Sunday, November 1, 2009

Camping: A primal experience






The thing about camping is it gets you back to your primal nature. Puts you in touch with your prehistoric roots. Back to primitive man.  I am sure prehistoric man slept in heated campers with foam mattresses.... really.


Camping does bring man back to its most basic needs. Food, shelter, heat.  Addressing these issues during camping can be... interesting.
Establishing a shelter was easy enough. We made it to our campsite at Mounds State Park by 6:30 leaving us enough time (if we didn't dawdle) to get the camper set up and dinner on the well under way before we lost light.

This is Fiddle Back Mound



After our shelter was created, we began to address the other two needs. For the Mills, camping is really all about the food. We have a dutch oven and we really like to find new things we can cook in the dutch oven or even in the fire itself.
But knowing we would have limited time, We planned to have an easy meal for dinner and s'mores for dessert.

Jonathan eating his first toasted marshmallow


I began to warm up the Chili and make the grilled cheese.
Everette and Grant (everette's brother-his first official camp experience--never mind that he worked at a summer camp for the last two years--sleeping in a camper is WAY different) began to work on the fire.




Brothers two, in front of the Great Mound (can't you see it?-it's very great!!)

Usually not a very difficult task for Everette. Seriously Everette is a fire Master. He builds awesome fires.  However he underestimated the wetness of the wood and was having difficulty  getting it started.
The plan was for them to get the fire started and then spend the rest of the time watching Jonathan, while I got dinner going.
But instead it was became a battle to survive (ok pretend there was no heated camper and no  Pb&J) to eat or keep warm. It was getting dark and the temperature was dropping quickly. But we had been traveling a long time and exerted a considerable amount of strength creating shelter so we were in need of  food.
So who was supposed to watch the kid?

Jonathan was... well layered... He had two hooded sweatshirts, a sock cap and a rain coat, his head looked gigantic!
dilemma...
I was assuming the need to eat was of more importance but I forgot that fire building is a point of pride for any man.  So we tagged teamed and got the job done.

Jonathan's Great Hike from Megan Mills on Vimeo.

Jonathan on a looonnngg hike.
 
The rest of the weekend was filled with hiking trails, building fires, good eating (I'm talking biscuits and gravy, cinnamon rolls, garlic chicken and roasted potatoes) and a hilarious hay ride.

Stay tuned for more details and more pictures.
Oh yeah and here's another cute video!

jonathan on his truck from Megan Mills on Vimeo.

4 comments:

Annie said...

I've been wanting to go to Mounds State Park. It looks gorgeous!

Also, I'm learning what you already know about men and fire: we finally have a wood-burning fireplace, and it is clearly Bob's job to build the fires, preferably with NO input from me... I can build good fires, too, but, well, Bob wants to do it.

Megan said...

The Park is pretty nice... I wouldn't want to stay there a week, but it was great for a weekend.

Everette won't ever cook, unless it is over an open flame... grilling and marshmallow roasting.

bethany said...

Oh my goodness... Your videos of Jonathan just make me giggle! You know what I missed, though? Max! I couldn't find Max. (It's my favorite game.)

Angie Oswalt said...

Beautiful pictures, Meg!