Took the boys Camping

One of the things we planned to do while Sophie was at Girls camp was to take the boys camping.  So we loaded up the van with our tents, sleeping bags, and all sorts of camping gear and headed up the hill. Evidently this is a very dry year so we had to go up pretty high up into the Sierras so we could have a camp fire.  They were prohibited any lower down. We ended up going to the exact same spot as the girls did for their camp. We pitched our tents at a camp ground right across the street. We could even hear the air horn wake up call the girls got each morning.

 We took along the 16 year old cousin who is a camping pro to be our guide. He showed us city slickers how this camping thing really works.

 It really is a beautiful place. And since it was in the triple digits down at Grandma's house the cooler temperatures were very welcome.

 Here we are with our tents up and our first meal on the table. Canned chicken noodle soup warmed over the fire in the dutch oven.

 Henry is a fire bug. He was constantly feeding the fire. This of course ment we needed to gather and break up a lot of sticks and such.

 The boys took turns with the hatchet.

 Before the sun was even down the boys broke out the marsh mellows for smores.

 After a night of sleep that even included a little drizzle of rain in the night we headed out to explore a bit of the land around.

 The creek was cold but fun to walk through.

 When they found a more quiet spot our guide (cousin D) started to show the boys how to skip rocks. My husband quickly got in on the act. All the boys went on and on like this for quite awhile.

 Henry started to get bigger and bigger rocks to throw in.

 Once they had their fill we headed out for more exploring.

 They found this shelter.

 When we returned to our camp we were surprised by our camp ground neighbor. He spent his morning fishing and brought back 6 trout. He gave them to us.

We slapped them into our cast iron skillet and lit the stove for a quick fist fry. Henry didn't quite know what to think about frying fish with their heads and fins still attached. He kept telling us to cut the heads off. We just added a little butter to the pan and fried them up.

 Our neighbor loved seeing the boys pull the meat off the bones and eat that lovely trout.

 After our lovely lunch the boys set to work whittling. They each took a pocket knife and started to smooth out the ends of a few sticks.

 We played a lot of cards and sat around the fire talking and telling stories. There was even a bit of singing.

After one more night sleeping on the ground we headed home to swim again in Grandma's pool. We were so filthy it was the perfect ending to our camp out.  My boys got to commune with nature and do a lot of manly things. They loved it!