Austin’s first camping trip

Austin’s first camping trip
This may be cheating a bit since Austin is the star of this story, but since he can’t remember it I figure the next best thing is for me to tell it on his behalf.
I want my children to love nature and feel at home in the elements. I figure the best way to do this is expose them at a young age to the great out doors. I’m sad to say that Austin’s first exposure ended up exposing him a little too much. I just hope it won’t back fire on me causing Austin to have deep subliminal memories of not liking camping all that much.
Austin was a little less than 3 months old. Heidi and I had a 3 day weekend and wanted to capitalize on it. Camping all three days would be a bit much with a baby so should we hike up Friday night and camp over till Saturday or Sunday night and camp till Monday? The weather man said it would be best for us to go sooner than later since Saturday day evening was expecting a storm. This would not be much of a problem we hoped since we would be hiking out Saturday afternoon. Heidi’s brother, his wife and our friend Rich would be coming with us. We made up some delicious tin foil dinners and were excited to get on the mountain. It was a beautiful day and the hike into the camp site as well as that night went as planned. Until about 3am that is. Heidi and I woke to the sounds of thunder and hail. I was worried that our rain fly would not hold or water could flow between our ground tarp and tent. But to my delight the tent stayed dry. Austin woke up periodically as new babies do to eat and with each waking I was still pleased to find us dry. If I had a flash light I would have not been so confident because I would have seen that our little tent* was caving under the weight of the hail. When the morning came I saw how dire our situation was. The top of the tent was almost touching our noses, for a brief moment I felt some pride for the fact that we were still dry. However we would not be for very long. I called over to the other tent where our three companions were sleeping and they were dry with no threat of infiltrating water. Heidi and I made up our minds, we stuffed our sleeping bags and packed our stuff just incase our tent didn’t hold and ran it and ourselves over to the neighboring tent. This tent was one of those Coleman Costco jobs with a high ceiling and plenty of space.
So there the five of us were, very comfortable with all intentions of waiting out the storm. But if you recall there were six people on this little trip. Austin was not comfortable, but would be as soon as he emptied his bowels into his diaper. Unfortunately his diaper was not quite big enough and poop exploded up his back and down his legs. This was not so good but fixable. So Heidi set about to remedy the problem with Katie’s help. I was on my feet at this time and noticed that the top of the tent was bowing a little under the hail. Katie told me to simply swat it, she’d done it before, and so I did. Instantly a rush of water poured into the tent. In slow motion I saw this water fall towards my unsuspecting innocent son’s face. He gasped as ice cold water bathed his face and washed down his chest. Remember he was nude because of the blow out diaper. Seconds later but what seemed like forever, his gasp turned into an enraged cry. Now Heidi’s skills would be tested. Could she calm, clean, dry and dress a baby in a tent that was slowly filling with frigid water. Well she could and did but it was not easy. I couldn’t help because I was trying to keep the rest of the hail/water out by holding the broken flap. Water trickled down my arm and soaked my clothes. I felt more and more sorry for my little trusting boy.
Now we were not so able to wait out the storm. Poopy water in the bottom of the tent and freezing water entering it helped make the decision to just break camp in the hail. Heidi sought refuge in a near by out house while I packed up our tent and everything else. While packing we noticed many fallen branches, some of which were quite large and could have done some damage had they fallen on us. Finally we set out with our noses pointing home. Austin slept most of the hike back and was nice and warm even though the rain didn’t let up. Well…it finally did when we reached the car.
* This is one of those tents that has two poles but instead of crossing each other they are just a big half circle and a little half circle allowing the tent to droop in the middle.
Michael 2006