Carter Lake Campout

We are a pure car camping kind of family.  Dave is a backpacker and could hike 80 lbs of gear on his back for miles upon miles, but with the amount of gear we need to take our family overnight, we need a large vehicle and a camp site that we can reach out and touch from our car window.  A few weeks ago, we realized that this weekend might be our only chance of the summer to go camping as a family.  So we looked around for availability and somewhat blindly chose Carter Lake—near Loveland, CO for our campground.  There was one campsite left so we booked it.  When we arrived, we realized why this site was unreserved out of the list of dozens of campsites:

Here’s our car--

from the perspective of the campsite itself.  There were a few advantages…like being a little more secluded, having a nice view of the lake, and being close to a toilet (pro or con?), but the obvious disadvantage being the major hike up the hill from the car with 8,000,000 items from the car, most of which weighed 100 pounds each. 

Luckily, we’ve got a big strong man in the family: 

The next problem we encountered was the 8 x 8 (ok, maybe it was 10 x 10) tent pad—the only level area in the campsite.  Our tent, “the tabernacle”, is roughly 10 x 16.  We didn’t really have a choice, so we set it up and left the last 6 feet hanging off the tent pad on the upslope. 

It’s kind of hard to tell from the picture, but there are two queen blow up mattresses in there and the port-a-crib (which no one slept in).  We put the kids on the upslope and of course they slid down to the bottom of the bed all night long.

See the awesome rocky scree all around the tent pad area?  Guess who tripped and fell 500 times in the 36 hours we were there.  All of us!

We survived the first night (barely), and in the morning we took the kids fishing—for the first time.  Actually, I think it was my first time fishing as well. 

      

Good ole’ Sponge Bob.  Which incidentally is not allowed to be viewed at my house.

Try to remember that I am 15 weeks pregnant.  There’s a song in Madagascar 2 where the man hippo, Moto-Moto, sings to Gloria about how he likes his women “I like ‘em big, I' like ‘em chunky”… Dave was singing this to me all weekend.  Very reassuring.

In the afternoon we drove around to the other side of the lake and took the kids swimming.  There was an inordinate amount of teeny boppers in skimpy swim wear, but otherwise, everyone had a great time.  Then we drove to Chili’s for dinner.  Cause we’re like that. 

When we got back to camp, Dave gave everyone a s’mores lesson or in other words, how to burn your marshmallow without catching your leg or arm hair on fire.

 

This is Grace.  She looks and acts like this a lot.  With or without a marshmallow in her hand.

 

We think maybe she is having a private vision of the future and sees her first boyfriend in the hall at school.  High school guys go for that airheaded look.  Or so she thinks. 

 

Stuart has never seen Napoleon Dynamite, but I am pretty sure he was channeling Uncle Rico…

…and we don’t let our 2 year old hold her own s’mores.

unless is is 80% in her mouth already. 

We again survived another night and in the morning Stuart found this super awesome caterpillar:

We then spent the next hour hauling all of our 5,000,000 items down the hill to the truck and drove home.  And we only stopped twice to pee.  In the hour and twenty minute drive home. 

Yaayyyy for camping.