A Camping We Will Go

This past weekend we had the pleasure of joining a group of our friends from church for a camping trip. In true Binkley form (aka "The Law of Binkley"), we were not without our share of hassles in getting on the road for our trip. It started on Thursday night when I suggested to Gary that he get the tent out so we would have it ready. At around 9:30 pm Gary let me know that apparently we had left the tent at the ranch the last time we went camping. Okay, no tent posed a problem, but we decided that we would just have to suck it up and purchase a new one. (Gary said the one we had wasn't as big as he would like anyway.)

The next day, the day we were supposed to be leaving, we planned for Gary to be home around 3:00, to load up and to get on the road no later than 5:00. Most of our friends had headed to the campsite earlier that day, and they had agreed to help us set up our tent when we got there. Gary happened to be talking to a friend that day at work who said he had a tent we could borrow, so it seemed as if everything was going great. When I got home from work, I frantically got our things together. I have never packed so much for one weekend in my life! When Gary got home, he got the new lanterns we had purchased earlier in the week out of their packages. Our friend was supposed to be bringing our tent by shortly.

That was when the wheels began to fall off our plans. One of the lanterns did not work. Gary took batteries in and out. He rearranged batteries. No luck. We would have to take it back. That was okay, because we had already determined in our packing that we needed a few things anyway. Around 4:30 our friend shows up with the tent. Gary puts it in the car and I stayed inside and continued packing. By sometime after 5:00 our friends are calling to see if we had left. I explained that we were just now headed to Wal-mart and that they should go ahead and eat without us.

We had a few errands to run (bank, post office) and then went to Wal-mart. Gary decided that we needed a small electric heater because the nights were supposed to be in the low 40s. We grabbed one, grabbed some fishing tackle and exchanged the defective lantern. After waiting tirelessly in line, we jumped in the car. In one of our more intelligent moments, we decided to test out the heater, since our car has an outlet in it that we can use. As luck would have it, the heater does not work. The light won't even come on. So I go back into Wal-mart to exchange it while Gary gasses up the car. It is now almost six and we still need to stop and eat.

We arrive at the campsite sometime after 8:30. Our WONDERFUL friends met us at our campsite, armed with lanterns, ready to help us get our tent up. Gary pulls out the tent from its bag and for a moment, we all stare in disbelief. It is impossibly small. One of our more optimistic friends suggests, "Let's just see how it looks when we get it up." Well, friends, this is what it looked like:

We were just barely able to squeeze our queen-sized air mattress in the tent. And so the three of us were in very close quarters. But guess what? It didn't really matter that our air mattress wouldn't fit, because by 1 am that night it became apparent that we had a substantial leak in it. We were laying on the cold, hard ground! (Except for Zach who was in the middle and had a little pocket of air due to the heavy objects--his mom and dad--on either side of him.)

But, we didn't let all of those little things get in the way of having a great weekend! We had a lot of fun, we ate a ton of really great food, and we got to spend some quality time with our friends. I am hoping that we will be able to make our camping trip and annual or even semi-annual event.

We got back home Sunday afternoon feeling tired but it was definitely worth it! Even a city girl like me can enjoy a camping trip when good friends and good food are involved!