Make Room!

My camping and backpacking trips have typically been blessed with good fortune. I usually experience pretty decent weather and conditions so I suppose I've been a little spoiled. The odds caught up with me this past weekend on our 2nd Annual Family Backpacking Extravaganza.

Seventeen of us (Stouts, Barneys and Crockers) went to the Grand Mesa area in western Colorado. We ranged in age from 7 to 49 so we tried to pick a hike that accommodated all. We ended up at Bull Reservoir. The map showed it was just 2 relatively flat miles from the trail head but it didn't show that there was 100 yards of ankle deep swamp we had to hike through. That was the first hardship and we had to deal with damp shoes and socks for the rest of the weekend. The kids insisted on cooking their shoes around the fire but I just let mine dry out on my feet.

The 2nd hardship was a biblical plague of mosquitoes. I may be getting forgetful but I don't recall ever being in that kind of swarm before. As soon as we got to camp we built 2 very smokey fires which helped a little bit. We intentionally put green wood on the fire to keep the smoke up. Mosquitoes tend not to like my blood so I suffered less than most. I counted 3 bites when I got home and I saw one pair of legs that had to have 50 bites per leg. One participant who shall remain nameless counted 7 bites on her rump from just one squat in the bushes. (camping is one of the times I'm most grateful to be a guy!)

Finally there was the rain. We were luck to only get a few quick showers during the day but a monsoon visited us on Saturday night. Fifteen of us had the proper equipment and stayed warm and dry but because of my previous good luck with the weather I under prepared. I was in a cheap Walmart one man tent and Jonah was on a hammock with a plastic sheet over him. At 1am, the winds were so strong that Jonah fell out of his hammock. At 1:50 the rain started coming down hard. At 1:55, the hammock had turned into a bathtub and I heard Jonah shouting "MAKE ROOOOM!" just before he came barrelling into my one man tent. I made room but we were both against the tent walls and couldn't straighten our legs. At 2:15, my cheap tent became so saturated that it started raining on the inside. By then I was checking the time every 10 minutes and thinking "12 more hours and I'll be home", "11 hours and 45 minutes and I'll be taking a hot shower", etc.

So those were the bad things. The fun memories include lots of laughing, a badminton tournament (congratulations Jen and Sam), BEAUTIFUL scenery, bacon on a stick, campfire games, knot lessons, an appreciation for warm beds and indoor plumbing, and just being with old friends and telling old stories again. The good far out weighed the bad. Next year will find us in Escalante, Utah. Let me know if you'd like to come!