8/16/2011 Back from camping!

Drove back from our camping/river-beach/canoeing trip in Guerneville today. Editing pictures, haven't had a chance to post yet. Great, beautiful, enjoyable trip overall - a terrific, if imperfect, start to camping with all three by myself. More tomorrow!




(Posting photos like these always presents a dilemma: do I repeat them in the "real" post with complete photos, or replace this quickie-post with the "real" one? Ah well, I'm too tired tonight to worry about it.)

Age is a good thing when it comes to camping -- there was a huge difference between Gabriel and Julian+Katrina. Gabriel still needs some reminding, but he's crossed the threshold from "helping" being a teaching moment to "helping" actually helping. I was so grateful that I could quickly bark an order at him ("ok, now go empty the water container and then go put the garbage away!") and count on him to be there with me, whereas the other two are still in the little-kid mode of barely going along -- often at great pains -- with requests ("time to pack all your clothes in your knapsack!" x 100) and needing tons of prompting and supervision.

I was so proud of Gabriel that I started to entertain a whole new venture: true backpacking! (like where you hike to your campsite carrying all your food and shelter with you -- not dumping it all in the back of a car). I've never backpacked and never, until today, thought I'd have anyone to do it with. Could we pull it off?!

Turns out -- Facebook makes uploading a lot of photos MUUUCH easier than Blogger. Here's the trip in FB format:

Facebook Album - Camping-Canoeing August 2011

8/16/2011