In preparation for our Yellowstone trip we decided to actually go camping overnight to try it out. We hadn't taken out the gear for a couple years, and we had kids who didn't remember anything about camping.
It took a lot longer to pack than I had anticipated, and by the time we left it was 8 PM. Fortunately, we were only going about 20 minutes away. It was super hot (end of July) and I couldn't wait to escape the heat.
As we headed up I saw some rain clouds coming in. I wanted to hurry up and set up camp before the storm hit us. It almost worked. By the time we got up there, picked our spot, filled out the registration card and paid, opened the back of the van and started unloading, the rain started.
Fortunately I felt like I should bring a bunch of ponchos. That kept the kids dry. I was so hot though that I didn't like wearing it, so I didn't. By the time we got three tents, one huge air bed, four cots, and a bunch of sleeping bags, I was literally dripping wet.
We had decided to try out camping on a Monday-Tuesday so there would be fewer people at the campground. That was a good move. We had the whole loop mostly to ourselves. So there weren't people around to hear the squealing, giggling, and laughing.
The biggest problem though was the baby. We left her in the car while we set up. She kept crying, and we kept checking on her to see what was wrong. It just looked like she wanted to run around in the rain with the rest of the kids though, so we didn't let her out. It turns out she was being eaten alive by mosquitoes. She didn't know to slap them, so she ended up with 20 bites. We had to show her how to slap them. She figured it out, and by the end of the night she was doing pretty good.
After that though she was exhausted and fell asleep before dinner was ready. We let her be, but by about midnight she was up and hungry. That's when I found out she gets a bottle to take to bed with her. I stopped giving her one about six months ago, so I didn't think anything of it. Peter's been tucking her in at night though, and has been giving her a bottle. So she woke up in a strange place, in her play pen, in a tent, and had no bottle.
We tried everything by by 12:30 AM Peter decided to go back down and grab a bottle for her. He grabbed a few other things that we forgot, but didn't get back until 2 AM. By then I had had it. Stephanie and Mandy were up giggling and talking, the baby was crying, and I was doing anything but sleep.
Peter showed up and I fell asleep, only to be continually woken up by "mom! Mom!" from Lisa throughout the night. At one point she had completely stripped (her usual, but not good when you're camping!). It was a long night.
About 8 AM my girls' tent was awake and chatting. I kept yelling to them to be quiet, but that didn't work. By 8:30 I was up. Tired, grumpy, and hungry. At that point I started re-thinking our whole trip to Jackson and Yellowstone. We limited the camping, cut the days, and simplified it a lot.
The experience though was good. The kids all handled camping in Yellowstone much better.
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