I of course was thrilled to have my buddy with me. I decided that we could just sleep in the back of the Subaru. We decided to go to Cunningham Falls State Park in Maryland. It's about an hour away from our house. It is beautiful. It was supposed to rain pretty hard overnight, but we decided we would go anyway and just do the best we could.
We arrived at 2:30pm and picked out our spot. There were only 2 other families in the entire circle, so we were feeling pretty good having some space. We were directly across from the water source and bathrooms.
This is shortly after we arrived.
It was still quite a while before the sun went down, so we decided to go for a hike, eat some dinner and then go swimming at the lake before settling in. It was a warm day but not too hot. Perfect!
We hiked to the falls and Ashton loved climbing all over the rocks around the falls!
I was still dealing with some anxiety about food and exercise so I did ok on the hike, but I opted to not climb with Ashton on the rocks. Maybe I'll do that next time I go.
Ashton is nearly worn out in this picture. It turned out to be a nice hike. We walked back to the car, then headed back to the camp site.
We went to get some wood at the camp store and got started on building a fire. I pretty much let Ashton build it. He was having fun and we had a light the bag style charcoal bag underneath. We didn't get a huge fire (and I've since learned why) but we had one big enough to cook our hotdogs and corn.
After we ate we headed down to the lake and stayed there until about 7:30p. It was pretty empty by then. Ashton swam like crazy and I enjoyed the quiet and journaled.
When we got back to camp that's when things started getting interesting, or less interesting whichever way you want to look at it.
I straightened up camp a bit preparing to just relax after a adventure filled day. Ashton kept running around, climbing rocks, exploring and basically kept himself busy. We still had about an hour of sunlight when I regretted not bringing a card game or something to keep him busy. Boredom was setting in. I recommended we go ahead and set up our bed, brush our teeth and prep for bed.
After about another half hour the sunset, nearly 9pm and we turned on our lantern. We climbed into the back of the Subaru and tried to get comfortable. It was still pretty warm but I was still too nervous to leave the hatch open on the Subaru so we just left the windows cracked. After about 15 minutes he started complaining that he was hot and he wasn't going to be able to sleep.
That's when I made the fatal mistake.
I asked him if he wanted to go home.
Not in a do you wanna go home honey voice but in a sarcastic- what? you wanna go home? voice.
He said yes.
The seed was planted. Now I was also second guessing going there knowing that it was suppose to pour down rain. Before we went to bed I piled all the stuff outside into the front of the vehicle so it wouldn't get wet.
Long story short, we did leave. We left at 9:30 and was home by 10:30p-- I slept better than I'm sure I would have at the site, but looking back I wish I would've made us tough it out. I slipped into old patterns of not following through with what was important to me. I will go again, maybe next summer, but by myself. If we go together it will be for a day trip.
And that was the camping trip that wasn't. :)
Until Next Time
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