"I At Camping!"

We went back up to Whitney Reservoir this last weekend for some more family time. Alan's younger brother, Paul, was back in town and brought his girlfriend, Leah, home with him. Our idea of a good time is camping and four-wheeling, so we went back to the same little spot where we spent four days in July.

Unfortunately for Mason, the mud puddle he so loved to splash in was gone; the only rock-throwing opportunities were when we wheeled down to the "blue water". He was skeptical of doing much with the reservoir because he is worried about deer pee in the water. Instead, we spent a lot of time shuttling him back and forth to the creek for his rock throwing. The snow we found last time was also mostly gone, so his pleas to throw more snow at Grandpa went unheeded until Grandpa himself took Mason up to get some. They brought back a cooler full of snow and proceeded to throw it at all members of the camp, with Leah being Mason's favorite target. Mason's other form of entertainment for the trip were the three large holes dug by his uncles that he loved to get his dump truck stuck in and "crunching on the logs" (breaking up wood for our fire).

Sunday night we all huddled around the fire because it was so very cold. Mason's favorite story to tell that night was how the fire was going up into the sky, where it would crash into the moon and cry. It was total nonsense that we found entertaining because he was so insistent it was true. Overnight was very, very cold and although we had plenty of blankets, Mason had a hard time snuggling down into the covers. I think he was warm enough, but there wasn't much sleep to be had for mom and dad.

On Monday, Alan took me to shoot a .22 for the first time. There is a picture in the slideshow of the homemade target (paper plate with uneven circles drawn on it) with five bullet holes. Apparently, I shot quite well and Alan encouraged me to keep the paper plate for bragging rights. The 3-5 shots I took landed just shy of the center, in the middle circle. He said that would be sufficiently "center mass". After the shooting lesson, we got to take a long ATV ride that was a lot of fun. I felt it was successful because I managed to avoid rolling it when I took a turn too fast. I was not quite successful enough to avoid killing it in the creek because I was in too high of a gear; my feet and shins got relatively soaked and I quickly learned not to attempt that in fourth gear again.

Monday night and Tuesday were much warmer than the previous day. We enjoyed playing card and dice games in camp, eating way too much food, and taking turns on the ATVs. Overnight on Monday night, we got to listen to a large herd of sheep bleating nearby. The next morning, they were herded right past our camp down to the reservoir and we picked up a visitor: one of the sheepdogs was just a puppy and she apparently wanted to go home with us. She wasn't the biggest fan of Rio and Samson (I think their welcome was a little too eager for her liking), but she hung around with us all day while we packed up. When it was nearly time to go home, Paul loaded her on a 4-wheeler and took her down to the area where the sheep were staying; she reappeared shortly after he had dropped her off.

In the end, we all went home a little dirtier, a little sunburned and a little tired. Mason barely made it out of the campsite before he crashed out in his car seat. We're hoping to attempt at least one more of these outings before the summer is officially over, but we'll have to see.