Camping has always held a certain mystique for me. Maybe that' s because I haven't done it for years and have forgotten certain drawbacks. My memories include such warm fuzzies as, attempting to climb a 2,000 foot elevation and down the other side in under 6 hours, worrying about hungry grizzly bears (they eat you!), and eating dirt because I ran out of food. Well, maybe I don't actually remember eating the dirt, but I do remember seeing pictures of me eating dirt. Of course I was around 2 at the time and maybe I was not so much hungry, as just really, really curious what dirt tasted like. Like I said I don't actually have memory of that memory. Well, the other two I actually do remember, and like I said, they have obviously left me with warm fuzzies.
So why would a perfectly sane family (such as ours?) decide to leave their comfortable home (with only DEAD bugs inside) to travel far away from comfort and peace and huddle in a flimsy fabric cave and present themselves as a delicacy for the native (completely non-dead) bug squad? Two words. Camp Fires. And also mushrooms. Oh, and hiking too.
The fascination with camping is intricately tied with the little pyromaniac in most of us that laughs manically when the tiny spark we have re-lit 17 times finally gets going, and lights our extra smokey camp fire. We tend this eye watering creature with loving care and try our darnedest not to allow our children to fall into it. Or to allow it to transform the tent, forest, or park around us into a blowtorch around us. Also fire is hypnotic to watch. After just a few moments we find ourselves watching reruns of Saved By the Bell in its flamey depths. Or maybe that's just me. I bet Daylin sees the Brady Bunch.
Aside from fires, going on hikes among the trees provides endless opportunities for discovering wonderful different varieties of highly toxic mushrooms! Don't touch at risk of finding yourself on the forest floor vomiting your guts out or on a peyote style journey through a multicolored wonderland of hallucination! We found several thousand of these wondrous fungi on our camping trip and marveled at each and every one of them. It was magical (NOT in a hallucinogenic way). Also we noticed on our hike, that if you look carefully, you might find a tree with a belly button. Or maybe we brushed a psychedelic mushroom along the way. We took a picture. You be the judge! In any case, we have returned, and if we listen to the kids, I guess we'll be returning to the world of mushrooms and fires and hikes in the not too distant future. Who knows what memories we'll be making next.
The day to day of the trip for those of you who didn't follow my ramblings was this: We went down to Brown County State Park on Friday night and got there around 7:30. Setting up the tent went pretty well as we had previously done a back yard test run. Good thing too, because we were running out of light by the time we finished. Fire and smores followed, and there was much rejoicing. We had 2 queen air mattresses and our night was surprisingly restful. The next day we made breakfast(sausages yum!) hiked and played in the park. We made a skillet Betty Crocker dinner (never getting the ham and hash browns one again!) More smores and bedtime story followed. Next day we packed up and headed home in time for church. The bug bites were amazing. I didn't noticed most of them until 2 days after I got home, but they mostly stayed with me for a week.
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