We just arrived back from the second camping trip Calvin has been on. Last summer was the first one. This one went great during the day but was disastrous during the night.

Wednesday night I had created a list of what I thought we needed to bring. Thursday I gathered most of the food-related items and precooked some meals. Jaeger worked a half-day Friday and then came back and we both finished packing. The idea was to pick Calvin up from after his nap time and head out to Stillwater Campground. Our trip up went mostly according to plan except Calvin hadn’t slept at daycare so ended up with a very late nap on the way up.

We arrived at the campground around 5:30 and wandered around a bit looking for a suitable site. It’s pretty early in the season for camping at that elevation so we had a lot of sites to choose from. Our first nomination turned out to be a bad idea as it was extremely windy. It was obvious that it was often windy as the campsite explicitly came with rings to tie down the tent with. We ended up with a campsite on the other side of the hill where it was less windy. It wasn’t quite as scenic. However, we got a great view of the boat ramp area which Calvin might have found more interesting than just a lake anyway. Unfortunately, due to the pine beetle infestation, almost all the trees in the campground had been chopped down.

I had opted for spendy freeze-dried meals our first night that just required boiling water. It always takes a while to setup camp and I wanted to make sure I was able to feed Calvin in a timely manner. We still didn’t end up eating supper till around 7:00pm. Calvin was excited by everything around him. He roamed up and down the hill several times, found the tent fascinating and basically was having a blast. He did not like the idea of going to bed. His normal bedtime is around 8pm but we didn’t get him to bed till closer to 10. We also found out that while he was enamored with HIS sleeping bag, he didn’t like the idea of actually being cocooned in it. Eventually Calvin fell asleep nestled on top of me in my sleeping bag. This left my arms exposed which was pretty chilly.

Calvin sleeping on top of my wasn’t ideal. However, it got worse. Around 1am he woke up screaming. We had no idea what was wrong but he kept creaming for at least 10 min (which feels like an eternity at 1am in the morning at a campsite). I kept expecting someone to come by and demand to know how we were abusing our child. However, there weren’t any other tents near us. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. One, of many, theories I had was he was having night terrors Another thought was that he was feeling suffocated being in the sleeping bag with me. Eventually he fell asleep with the sleeping bag partially open and another small child’s blanket draped to stop the worst of the draft. I was exhausted but apparently Calvin was fine as he woke up cheerfully at 7am.

A couple of weeks ago I started researching ways to make food while camping without all the mess associated with it. I’ve tried using heavy duty zip-lock-like bags before. These are kind of like the freeze dried meals you buy that just require adding water except you put your own dried ingredients in. It worked ok but I thought the commercial freeze-dried meals tasted better. Plus, I’m a little dubious about adding boiling water to the plastic bags, even if they are technically rated to be able to handle that much heat. This time, I discovered Dutch Oven Liners. I have a cast-iron skillet that is very similar to a dutch oven and it turns out that the 10″ liners fit fine. Then I prepared our meals at home and put them in zip lock bags in our cooler. To prepare, I just placed the skillet with a liner over the camp stove and poured in the food to reheat it. It’s easy to lift the liners out and replace with another one so you can heat up several things without having to clean in-between. The only thing I might do differently next time is bring aluminium foil to place on top to keep the heat in better while other items are being heated. Obviously, this wouldn’t work for backpacking but it was great for car camping. For breakfast, we had scrambled tofu, pastries I had bought a couple of days before, applesauce, and hot chocolate/milk/coffee.

After breakfast, we headed out to a visitors center. Jeager asked a ranger for suggestions of good hiking trails that weren’t covered in snow. The ranger offered two suggestions that she thought would be relatively snow-free the first 3 miles. We ended up trying the East Inlet Trailhead. Jaeger carried Calvin and our food in our kid backpack carrier and I carried toileting supplies and some other stuff. I brought along our little potty chair which is small enough to fit in a backpack and that worked well for Calvin (I didn’t think he was advanced enough yet to learn the other outdoor potty methods ). Calvin really seemed to enjoy the hike, especially when we went by the waterfall. We decided to stop for lunch about 3 1/2 miles in. Since the ranger didn’t think we’d get much farther without running into snow, we decided to turn around. Calvin walked a little bit of the way back. However, he soon gave up and went to sleep in the backpack. It looked uncomfortable but he slept for almost an hour that way.

After returning to the trailhead, we decided to head back to Grand Lake and grab some ice cream. Upon driving down the main tourist street, Jaeger and I were surprised to hear Calvin suddenly call “ice cream!” from the backseat when he spotted the shop with a picture of two large ice cream cones out front. When reviewing flavors, I asked Calvin if he would like strawberry. He said, “No!” I tried a couple other flavors, each getting a negative response, until it occurred to me to specify I was asking about ice cream flavors. I rephrased and asked if he would like strawberry ICE CREAM and he immediately agreed that was a great idea.

It was extremely windy when we got back to our campsite but fortunately it calmed fairly quickly. We all headed out to the lake where Calvin played in the mud/sand mixture and occasionally splashed in the water. I read a book for a bit on the “beach” while Jaeger made sure that Calvin didn’t drown. We headed back for an early supper in hopes that eating earlier would inspire Calvin to go to bed earlier.

For supper, I heated up the rice and dal I had made Thursday as well as an Indian-flavored peanut tomato sidedish. Calvin ignored the tomatoes but ate a large serving of the dal and rice. After supper, we went to see Smokey the bear at the camp’s small “auditorium.” Calvin seemed to find the bear mascot fascinating but was even more excited by the forest-service fire pickup (equipped with a hose and a generator to allow pumping of lake water onto a fire).

I thought one reason Calvin might have taken so long to settle down the previous night was because I was in the tent with him. Jaeger often has better luck getting him to sleep than I do. So, I encouraged Calvin to run-off some of his excess energy and then turned him over to Jaeger for bedtime stories and bed. I sat in our car and finished reading my book. I was in the car for quite a while but kept hearing the murmur of Calvin’s voice. Finally, around 10, I decided Jaeger wasn’t having anymore luck than we’d had last night and went back to the tent. Eventually Calvin did fall asleep, sans any blankets. After he was asleep, I put a blanket and his sleeping bag on top of him. This seemed to work pretty well until he once again woke up in the middle of the night. It wasn’t as bad as the night before but he absolutely refused to have any blankets on top of him. He got quite hysterical whenever I tried. This was a problem as it was in the 30s outside and not suitable weather for just sleeping in one’s pajamas, however thick they may be. Eventually, he fell back asleep and I successfully snuck the blankets back on him. I woke up multiple times during the night to make sure he hadn’t shaken them off and had avoided freezing to death so far. Fortunately, Calvin slept in till 8:30 so I ended up with a lot more sleep than I had the previous night.

We had a slow start but eventually had breakfast and then packed up our campsite. On the way home we stopped at a trailhead to stretch our legs. Calvin really got into the hiking, especially when we encountered snow, so the whole hike took longer than expected. We decided to eat lunch there which delayed us further. Jaeger’s initial plans were to stop by the Alpine Visitors Center but we were running late by then and Calvin and I were both almost asleep. I napped until we exited the park and Calvin napped almost the entire way home.

Overall, I think it was a good trip. However, Calvin’s problem sleeping in the tent make me less than thrilled at another camping trip in the near future. We might try some camping in our backyard to get Calvin more use to sleeping in a tent. At least if he starts scream in the middle of the night in our back yard, it’s easy to come back inside for the rest of the night.