Camping Discoveries

Last month we decided to go camping in Eastern Washington with our friends (our 'family-away-from-family'), the Dormans. I was a little uneasy at first because, although I loved camping as a kid, I am now more of a 'condo and hotel' kind of girl. But I caved, and spent a full couple of days packing (ugh). My first discovery was that camping takes A LOT of work! Our next discovery on this journey was that GPS systems are not very accurate on obscure back country roads. After actually stopping to ask a real human for directions, we finally made it to the campground only about an hour late. This wasn't the last time one of us would get lost on this trip, but we won't go into that (just ask Tony sometime about his boat ride back to camp)... Luckily, the Dorman family had arrived the day earlier and had set up our tent for us (didn't I say they were great friends?) so we were able to hit the ground running. Which leads me to our next camping discovery: camping is for kids. If we were chatting in a nice condo somewhere, the adults would be comfy and the kids would be bored, but if we are chatting around a campfire covered in dirt with a river nearby, the kids are in bliss.
The next morning we discovered that even really really ugly boats are a lot of fun. We rented a 'jet boat' (see pic-not sure I would describe it as a jet boat) and a single tube to play on the river for a day. I can't believe just that kept 4 adults and 6 kids occupied for nearly 7 hours! We did also discover an island that we explored and found a crawfish, but most of the time we just played on the river. We were then starving, so we decided to "cheat" and eat out instead of wait at camp for our dutch ovens to heat!
Our next discovery happened that night when we met a family of skunks that were living in the bushes around our campsite. Luckily we were pretty tidy campers and they left us alone. Our neighboring campers were not so lucky and the skunks had a 'hay day' in their camp. I think Jaxson was the most worried about the skunks, not because of their smell but because he heard that if you get sprayed you have to bathe in tomato juice, and Jaxson HATES tomatoes!
Other camping re-discoveries: almost everything (even oatmeal) tastes better when you're camping, the stars really are brighter, air mattresses are not as comfortable as the picture shows, and camping is way more fun than I expected it would be.