Camping

We like to go camping. By that, I think I mean we like to take our kids camping and we like camping with friends. We went camping a couple of months ago and ended up in a wind storm. I wish we had video of my husband and myself trying to take down our tent in that wind storm. It was quite funny. Let’s just say that a 10 man tent makes a good kite for two adults to hold onto.

Anyway, the wind storm did some major damage to our tent poles and tent fly. I’m one who believes in the motto: “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.” So my first thought was, we’ll order some replacement parts for the poles and it will be as good as new.

Our tent is no longer manufactured. At all. By anyone!

Strike one.

So we thought, we’ll go to a camping store and buy a repair kit, which we did. The poles were the wrong circumference – too small. And for whatever reason, we could not get the pole threader to thread the shock cord through either the old poles or the new poles. We tried for five hours. I felt a little like MacGyver. I was using fishing line, a sewing needle, duct tape, packaging tape, pliers, scissors, and my teeth. I managed to get one tent pole repaired. The other one, well, let’s just say that it no longer lives at our house.

Strike two.

Our last option is to go buy another tent. We have a tent that says it will hold six people. So really it will hold about three. The question is: do we buy a tent that will fit all of us, or do we divide into two tents when we camp?

Strike three.

No camping, that’s what I’ve decided. No yummy s’mores. No fire pit chats with the stars up above. No hot chocolate in the morning, while the eggs fry in the pan. No more adventures finding streams, or pinecones. No more hearing the sounds of nighttime or watching the moon and sun rise.

Oh, okay. We’ll figure out how to fix the tent.

I love camping.

And on that note, there won’t be another blog post until Sunday.  We are out of technology range.