Rush to the Middle: Roughing it in the desert

Last weekend we went camping, our first time in the desert, and our first time as a family. The husband has taken the boys camping several times before in the States, but I have managed to avoid going every other time (what? There have always been scheduling conflicts! Yeah, right!). To say I'm not a huge camper is a huge understatement. The husband, on the other hand, has a long Scout and family history of camping and cabining and all sorts of out-of-doors pursuits, so he is always enthusiastic to go and give the boys that experiment. This time, we jumped on the bandwagon of a father/son or Scout campout that turned into a much bigger ward campout at the last minute. I think there were more than 60 people there in the end.

So we loaded up our car with everything we could think of that we might need (and a little bit more) and headed out to Zekreet, a beach on the other side of the country, about an hour away. And, of course, the boys LOVED it. Zekreet is filled with huge limestone monoliths, perfect for climbing up and semi-sliding down. When we finally got out to our campsite after a 15 minute off-road ride along the beach and had been unloading for a few minutes, I looked around for E and found him almost at the top of the huge wall of rock behind us, happy as a clam. He must have climbed up and down the rock face 20 times in the next 24 hours, if not more. J, who started out getting to the top and then getting stuck, conquered his fears and was up just as often. Both boys were basically running wild all evening and all the next morning, happy to be doing something new.

We did the whole nine yards: s'mores, food cooked by the Scouts, an enormous breakfast with pancakes, eggs, breakfast burritos, and BACON, and looking for shells and playing in the water at the beach. Our night sleeping in the tent went relatively well: we separated the boys, putting J on the edge and E in between us, which was good choice since E turned into a whirling dervish at night and ended up perpendicular to the husband and I, at our feet. He did sit up suddenly at one earlier point and launch himself across where I had been sleeping and onto J's chest, but he was still asleep and I was able to wrestle him back to his sleeping area before J woke up enough to get upset. Must have been having a really vivid dream of some kind, perhaps about flying? We were with a mixed group of campers, so the teenagers stayed up far too late for me and the tents around ours had even younger kids, some of whom had rough nights of coughing and crying at various points, but we all managed to get some sleep, which I consider a win! Maybe we will try this camping thing more often next winter when it cools down enough for it again (the hot weather is almost here, so I think we might be out of weekends for now).

E on one of his many climbing adventures up the hills.

Here we are in front of our little blue tent. We ended up taking the rain flap off and sleeping on top of our sleeping bags and blankets for most of the night since it was cool out but there wasn't much of a breeze...until it started blowing so hard we thought our tent was going to fly away at 3am!

Eating fruit cocktail out a can, cuz I'm classy like that!

E with his favorite band of brothers!

Pensive or mesmerized J at the bonfire.

Did I tell you the husband got a new camera? He spent lots of time working on taking shots like these of they boys and their glow sticks!

A blurry shot of them at the top of the mountain.

A clearer picture of their "boys' club," which Mommy quickly shut down when the little girls climbing up made it to where the boys were. No girls allowed? I don't think so!