If someone where to ask me or Chris if we like to camp, we would answer with a resounding "Yes." However, we realized the other day that ever since Krystal was born, the one Mattson who was born minus the over-sized adventure bone that the rest of us posses, we have not gone camping. That's right, it's been over 5 years since we've gone camping as a family which means that the youngest two girls have never been! We decided that Labor Day weekend would be a good time to break them in and build some character. As usual, we waited until the last minute to make our plans, so Friday morning I got on the phone to find a campground nearby that wasn't already booked. Then, the kids and I dusted the cobwebs off of the camping equipment, bought some food and packed up. Once Chris got home, we rolled out headed for the Deer Trail Campground in Wytheville, VA.
So far so good.
The first order of operation was making foil dinners. The kids had no idea what foil dinners where, but loved the idea of making their individual packets.
While the dinners cooked we headed over to the playground for some fun.
Dinner was fabulous, in fact, we've decided that foil dinners are the best food ever!
That is, after S'mores of course. Amber really enjoyed getting all marshmallowy.
After S'mores the kids were begging to go to bed (I think they were just excited to get into the tents). But, as all good parents should do, we told them No and made them stay up. We sang some campfire songs and I told them a story about the Man in the Moon, but the fun couldn't last forever and we finally tucked them into their sleeping bags. This is where things start to go from all fun to character building. First of all, we don't actually have sleeping bags for everyone so some people had to share. After playing a game of musical tents during the middle of the night, some people finally got some sleep, the rest of us froze. Those that were sleeping were then awakened by an earth shattering sound also known as, a Rooster. (By the way, roosters do not only crow when the sun comes up, they also do it all through the night.)
So, cold, tired, and dirty we drug ourselves out of bed and started a fire to keep warm and cook breakfast. Pretty soon the sense of warm bacon and eggs in our bellies had us lulled into thinking we were ready for more adventure. In our sleep deprived state we made the decision to go hiking. We do love to hike so we headed for a trail called "The Seven Sisters," named such because it takes you over the top of seven mountain ranges. At the trailhead the sign read 4.8 miles and we were like, "Well, we'll just go a little ways and then come back."
Things started out okay, there were lots of neat things to see, especially the cool fungi.
The weather was perfect, not to hot, not to cold, so we kept going up and up.
Amber fell asleep, but that was okay because she was just being carried anyway. We stopped for a snack and decided to keep going. There were orange blazes on the trees to mark the trail, but no markers to tell us how far we'd gone, so we kept going. We climbed one of the "sisters" that we named Killer because it was about a 45 degree angle up, then stopped for lunch (and a nap for me). By this time everyone was pretty tired, but we had gone far enough that we figured we were about half-way done and might as well go the rest of the way to the top to see the view and down the other side (this was not a unanimous decision, but an executive one). Krystal started to get really tired so we tried to distract her with comedy acts that will forever remind us of this trip ("What's he doing? He's eatin' a bush, that's what he's doing").
Finally after a couple more "sisters" we made it to this sign. It reads, "Highest point on trail 3310 ft." and showed that there were still 2 more miles if we kept going in the direction we were headed and 3 miles if we went back the way we came. We were proud to know we had ascended about 800 ft., but disappointed to find that there was no view, it being blocked by trees all around and this hike was taking a lot longer than we had anticipated. This was the point when tears were shed and we learned a great lesson - once you get to the top of a mountain, there's only one way to get off, keep going. So that's what we did. Needless to say, we made it. We sang songs, we gave piggyback rides, we had some scraped up knees, but all in all, we are in tact and can live with the satisfaction of knowing that we conquered "The Seven Sisters." We talked about all the things we learned about ourselves on this hike, about how we learned to persevere, to rely on our family, that things were easier when we kept a good attitude, and that we could do anything we set our minds to. I hope that once all our sore muscles have healed we can look back on this experience and be happy for the character that we've built and that those traits will help us with the challenges that we will face in this life.
So far so good.
The first order of operation was making foil dinners. The kids had no idea what foil dinners where, but loved the idea of making their individual packets.
While the dinners cooked we headed over to the playground for some fun.
Dinner was fabulous, in fact, we've decided that foil dinners are the best food ever!
That is, after S'mores of course. Amber really enjoyed getting all marshmallowy.
After S'mores the kids were begging to go to bed (I think they were just excited to get into the tents). But, as all good parents should do, we told them No and made them stay up. We sang some campfire songs and I told them a story about the Man in the Moon, but the fun couldn't last forever and we finally tucked them into their sleeping bags. This is where things start to go from all fun to character building. First of all, we don't actually have sleeping bags for everyone so some people had to share. After playing a game of musical tents during the middle of the night, some people finally got some sleep, the rest of us froze. Those that were sleeping were then awakened by an earth shattering sound also known as, a Rooster. (By the way, roosters do not only crow when the sun comes up, they also do it all through the night.)
So, cold, tired, and dirty we drug ourselves out of bed and started a fire to keep warm and cook breakfast. Pretty soon the sense of warm bacon and eggs in our bellies had us lulled into thinking we were ready for more adventure. In our sleep deprived state we made the decision to go hiking. We do love to hike so we headed for a trail called "The Seven Sisters," named such because it takes you over the top of seven mountain ranges. At the trailhead the sign read 4.8 miles and we were like, "Well, we'll just go a little ways and then come back."
Things started out okay, there were lots of neat things to see, especially the cool fungi.
The weather was perfect, not to hot, not to cold, so we kept going up and up.
Amber fell asleep, but that was okay because she was just being carried anyway. We stopped for a snack and decided to keep going. There were orange blazes on the trees to mark the trail, but no markers to tell us how far we'd gone, so we kept going. We climbed one of the "sisters" that we named Killer because it was about a 45 degree angle up, then stopped for lunch (and a nap for me). By this time everyone was pretty tired, but we had gone far enough that we figured we were about half-way done and might as well go the rest of the way to the top to see the view and down the other side (this was not a unanimous decision, but an executive one). Krystal started to get really tired so we tried to distract her with comedy acts that will forever remind us of this trip ("What's he doing? He's eatin' a bush, that's what he's doing").
Finally after a couple more "sisters" we made it to this sign. It reads, "Highest point on trail 3310 ft." and showed that there were still 2 more miles if we kept going in the direction we were headed and 3 miles if we went back the way we came. We were proud to know we had ascended about 800 ft., but disappointed to find that there was no view, it being blocked by trees all around and this hike was taking a lot longer than we had anticipated. This was the point when tears were shed and we learned a great lesson - once you get to the top of a mountain, there's only one way to get off, keep going. So that's what we did. Needless to say, we made it. We sang songs, we gave piggyback rides, we had some scraped up knees, but all in all, we are in tact and can live with the satisfaction of knowing that we conquered "The Seven Sisters." We talked about all the things we learned about ourselves on this hike, about how we learned to persevere, to rely on our family, that things were easier when we kept a good attitude, and that we could do anything we set our minds to. I hope that once all our sore muscles have healed we can look back on this experience and be happy for the character that we've built and that those traits will help us with the challenges that we will face in this life.Anyone want to go camping next weekend?
4 comments:
Sounds like you had a great time....hike tears and all.
Ryan and I love to camp too! We always end up waiting to the last
minute and then it never happens.
It sounds like you had a great time. Lesson learned from all my Girls Camp hikes... food is the best distractor.
Sounds like a fun weekend! I can't say my Labor Day is nearly as exciting ;) In fact we are just enjoying not having to go anywhere.
you guys are tough. way to go! we were going to go adventuring...but then decided...nah, lets do nothing instead. so we did. and it was glorious. we've had enough adventure this year!
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