candy or food of any sort...just in case.  About the deers, yes, deers.  We saw these two fellas several times and at one point I was probably 20 feet away from one of them.  If only I had my camera out.  Face smack. 

How we cooked.  To be fair we also had our gas stove up there and used it once or twice.  Ummmm...a thing about lighting charcoal.  Bring a chimney.  My buddy and I were sent up to cook while the menfolk fished...and we had to light these ourselves...without the intuitive knowledge that men have regarding fire and food.   They weren't the briquettes that already have lighter fluid in them, either.  Nope.  I am pretty sure we went through an entire newspaper and several paper towels trying to get the dang things to light.  Then on top of that we used about 4 times more briquettes than we needed, JUST TO MAKE SURE!  And then on top of that, we tried to chop wood ourselves to make kindling to help get the fire going to help get the charcoal going....with an ax. An ACTUAL ax.  

Yeah....so I at least didn't attempt to cut my thumb and toe off like my faithful assistant....who is pregnant. gulp.  That coulda been bad, real bad. After she ummmm...did her chopping attempt, I took over and I'm pretty sure I had about the same amount of force a newborn kitten would have when striking ax to wood. Very effective.  

In case you are worried we starved this night, have no fear, somehow we got the charcoal to light and enjoyed a lovely dinner.  Many, many hours later.  All appendages still accounted for.

Where we were.  Pretty.

How we mountain manned up.   Yup, it's the machete again.  You have no idea how handy a machete is to a man.  In all things.  Constructing shelves, camping, fending off wild forest beasts...

What we did for fun.  The regular fish fishing wasn't great.  But the crayfish (crawdad?) fishing was AWESOME!!  I had no idea you could catch a crayfish on a fishing pole, turns out you can.  

We have at least 6 in there and they were sure fun to look at...but NOT touch. We had at least one pinching/throwing of the crayfish incident.  

Disclaimer....

No crayfish were killed during this camping adventure.  Flung at a mom who was trying to take a picture at the time and then dropped on the ground...maybe.  But we're catch and release kinda people.  At least this time.

Sweet child of mine, smile for the camera. 

Don't wiggle.

Smile normal.

No laughing.

With teeth.

Child!

This is no time for fun!!

TAKING PICTURES IS SERIOUS BUSINESS!!!

Phew.  Thank you.

What a fun time.  In addition to all of the above, there was BB gun shooting, bow and arrow shooting, applying of mass quantities of bug spray, frog catching, butterfly catching, playing in the swamp, more applying of bug spray, running and playing wolves, bike riding, hiking and deer spotting.

Thanks for reading!

Heather