- even cheese-grating can be fun, when you do it with friends.
- a six-year-old can subsist on little more than quesadillas and marshmallows for three days.
- when a camping coordinator reads the “camping guidelines” aloud during dinner, including the guideline about adults modeling responsible alcohol use, she is bound to have a bottle of beer in her hand.
- if you tell a group of five to eight-year-olds that they can “fight” with kindling sticks only if they do so in slow motion, they may surprise you by following your instructions.
- if you tell your twelve-year-old that she must sleep in your family tent, rather than in a tent full of other twelve and thirteen-year-olds, there will be some wrath to deal with at bedtime.
- you can knit complicated lace patterns while supervising your six-year-old in the Santa Cruz surf.
- older teens who have spent previous camping trips hiding out in the farthest reaches of campsites may suddenly spend stretches of time alongside the adults, seeming to enjoy themselves.
- if you put out an expensive hunk of Humboldt Fog truffle-laced goat cheese for your co-chefs to enjoy, an eight-year-old with a sophisticated palate will snarf half the thing down before you notice what is happening.
- on the other hand, if you leave out a bag of grated jack while making an aforementioned quesadilla, a far-less-sophisticated adult may approach, stick his dirty camping hands into your cheese and do some snarfing of his own.
- homeschooling mothers outfitted with headlamps will continue knitting long past dark.
- homeschooling fathers outfitted with guitars and a trumpet, plus one talented 17-year-old with a mandolin, can lead one heck of a hootenanny.
- if a park ranger approaches on Thursday night to complain about the noise generated by a group of adults talking quietly around a campfire, he will be nowhere to be found on Saturday night during said hootenanny, even considering said trumpet.
- despite what naysayers may say, eighteen hearts of romaine does not make too much caesar salad for sixty-one hungry campers.
- you can make a pretty tasty lasagna with a cast iron dutch oven and a bag of briquettes.
- despite the all the shopping and packing beforehand, and the unpacking and laundering after, the trip will be worth it. And then some.
we *heart* camping
It was really fun.
Every time, I think, “It can’t get better,” and then it does. Maybe it’s moving out of the toddler years. . .
I’m still doing laundry.
This sounds great. Our Small co-op is planning a camping trip in June 2009.
Thanks for stopping by my blog, Lin!
Homeschooling camping trips are the best. Our group has gone on two per year for several years now. I know those trips will be among my kids’ favorite memories of homeschooling.
Ooooooooh, that sounds like my best dream ever.