camping with babies

oh hi! I hope you had a wonderful weekend. We took Stella on her first camping trip. It ended up being a tonne of fun. We rented a tent trailer to see how it compared to our usual tenting. Also, as owners of a small SUV, there's no way we could fit our dog, baby and all of our camping gear without some kind of trailer. Have you seen how much gear babies travel with? It is like travelling with a little diva - she has four bags to our one. The tent trailer was perfect because we could load it up with all of our camping gear before we hit the road. We camped at Sasquatch Park. We wanted to pick a spot close to home in case it ended up being a shisaster and, did I mention Harrison Hot Springs was close by? This was our plan B in case camping went sideways - we could spend our weekend gallivanting at Harrison in fuzzy white robes. 

It's funny because our campsite neighbours were a group of 50-60 year olds, not the usual crew to make you feel like you drew the short straw of camp sites. But fast forward to almost 2 a.m when all you've heard is a whole lot of "Whoot whoots! "Hell Yeahs!" "Drink!Drink!Drink! "Whooohooooos!" plus the entire Def Leppard Hysteria album and you will see why I was in a private hell. Fortunately Stella was asleep through it all, but I knew she'd be up at 6 and my sleep window was quickly shrinking. I didn't want to send my hubby over, because a bunch of drunk guys could turn aggressive really quickly. So, I just curled up in a ball and tried to find my happy place. I'm pretty sure I also told Craig it was the worst night of my life, but I do tend to get dramatic rather quickly when my sleep is in jeopardy. In the morning we complained to the park ranger that we would need a new campsite because we couldn't handle a second night next to baby boomers gone wild. But lo and behold, they had 10 friends arriving that night to celebrate one of their birthdays and needed a bigger site. It was like a mirage, our eyes dewed up with tears of joy as we saw them pull down their tarps. The sun came out, and we danced like no one was watching. Our friends we were camping with had an adventure of their own when their dog Hercules rolled over on their tent trailer bed and fell out one of the canvas sides. They had to try and round him up in the dark while he did his "I'm freaking free!" sprint up the road. They caught him - partly because they love him and partly due to the fact they knew as a pug he had zero survival skills in the wild. 

I was relieved that Stella did well during the camping experience because it is something Craig and I really want her to grow up with. She slept great and didn't have any problems. A few tips for camping with babies - our friends bought their baby a great waterproof jumpsuit so he could crawl around without wrecking his clothes. (see 2nd photo from the top). They also had this great bunting suit from MEC that provided extra warmth at night, which was a lot better than the five layers I put Stella in, rendering her arms pretty much immobile. (She looked like a letter T).  Camping is definitely one of those things you either love or hate. I think it depends on what you grew up doing. I definitely love camping, it's in my blood. But don't get me wrong, I teared up when I spotted my big comfy bed last night.