Mollie's First Camping Trip

We survived our first camping trip as a family of 3!!

We headed out to Bottomless Lake State Park, NM on Friday night. It was less than a 3 hour drive, so that wasn't too bad. When we arrived we started to set up camp and I immediately had to put my cleanliness concerns aside as Mollie proceeded to head straight to the rocks and give herself a dirt bath. Awesome. But hey, who cares? We're camping, right?

We get the tent set up and get all our gear situated and start to head to bed at our normal time (which was pretty early because Jason had a Triathlon the next morning). However, since we're in a tent, it's daylight for way too long and it didn't cool off until the wee hours of the morning, so we all laid there tossing and turning for hours. Mollie was amazing through this process, however, and didn't make a peep even though she was as uncomfortable as could be. So somehow, we all managed to fall asleep at some point and the woke up at 5:30 or so because we're in a tent and are at the mercy of the sun. And Jason had a race, so we all had to get up early anyway.

We headed to Dexter, NM for the Milkman Triathlon. The race started at 8:00am, and it was already getting hot. Mollie and I found a playground to play on while Jason was racing, and she had a blast! In the meantime, Jason was enduring grueling heat while swimming, biking, and running, but ended up doing great and placed 4th in his age division! We hung out at the park for a bit until we were all miserably hot, then drove into Roswell to borrow some air conditioning (I mean, eat lunch :o).

Mollie and Daddy before the race

Deep thoughts...

We arrived back to our campsite and decided to go swimming, because did I mention that is was miserably hot?!? The campsite was next to a nice little lake (which just happened to be ice cold...yesssssss) so we spent the rest of the afternoon there. It was the ONLY way to cool off because it miserably hot. We all had a blast playing in the water! But before too long we were all exhausted from being in the sun and decided to head back to the tent.

At this point, we just couldn't get a break. You could cool off in the water, but get zapped by the sun. You could get out of the sun, but get zapped by the heat. We sprayed each other with a water bottle for the next few hours, ate dinner, and tried to go to sleep (I didn't mention that Mollie woke up at 5:30am with us, and didn't get to nap at all, and was still doing awesome at this point). As we were all laying there in a pool of sweat, we thought, "Why are we still here?" We accomplished all we wanted to do (sleeping under the stars, Jason finishing his race, swimming in the lake), so by golly why be miserable all night! At that point, we packed up camp in record time and headed home! It was worth it to get to cool off in the car and sleep under my ceiling fan and the air conditioning :o)

So we spent the next day rehydrating, catching up on sleep, and just being lazy. Looking back, that particular weekend probably wasn't the best weekend to be camping due to the heat, but we had an amazing time as a family, let the little one get a taste of being in God's creation, and made some memories! It was a blast and we absolutely plan to go camping again...when it cools off a little bit :o)

We also had the pleasure of celebrating our wonderful Lacye's birthday on Sunday!!! This fantastic sister, momma, and friend is a year older and is loved very much! Happy birthday lady :o)