My Family's First Camping Trip. pt7 Conclusion.

My wife shook me awake with a look of exasperation on her face. I was completely confused, as usual but she quickly clued me in. She had been awakened by the baby needing a change and was just getting her settled in again when it dawned on her that she was done. I mean really done. As I lay there looking at her and her telling me about trying to change the baby while keeping watch out for the bears and keeping from waking us all up I realized that she wanted to go home.

At this point I interrupted her rant to ask if she wanted to break camp and head for the house. It took her a few seconds before she understood what I had said but once the light went on in her head she said that she would like nothing better. It was at this point that I noticed I was laying lower down than I had thought. A quick look confirmed that the air mattress and deflated. I climbed out of the sleeping bag and came to another realization...it was cold.

Shivering I quickly grabbed my coat and slipped into my boots and headed outside. The fire was dead..mostly, it still smoldered a little and could be brought back to life if I had wanted to but I knew there was no point to it since we were leaving. I grabbed up the water container and promptly poured the remainder on to the fire, dousing it real good. My wife was standing behind me, watching and asked why I was doing that. I told her that you never leave a smoldering fire as it could come back to life and start a forest fire or some such. She then grabbed the camp shovel and tossed some dirt over the fire as well, better safe than sorry.

Once the fire was good and out I headed over to her car and cranked it up so it could be warming up while I was loading it up. She asked what she could do and I just told her to watch and make a note of the time. She looked confused but went to check the clock in the van while I started grabbing our gear and loading her van first. She asked me again if I wanted her to do anything and I told her that the best thing she could do was to make sure I didn't forget anything and to just watch how to break a camp.

Once I got her van loaded up with the food and other gear, not counting the tent, bags, or mattresses I had her get the car seats ready as I was bringing out the kids. One by one I grabbed up the kids and took them out of the tent to the warm van waiting for them. They put up very little fuss and promptly went back to sleep once inside the van. Red didn't even stir as I put her in the van...she was sleeping real good at this point. Once they were in the van I had the wife get in as well so she could get warm while I got the mattresses and bags out of the tent and rolled them up to stow them in my van. It didn't take as long as I thought it would and before long all I had left was the tent and tarp.

Pulling up the stakes and unhooking the two poles were quick work. once the tent was down I started folding it in 3rd's so I could roll it up and get the air out of it at the same time. Things were going smoothly, a little too smoothly if you ask me. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and something go all wonky on me but as it turned out I was able to get the tent loaded and the tarp folded and loaded without a hitch. Once that was done she got back out of the van and we bot inspected the camp site for anything we might have missed. Finding nothing we went back to her van and checked the time. It was a little after 7am. It had taken a little over an hour to break camp and pack up. When she commented on that I looked at her and told her that that was about the best it can get. An hour set up and an hour to break down each day.

That's when it really dawned on my wife that it was going to be a lot of work trying to tent camp all the way from Alaska down to where ever we were headed. She looked at me and grinned saying that she wanted to go looking at campers today but first she wanted to go home and crawl into her bed for a couple more hours sleep. I agreed that it sounded like a real good idea and we headed for our vans to head for home. As we were pulling away from the campsite the CB came on and my wife was asking about why we hadn't seen any bears. No that she's complaining mind you, she was just curious. It was at that moment that we spotted a black bear walking up the middle of the road we were about to turn on. I called her on the CB and told her to just sit tight until the bear had passed.

We sat there for a good couple of minutes watching the bear as it came down the road towards us, then as it passed on by and kept right on watching as it slowly walked up the road heading for the upper lake campground. As the bear was passing I couldn't resist asking my wife if she was going to jump out and give it a big old hug. She just gave me a one finger wave and cut off the CB.

Once the bear was out of site we pulled on to the road and headed for home. It took a good 15 minutes to get there even though we were really close to the house as the crow flies. Once we arrived home I grabbed the kids and took them to their beds so they could continue sleeping. I told the wife to go on up to bed and that I'd unload the vans later. She headed inside, leaving me standing in front of the house admiring the mountains and wondering when or if we'd go camping again in the near future.

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