The Great Manly Camping Update

This would be so much better with Kent telling the tales, since he was there and I was not. We are the experts on what we personally experienced and otherwise we're just some bloke retelling someone else's tales. Guess I'm the retelling bloke this time around.

Kent was a little sad on the way up. Kent has all the Harry Potter novels on audio, set up so he can listen while driving. Even though no one has touched the audio book stuff, or I should say, no adult has touched the audio books, Kent couldn't find them for his drive. That left him listening to a little music and a whole lot of Ean on the way up. The real entertainment was apparently the twins conversation.

They had a lively discussion about every broken tractor they passed. They discussed how sad it was. How the farmer couldn't use that tractor. What was wrong with it. You get the idea. Real in depth, broken tractor stuff. Kent said that when they finally passed a tractor that was obviously new and parked someplace like the driveway, the twins erupted into cheers for that tractor and the farmer that had fixed it.

If I could have been a fly on the wall for that one.

Then there was the actual drive up the eyebrow of a road to the campsite. David gave his daddy instructions to not fall off the mountain. Actually, first David made sure they were on the road, then made sure they were headed up and then he strongly advised Kent to back down the road where they would be safe. Kent had to break it to him that if he wanted to camp, they had to keep going up. Well, David conceeded that if that was the only choice to camp, they could keep going up, but his dad had better be very careful and not fall off!

Kent's been watching this trucking show on Netflix that takes place in India with extremely narrow roads on thousand feet cliffs. David probably would have been more at ease on that mountain road if he hadn't watched the trucking show with daddy.

They made it up the road and since Kent was sleeping with all the boys in the suburban, All he had to do was park. The stress of finding that "perfect spot" for a tent, was alleviated! Now Kent was searching for a fire. See last "father, son" camp out, Kent just borrowed a fire and didn't worry about building his own. This time no one was building a fire. Kent hadn't brought his own fire building stuff, so this was a problem.

Kent had brought hot dogs for dinner and marshmallows for the boys. Not having a fire really put a damper on his evening plans. Luckily a good friend of Kent's came up with his sons. This friend is studying to be a chef, and to Kent's absolute delight, he was able to feed hot dogs to all the kids and eat a dinner far nicer then he had dreamed of when packing earlier that day.

It was a win-win for all the men and boys involved, lol.

Both the twins did manage to burn their fingers on marshmallows later that night unfortunately. I don't believe the memories of these injuries will hinder the roasting of marshmallows during future camp outs. As far as the boys are concerned, it's just not a camp out without marshmallows!

The boys announced they were tired and ready for bed at ten. However Kent says the movement in the suburban kept going until well past 11:30. On the drive home the next day, there were some exhausted boys that napped in the car.

Kent was extremely impressed with how much ground the boys cover while they sleep. Ean stayed in his section of the 'burb. He was down by the front, with his personal belongings stashed in all kinds of crevices, that he of course lost by morning. However Greg was near Kent's head, okay, so he didn't start out close but he moved right next to his dad several times during the night.

Kent also said that David undid himself from the sleeping bag over and over again.

Now for morning, I didn't get any reports on breakfast, but I assume everyone was fed and happy. There were activities the next day. Someone obviously went into a lot of effort to plan what happened next and it's so painfully obvious the planners were men and not mothers.

Someone had this nifty idea to have Gadianton robbers, an evil group of murderous thieves in the Book of Mormon, attack the camp. For simplicities sake, we will now refer to them as the twins do, Bad Guys, attacked the camp.

Kent would like me to point out that whenever the twins called them bad guys, Ean corrected them and said pretend bad guys.

Passed out to the group of children were wooden swords, extremely long wooden swords, so the children could fight the (pretend) bad guys. This is the part where obviously no moms were present in the planning. The swords are at least three and a half feet long, definitely taller then the twins.

At this point I planned to insert photos to show the wicked looking swords, but photobucket isn't cooperating with me. I may just download Kent's pictures to facebook.

Anyway, the boys all attacked the (pretend) bad guys with the swords. Kent said it looked rather hairy for the (pretend) bad guys, so a little organization allowed each boy to take a turn sword fighting.

At this point there was a problem with all the self starters who felt that throwing pine cones was an acceptable method of continuing this battle against evil, even if it wasn't their turn with the swords. It took the words of multiple adults to multiple children multiple times to stop the assault on the (pretend) bad guys. Ean was amongst the pine cone throwers, I know you're all surprised by this. Yeah right. :)

Kent said that there was only a dozen or so instances where eyes were almost lost but in the end everyone survived including the (pretend) bad guys without anyone needing first aid. I should add, I don't know how many mishaps were narrowly avoided that Kent did not see.

Someone also made real metal tomahawks, which were thrown at wooden targets. Kent filmed both of the twins throwing theirs. I would have had a heart attack on the spot if I realized my five year olds were throwing sharpened metal at wood.

Finally Kent did take his boys fishing. The twins are determined that fishing is to feed the fish. They will be scarred for life if they ever catch anything and witness a fish being gutted and fried for dinner. There was also a stop at the Grace fish hatchery to really feed fish. After Kent lost a quarter in the food dispenser, he was given a huge chunk of fish food which the boys dumped into the water by the fist fulls. Talk about feeding frenzy!

So that's the guys big camp out. They had a blast, obviously. They may be disappointed our next family camp out when we're not attacked by (pretend) bad guys. Oh well.