Riverview Family Adventure Camp

We made it! 4 days and 3 nights in the car and sleeping outside with two kids and a dog! We had a lot of fun, we would totally do it again... however, there were parts of it that really sucked! Taking 11 hours to get there wasn't super fun, not awful, but not great... but I guess you can't expect too much when you are driving with four other families with a total of 13 kids, 12 of them 6 and under (and one 8 year old), 2 of them babies who needed to nurse... I suppose considering all of that it is lucky we made it there before dark! We did leave at 4:30 in the morning! The other sucky parts were the mosquitos. I was doing pretty well with the spray and everything but one day I didn't get my back well enough and I have about 2 dozen bites back there! The dirt wasn't great either but both of those things were to be expected. I think the worst part was the first two nights trying to sleep. The first night I would fall asleep a little bit but not deeply enough because Alec would make some small noise and I would wake up. The second night I just flat out had insomnia! I could not fall sleep at all which meant my bladder never shut off and I actually had to get up out of the tent FOUR times to pee! And we had an incline right outside our tent, I am surprised I didn't twist my ankle in the middle of the night... so at one point I thought I was going to cry and I was so frustrated that I kept shushing Anthony or bumping him to be quiet because I had lost one of my ear plugs and could hear all of his snoring and loud breathing. Well, he felt bad for me and decided to go try and sleep in the car! And actually I did eventually fall alseep for a brief time but actually woke up shaking from the cold since my body heater had left! It was miserable!! The third night I slept like a dream! We borrowed a blanket from somone who had an extra one, I bought and took some Excedrin PM, and I found my other ear plug!! It was wonderful! And as far as I know Alec didn't make a peep! ;-) Actually I don't think he ever woke up any of those times he made noise, I think he just shifted and made noise in his sleep... I am just not used to him sleeping in the same room.

ANYWAY! Being up in the Sequoias with all of our friends from church was a lot of fun. The church provided dinner each night and we were all assigned different tasks on different nights to help out but it was nice to have it taken care of and to eat all together for that one meal. We also had little fellowship services together each night and each morning. We sang and one night each family shared a special time in their lives that God was faithful to them... it was very cool.

Friday we drove up to the National Park where there is museum and a hike that taked you around to see all of these amazings Sequoias, they are so beautiful and of course HUGE. We almost weren't going to be able to go because we brought Max and dogs weren't allowed on the trails. However, a super nice man from our group was just getting done with the hike and said he would take Max back to camp for us! That night after we gathered with everyone and headed back to our own campsite that we shared with Julie and Anthony Gioia we put the kids to bed and made a fire in our own little fire pit and we hung out and talked for awhile with them, which was so nice to have a some adult time to unwind and relax at the end of the day. We did that the next night as well and actually played a little bit of a game.

Saturday we headed out to Hume Lake. A couple of us left earlier than the rest and we were pretty sure we had found the place that would be meeting up with all of them but of course after we unpacked on the beach and ate lunch and started to swim we find out that they are all over on the other side of the lake! So we packed everything back up and hiked back to our cars... but it was totally worth it! We had so much fun swimming in the lake and hanging out with everyone. Max got to go swimming and we bathed in the lake! I actually swam out a ways with my friend Elisa and then as we were headed back in Adam was starting to swim out so I swam back out with him. On the way back I decided to really swim freestyle and just truck it in. I had no idea that Adam was trying to swim along with me... apparently I whipped him!! And he is a SWAT officer in Carlsbad!!

That was about it! We woke up Sunday morning and started packing up after breakfast. After having slept so well the night before Anthony and I both said we were ready to camping again soon!

PS- I have already scrapbooked all 200+ pictures from the camping trip (as you can see some of the examples above)!!!