camping is certainly an adventure…in insanity

A few weeks ago we made our pilgrimage to Yosemite.  It was … interesting.

Emma loved everything about camping except nighttime.  The first two of the three nights her nose bled.  And when I say ‘bled’ I mean to say, bled all over her face and sleeping back and jammies.  The first night we were there she slept on this thing:

Good in theory.  Bad in practice.  It’s a sleeping bag that’s sort of attached to an air mattress.  The air mattress is more like an inflatable raft you take into the pool.  Slightly uncomfortable and VERY LOUD.  So the noise she made moving her around kept her from really falling asleep and kept me from sleeping at all.  She whimpered a bit and tossed and turned until she just woke up completely and started crying.  I got up to calm her down and noticed darkness all over her face.  Grabbed a flashlight and almost had a heart attack when I realized the darkness was blood.

Not.  Fun.

Eventually I brought her into my sleeping bag (I got a ‘big & tall’ bag and it was perfect for fitting either my preggo pillow or a fussy 5 year old) around 5 in the morning.  She slept for a couple of hours and I slept for around an hour.

The first full day at Yosemite was …. long.

We did make it to the valley later in the morning.  Our campground was about 30 minutes or so from the valley.  We headed out with really no plan whatsoever.  Walked around for a bit, but the kids were really tired (and me too) so we didn’t really hike around like we planned.  We did get ice cream and the kids participated in a scavenger hunt that the park puts on and they had fun with that.  I didn’t take as many pictures as I thought I would, as I wanted to, but I did get some.

Just some ground cover.  I thought it looked purty.

Dominic hitching a ride with Ji-Chan.

My brother, looking excited.

Trying to decide what kind of ice cream to get.

Working diligently on their scavenger hunt pictures.

The obligatory picture of Half Dome.

Mossy.

Chloe kicking back.

Sunshiny day.

Before we headed out to Yosemite we got an email from Park Services informing us that nearby our campsite they would be doing a controlled burn of several acres.  Luckily, we weren’t really affected by the smoke, but it was much closer than we thought it would be.

It’s hard to see during the daytime, but this was from the campsite across from us.  From there you could see across the road where they were doing the burn.  All day and during the night as well we could hear trees falling.  I couldn’t believe how loud it was!

Much easier to see at night!  Nuts & crazy and luckily the kids were sleeping when we saw this.  Though Dominic was pretty stoked to see all the fire fighters and trucks!

Despite all the pitfalls we did have a good time.  I love camping, the tents and sleeping bags, s’mores and all the camping food.  It’s just fun and nostalgic.  Plus we were there with some of my favorite people.  Next time though, I think we’ll stay a little closer to home!