Friday night we camped at Camp Lehi, a patch of the Santa Cruz mountains co-owned and maintained by several stakes in the area. One of the consequences of that arrangement is that our ward has an assignment to provide 100 man-hours of service to help maintain the place. This year we took the whole crew, making this the first camping outing for bothe Louisa and Lini.The condition that Jenna made on daring such a feat with three under the age of five was to get a new tent. We received our old three-person wilderness shelter about six? years ago from a scout that no longer wanted it. As you can imagine, the tent wasn't in the prime of it's life, and with five people, just wasn't going to provide the buffer space we all craved.
So, we bought this tent, the Coleman Ridgeview (I affectionately named it "the Chateau") from Target:
The Chateau is a 13'x13' three-room behemoth that has plenty of space even after swallowing queen and twin sized mattresses and a pack-n-play.
The girls had a lot of fun making s'mores, looking at the stars, playing with other kids in the ward and discovering the local flora:
Louisa experimented with controlled substances (charcoal from the previous night's fire), and decided she didn't like them.
For service, I climbed up on a scaffolding with a power washer and a poncho to strip the cellulous (i.e. newspaper) based insulation from the walls and cieling of the dining hall, as it was wont to fall into peoples suppers unannounced. It was fun, then tiring, then unbearable. I ended up soaked, poncho notwithstanding.
