Father's Day Camping Trip

For weeks my dad has been saying that he wanted to go camping and so after finally digging out all of our camping stuff out of the storage shed as well as weather permitting (sort of, I'll get to that later)  we decided to do our first camping trip of the year on Father's Day weekend.  Since neither Jeremy nor my mom had friday off it was decided we would head out Saturday morning.  The area we picked was in between Tollgate and Elgin, OR off of a road that heads up and goes into national forest.  Jeremy and I had been to this particular spot before and loved it.  Jeremy, Rogue and I got up Saturday morning and got ready to go, I started loading the truck while Jeremy was giving Rogue some breakfast and as soon as I walked outside...it was raining. Boo! but I wasn't going to let it ruin anything and my dad had said he would like to go no matter if it rained or not which was fine with us.  It was supposed to only rain a small amount and it probably did in Tri-Cities and Walla Walla, but NOT where we were camping.  It rained ALL day long and most of the night as well. Though it didn't pour down rain all the time there was a lot it was misting.   Though sometime after Rogue and my dad went to bed while my mom, Jeremy and I sat by the fire we did see the starry night sky for like hmmmm 10 minutes maybe?  Even though it rained we didn't have too many problems setting up camp.  We did try to make a covered porch with tarps and poles off of our truck but a good gust of wind took that down.  Instead Jeremy and I did what he was taught years ago while hunting with his parents.  we went and found 3 trees, one being much longer than the others and the other two we cut in half to make 5 poles total.  Making an X with two smaller poles we tied those together and did the same with the other two poles a few feet apart then we put the bigger pole on top and ties that down.  we threw the tarp over it and used metal poles from the previous attempt and staked those in front to make a nice covered area which wasn't going to blow down anytime soon. 
The next morning (sunday) was beautiful!!!! nice, warm and sunny.  We all hoped into the truck and drove around cruising the area and taking in the beautiful sites.  We didn't leave that day until after 5 pm, not getting home until after 8 pm tired, happy and smelling like campfire.  All in all, it was a fantastic camping trip!

Here's the covered porch

 Rogue playing in the tall grass and yes we went through MANY changes of clothing during this overnight stay...my kid loves puddles!

 Climbing on Daddy's Lap...in the distance is my mom we won't talk about the "potty chair" she is carrying...

 (top) Jeremy and Rogue...Jeremy being a dork of course (bottom) my mom and Tiggy

 Our camp from the road coming in

 The view in front of our camp

 The meadow where we saw a deer that morning

 On of the pretty views we saw on our drive

 The last but not least a picture of Jeremy and I.