Rain Camping – I Don’t Recommend It.

I’ve just returned from four days of camping…in the rain. Once your sleeping bag and pillow are a cold, wet, blob, you might as well pack it up and head home, except I couldn’t. Twenty of us parents were in this for the long haul.


I plastered a smile on my face, helped to dig trenches around flooded tents, hugged children who were missing parents, and used my blow dryer on the coldest little ones.


Around the parents I broke my complaint-fast, and I haven’t laughed so hard. Their sarcastic wit had me rolling. By the time the thunder and lightening began, we’d all become fast friends – comrades in battle.


Before I share the adorable pictures of my daughter and her friends with you this weekend, I thought I’d share a few lessons learned.

• I learned how to sleep in the back of a car like a transient (minus the dog).
• I learned a body can live for days on Doritos Ranch chips and flat Shasta soda.
• I learned just how close is “too close” to put your shoe by a campfire.
• I learned that $5.99 for one gallon of milk is the sale price in Point Reyes.
• I learned that campfire songs stay in your head FOREVER.

• I learned that husbands laugh when wives call home while rain-camping.
• I learned that an eleven-year-old daughter is the elixir for a cold-wet-mom.