Their Annual Camping Trip

Every year my mother takes my older children on a one to two week camping trip in a National Park. I normally send off the kids with a backpack and kiss and settle down to enjoy the quiet bliss of an empty house. This year, I'm unemployed and I can't remember the last time that I did anything with my mother and daughters together that didn't consist of a family dinner or holiday at one of our homes. Voluntarily going camping with all of them for 5 days, never! I love to camp, I love my children, I love my mother, I just wasn't sure if I was going to love all of them together for that long. I'm an adventurous girl though and I'm unemployed so I really have no excuse not to join my family...

Day 1 was fairly easy. Mom worked the graveyard shift at the hospital last night so we'd load up and head out when she woke up around noon. She had a hard time sleeping and I ended up being the one running around trying to get my errands finished so we could leave at a decent hour. The five of us loaded into my mom's Ford Focus. I had managed to pack clothing for the three of us into one carry-on size suitcase. Besides that, we had three pairs of cowboy boots, one cowboy hat, my camera and DVD camcorder, and the girls toys in little backpacks. AshLee sat in the backseat with the girls with two plastic boxes sitting on her lap. One contained 9 live crickets to feed to the 11 live tarantulas in the other box, eeks! The first leg of our journey was pretty easy, drive from Bend, OR to Boise, ID and sleep at the Best Western. The only thought running through my head was that I would get to eat at my all-time favorite restaurant, the Cracker Barrel! Due to the time change, we ended up pulling into town for dinner around 8:30pm. I ordered my usual; raspberry lemonade, 10 oz rib eye steak medium rare with sides of macaroni & cheese, hashbrown casserole, and fried apples. By the time we left for the hotel, the sky was full of lightning, the trees were almost blowing in half with the wind, and the rain was coming down hard and heavy. And there's a poor girl on the back of a motorcycle in a tshirt and shorty shorts, it's gotta suck to be her!

So we're settled in for the night. The girls want to hit the swimming pool in the morning since we checked in too late to play tonight, and then it's about another 6 hours to the lodge in Yellowstone tomorrow. I hear there is no cell phone coverage or internet services so I'll update next week. Here's to a week of female family bonding!