A Long Awaited Trip

Last summer, I very excitedly bought myself a hiking pack.  I'd been wanting one for years and had spent a LOT of time researching, asking opinions, and reading reviews.  I finally settled on a beautiful blue Jansport pack that had more features that I really needed and fit like it was made just for me.  Devin and I planned to take a several day backpacking trip right after he finished Step One but the weather stopped us from going and led to other plans.  We never did make it camping again for the rest of a very busy 2011, and my pack began gathering dust.

Finally, over spring break, we were able to go camping.  Rain threatened once again, but we just couldn't stand to think about not making it this time either.  So, we loaded up our packs and headed out to Mistletoe State Park for one night.  The hike in was only a couple miles or so, and we were determined to make this trip happen.

As it turned out, the rain started falling as soon as we pulled into the parking lot at the park.  After a couple minutes of unease, we decided to put on hats and just go for it.  Thankfully, it stopped falling within a the first couple minutes of us walking and didn't start again until we arrived at our campsite.  We raced to set up our new tent (given to us last summer) that we hadn't used or even practiced setting up in ten months and got inside and dry within five minutes.



Once the rain finally passed, we headed over to a stream near our site to watch the dogs play and swim in by the waterfall.  This was a pretty big deal as Moose has previously been afraid of the water.  Devin used to have to carry him over any crossing as he freaked out if his paws even got wet.  But, here he was heading in for his first full fledged swim ever!  It happened many times over the rest of the trip then, too.

We cooked over the campfire for dinner and served up some very tasty red beans and rice with andouille sausage.  I was pretty proud of Devin for getting a fire going and getting this to work after all the rain we'd been having.  He's pretty awesome at stuff like that, though.

While Devin worked on the fire, I mixed up Orange cakes to cook in a coal pit.  We buried the oranges (wrapped in aluminum foil) with coals for an hour while we made s'mores.  Unfortunately, that didn't seem to be nearly long enough.  So, we put them back in the whole surrounded by many more coals and left them to cook overnight.

Next time, we're thinking the oranges may just need to be placed near the base of an active fire, because they were still just batter in the morning.  Instead, we ate a breakfast of leftover s'mores snacks and the snacks we'd brought with us.

Devin found a tibia at our campsite, and we debated carrying it out with us.  I was pretty excited thinking I had a shot to end up on the next episode of Bones (kidding...sort of), but Devin looked closer at some "mustache" part of it and determined it wasn't human...sigh.  So, it ended up staying at the camp site.

Overall, the only real bad part of the trip was that the mosquitoes were out in force thanks to the rain.  So, while the rain itself didn't cause much of a problem, it did lead to one big one.  Devin woke up with two big bug bites on his cheek amongst many other bites.  I don't know that we ever applied any bug spray to our faces, though.

My face was thankfully spared, but I did have quite a few bites on my legs.  My right ankle alone had 13 bites!  We spent the next several days using a combination of Benadryl cream, hydrocortisone cream, and IcyHot rub to try and calm all our bites.  Because of me being pregnant, we'd only used Off! Family Care bug spray as opposed to the Deep Woods with Deet spray, though, so we probably should have expected this to happen.

Unlike last time, they actually slept at night because we'd dosed them with Benadryl.  They'd been sneezing a good bit, and we did like the idea of insuring they would not keep us up so much.  Of course, our dogs were still tuckered out by the time we arrived back at the car. They'd played pretty hard for the whole trip and made sure they got the most out of their time in the woods on the way back.

I was actually pleasantly surprised with how pleasant the trip turned out.  I slept better than I thought I would and only had to get up once during the night--although I may have set a record for the number of times I had to pee in the woods over the whole trip.  There were relatively few glitches (we forgot leashes...oops!) and lots of pleasant time to talk and enjoy nature.  The night was beautiful once the rain clouds passed over, and almost all our food worked out perfectly.  So, this one can definitely be counted as a success!