When we left our family, Chloe the Wonder Mutt had escaped the tent. Was she gone forever? Did she come back? Read on to find out!
After looking around the tent in the low light of the early morning and not seeing Chloe the Wonder Mutt, I started to panic. You see, Chloe is not a particularly calm dog. And she likes to chase wildlife. Squirrels, birds, or even other dogs.
But then I heard it. The “clink, clink, clink” of her dog tags. Chloe was wandering around outside the tent! We brought her back in, noting her muddy feet. We’ll never know what she was up to or how long she was gone, but I guess she had a good time.
After everyone woke up and had a delicious breakfast of eggs, hash browns, and sausage, we all headed down to the beach. The path is steep, so we took Boo’s jogging stroller. That was fine until we got to the end of the path. We had to carry the stroller over logs and then drag it across the sand. I’m sure we were quite the sight!
That didn’t matter, though. We were finally at the beach and determined to have a good time! And a good time we had!
The girls put on their mermaid tails and attracted quite a bit of attention while sitting on a rock, looking beautiful.
People stopped to take pictures and talk to them. The girls reveled in their newfound star status. Until they got off the rock. Mermaid tails aren’t that easy to walk in, so they had to crawl across the sand. I was in tears from laughing so hard!
While the girls were off looking beautiful, the boys were building sandcastles and roads to the ocean.
Baby Boo had a great time getting dirty!
And Chloe the Wonder Mutt needed a good rest after the previous night’s romp around the campsite.
The rest of the day went smoothly. Baby Boo and I took a nice nap, while the girls hung out and the boys went to see the tide pools. We had a delicious hamburger dinner and then ate s’mores and birthday cake.
As we settled in to our tent for the night, tethering Chloe the Wondermutt to the Pack ‘n’ Play, we thought there couldn’t have been a more perfect day. Until we began to drift off to sleep.
From the campground next door, we heard a loud group of very drunk people playing the card game “Bull Sh**” and discussing the bioethics of surrogate parenting. I could have done without the bad language, but the bioethics discussion was certainly interesting. I wasn’t about to let it ruin our day.
I wish I could say our camping trip ended well. Unfortunately when we woke up in the morning, Baby Boo got sick. And got sick again. And again. And again. I don’t think I’ve ever had to clean up so much barf without a washing machine in my life. Actually, I left the barf cleanup to Sportsguy. I cleaned up the baby. And the tradition lives on. We always say, “It’s not a family vacation unless a kid barfs.”
We called an early end to the camping trip and headed back home, short one broken tent and one leaky air mattress. I’m happy to say Baby Boo was feeling much better by the time we got home.
Do we have any regrets? No way! This is the stuff memories and legends are made of! I think it will be a long time before we go tent camping again, though.
If you missed the first two episodes of Camping Misadventures of a City Family, be sure to read Part 1 and Part 2.
Haaaaaa! I know the feeling. It’s our eldest who usually pukes, not the toddlers…sometimes it’s worse cleaning up that big-kid puke though, kwim? You’ll do it again. That’s the thing with camping. You just keep doing it!
You have created wonderful memories for you and the kids. You will all be talking about it when they are all adults, just as we do when we all get together. (Plus you will find out a lot of other stuff you didn’t know about!)