Bradie’s First Backpacking Trip

On Tuesday Bradie and I went on our first backpacking trip together. She was very excited, especially since Troy and Kyle were going to spend the day with us.

Here they are “taking the lead.” They could not be bothered with their slow daddies holding them back. If you notice Bradie is carrying her own backpack. She carried her sleeping pad, clothes, tiny blankie, and some mosquito coils we did not use.

Their “taking the lead” was actually a ploy to hide in front of us and shoot us with their guns. They did this the whole way up–luckily it was only 8/10th of a mile so we only sustained light damage. It is a good thing Troy found those green mushrooms or we would have never made it up alive.

The chivalrous Kyle would not allow the fair maiden to carry that backpack all the way to the top, nor would he allow the scalawags to take the lead.

Once we relented and payed a hefty tribute, all parties were happy.

After setting up camp at Boardman Lake, we all went swimming. It was refeshing! The large rock and deep pool were much appreciated–it is much easier to jump in then slither in from the shore. Soon everyone grew hungry and we snacked on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, chips, butter toffee peanuts, and some red PowerAde. At about 7:00pm Troy and Kyle left and Bradie and I settled down for the night.

We went down to the lake and watched the fish jump. Here is the aforementioned rock and a nice tree.

Soon the sunlight started to fade so we went back up to the forest to explore; we encountered all kinds of strange things:

Like huckleberries and…

a pit toilet. She was not impressed with the pit toilet nor did she want to use it; she preferred the hover in the air as dad holds you technique. We returned to camp after the letdown that was the toilet to start a fire; part way through the lighting of the fire Bradie declared she was nervous about the whole fire starting routine and announced she would be in the tent. As the first few sticks started to crackle and an orange glow filled the campsite she reemerged chipper and demanding we make marshmellows!

That picture was a lot harder to take then I thought!

A very happy customer of Dad’s Mallow Roastery–do you see the PowerAde stained upper lip? Following the closing ceremonies for the fire, we hopped into the tent.

And I prepared to be destroyed by a four year old playing go fish:

The last game was a nail-biter coming down to the last draw card, but she won again! We turned the lights out and Bradie fell asleep instantly. With our bags zipped together, I hugged her one more time and tried to fall asleep. Until that moment I never realized how used to noise I was; where were the neighbors talking/smoking/playing beer pong? It was so quite! Periodically a mouse would scurry on to the tent, even daring a climb to the top. Other than our rodent visitors, it was silent. I tossed and turned and Bradie slept. She woke at about 530am to inform me her tummy hurt but then fell back asleep until 700am. We decided to get up and go look at the lake.

We snacked on some wicked awesome chocolate banana bread (thanks Sara!) and started to break down camp:

Soon camp was packed up and it was time to make sure we did not leave anything behind:

All clean! Time to say good by to our camp and Boardman Lake:

All that Bradie could talk about on the way down was when we could camp again and when we could bring mommy and Beau. She said Beau needs to be older because he still gets out of his bed. What a fun time! I don’t know why I waited so long to do our first trip; next year will be filled with camping trips and I might even convince Troy to sleep outside! One last shot of Bradie and a big tree: