Turns out interior raining whilst camping is somewhat preventable. Yes, we're in a humid area. Yes, it's been raining. But it need not rain INSIDE our tent. Bill did a little research, and if you simply vent your tent, no interior raining. Lovely!!!! So now we unzip the windows a bit, and all our breathing humidity joins the other humidity outside the tent, and we're just left with the regular humidity level surrounding us (about 60%).
Now, if only we could prevent the regular rain that occurs naturally in weather. It rained pretty hard Monday night, and for whatever reason, we got a river that led right to my feet. And soaked the sleeping bags I was using. So terribly sad. And it's supposed to rain more Wednesday night. Not looking forward to it all....
Showing posts with label camping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label camping. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 27, 2016
Monday, September 19, 2016
Two Months In...
Time to hit some numbers. In my pipe dreams, we were living on less than 3k a month. We missed that by a HUGE amount. We've spent over 9k in a little over two months. Sigh. So not how I wanted things to go. BUT, we've spent some time internationally, we've had to repair some tires, we've had some amazing experiences, and we've had a great time. Now it's time to buckle down.
We can't be doing everything we want every time it comes along. We also need to tone down our eating expenses. Here's a breakdown of how we spent our money:
Fuel: $1342.28
Stuff: $2042.08
Snacks: $299.07
Meals: $4216.28
Lodging: $1519.96
Clearly our food is out of control. Stuff? Who even knows how we spent that money? Our categories are too vague, so I've decided to track a bit more detail in our next leg of the journey. I want to know how much we're spending on ice. I'm gonna say it's an obscene number. How often are we buying DEF? So much that would help me to plan much better. I'm going to differentiate between groceries and eating out. I want to see how much we're spending on laundromat. How much firewood do we buy? How are we doing with propane?
And just to keep track, we've gone 9,974 miles in nine states and one foreign country (two provinces). We spent 65 days on the road, nine of which were in Canada, seven days spent at family's house. The boys have earned one merit badge, seven Webelos adventures, six Wolf adventures, and the Wolf Outdoor Activity award. And the youngest three have earned a TON of Jr. Ranger badges.
And then again, is our journey really in the details? We can learn so much from the details, but can we enjoy our trip any more or less based on them? I need some philosophy class to work out my issues....
We can't be doing everything we want every time it comes along. We also need to tone down our eating expenses. Here's a breakdown of how we spent our money:
Fuel: $1342.28
Stuff: $2042.08
Snacks: $299.07
Meals: $4216.28
Lodging: $1519.96
Clearly our food is out of control. Stuff? Who even knows how we spent that money? Our categories are too vague, so I've decided to track a bit more detail in our next leg of the journey. I want to know how much we're spending on ice. I'm gonna say it's an obscene number. How often are we buying DEF? So much that would help me to plan much better. I'm going to differentiate between groceries and eating out. I want to see how much we're spending on laundromat. How much firewood do we buy? How are we doing with propane?
And just to keep track, we've gone 9,974 miles in nine states and one foreign country (two provinces). We spent 65 days on the road, nine of which were in Canada, seven days spent at family's house. The boys have earned one merit badge, seven Webelos adventures, six Wolf adventures, and the Wolf Outdoor Activity award. And the youngest three have earned a TON of Jr. Ranger badges.
And then again, is our journey really in the details? We can learn so much from the details, but can we enjoy our trip any more or less based on them? I need some philosophy class to work out my issues....
Thursday, May 19, 2016
Organizing the Trip
The house is under contract!!!! We now have a start date of sorts. We'll be in town until the older boys return from South Dakota on their scout camp. Knowing we won't be leaving the area until early July gives a sense of security, but also a bit of panic since I put all trip organization and planning on hold while the house was being prepped and on the market. With the house on the market I was able to start planning again, since that involves little chaos. Organizing for me, though, involves a TON of chaos.
This is all our stuff, weighed and recorded. Ok, it's really only our tent stuff, minus any personal items. Nine sleeping bags (the older boys each have two), five pads, seven pillows, and a whole bunch of goodies. I feel like we're missing some stuff from this, but I can't figure out what it would be. I'll figure it out at some point, I'm sure.
It's amazing how little this looks like. All but the coolers will fit in our small, 4x4, trailer that we'll sell once we've got our travel trailer. But this stuff has seen us through quite a few trips. The coolers are new, because our locks on our old coolers had broken, and we had to stack things on top of them just to keep them closed. Not so handy. We've been really happy with our setup to date, so we'll see how we feel after months, not weeks, of camping!
This here's our baby trailer. She's served us well, though she gets a lot of laughs. Amazingly, we keep very organized and can fit an absolute ton of camp gear in there. We did need to add the car top carrier, but the two of them combined are a traveling wonder.
This is our school gear, unfiltered. I put something like 25 boxes in storage at my parents' house, and whittled our keep pile down to this. 200+ pounds of stuff. Um....it can't all go. I invested in Life of Fred Pre-Algebra because NS said he loved LoF; that's so five minutes ago. *grinding teeth* Ok, well, that's fine, I also picked up Prentice Hall's stuff. On the cheap, thank you used books. Now I get to spend another couple of days (or weeks, who's to say?) sorting through this stuff and figuring out what we need between now and September. If I don't need it until after mid-September, I'm good with storing it in plastic tubs at my parents' house, since we'll be back in the area. There are other things that probably should have been packed away, but I couldn't bring myself to do that. As I was breaking my back pulling all the heaviest boxes off the top shelf in the garage (?!?!), I realized how stupid putting books into bigger tubs was/is. That's ok, I'm sure I need the two kids' dictionaries and the two kids' thesauri, and the dictionary of idioms and such. Holy cow, this is a trip, not a new home we're filling up! Man, I need to prioritize. I can't believe (yeah, I actually can) I was thinking packing so many reference materials was a good idea. Clearly I am an English major and can't let go of my texts, but that ain't gonna work on this trip! Oh, do I have my work cut out for me!
Monday, May 16, 2016
Early Stages of Planning
It's time!!! I finally get to start planning...ish.... Since we need to wait for the house to sell, I don't really have dates, though I do have a date in September where we need to be back in this area. So I have an end date for the first leg of our trip, and an area of the country to visit. Since that's all I have for now, let's just start daydreaming.
In my ideal world, we leave this area mid-June, so let's start there. From here we probably head to my parents' house for a day or two to collect ourselves, and then head on over to South Dakota. That's non-negotiable for the end of June since the older two have scout camp there. But I want to visit the Pacific Northwest. In order to get there, we have to go through Wyoming. Devils Tower. LOVE IT. We've been twice already. Once a couple years ago just for about three hours, and the other time was four years ago for a few days. This year may be camping there, may be a short stop on our way to another campground, who knows? I don't want to spend a lot of time in this area, cuz I want to get to Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and northern California. Possibly a jaunt to Canada in there. G wants to hit Alaska. Gosh, I don't know how we do this.
Idaho...I just started researching it. I don't know what's near each other, what's far away. But there's a ton of stuff to do there. Beautiful stuff. I'm having a hard time narrowing it down. I'm thinking a week in this state might not be enough, so I have to start carefully allocating our time. I've had Craters of the Moon on my list for years. We had to cut it from our big trip four years ago, which made me sad, but maybe this time we'll put that in. The campground closes for renovations right around the time we'll be there, but a visit would still be nice. I've been pinning things like mad on Pinterest, plus I have a stack of books with just snippets of best to do and see in areas. Narrowing down is going to be hard. Plus I have to figure out where exactly my uncle is so we can meet up with him.
Washington. My sister and her family live here, so we'll work in time to visit them along with camping. There's a lot to do in this state, too, and combined with spending time with my sister and her family, I think we're going to end up with two to three weeks there. The 10 Best of Everything: Families has a list of farmers markets and such in the northwest. Oh, I'm so looking forward to getting fresh, regional food. I want to hit National Parks, state parks, Mount St. Helens, and just spend some down time chasing my niece and trying to get my one nephew to acknowledge me and the other nephew to stop hugging so tightly.
Oregon...We have a family friend who gave us a HUGE list of things to do. They sound amazing. I haven't started researching this state myself, so I'm very grateful for the list she gave me! The kids are so excited to see the ocean, though, they may never want to leave. Bill's also got some family in this part of the world, so we'll try and meet up with them. We haven't seen his aunt and uncle since 2010, so that'll be cool. I guess we should tell them we're coming!
Northern California....Redwoods, sequoias, lava beds. So much to see, so much to do, how do we fit it all in? Since we have no one we want to meet up with in this state, I think we're good with just a week or so here. I don't really know if we can get all the way there, but I'd love to stop in at the Lawrence Hall of Science, too. I've been getting their emails for years, so actually seeing the museum would kick butt.
Now that this part of the trip is planned...ish, how to get back to CO? And how much time do I need to allow for that? A hotel room for all of us is about $100/night, so I think we have to rule that out and try to give ourselves a bit more time. Or maybe we suck it up and pay for one night and just try to make it with one overnight. More research is needed....
In my ideal world, we leave this area mid-June, so let's start there. From here we probably head to my parents' house for a day or two to collect ourselves, and then head on over to South Dakota. That's non-negotiable for the end of June since the older two have scout camp there. But I want to visit the Pacific Northwest. In order to get there, we have to go through Wyoming. Devils Tower. LOVE IT. We've been twice already. Once a couple years ago just for about three hours, and the other time was four years ago for a few days. This year may be camping there, may be a short stop on our way to another campground, who knows? I don't want to spend a lot of time in this area, cuz I want to get to Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and northern California. Possibly a jaunt to Canada in there. G wants to hit Alaska. Gosh, I don't know how we do this.
Idaho...I just started researching it. I don't know what's near each other, what's far away. But there's a ton of stuff to do there. Beautiful stuff. I'm having a hard time narrowing it down. I'm thinking a week in this state might not be enough, so I have to start carefully allocating our time. I've had Craters of the Moon on my list for years. We had to cut it from our big trip four years ago, which made me sad, but maybe this time we'll put that in. The campground closes for renovations right around the time we'll be there, but a visit would still be nice. I've been pinning things like mad on Pinterest, plus I have a stack of books with just snippets of best to do and see in areas. Narrowing down is going to be hard. Plus I have to figure out where exactly my uncle is so we can meet up with him.
Washington. My sister and her family live here, so we'll work in time to visit them along with camping. There's a lot to do in this state, too, and combined with spending time with my sister and her family, I think we're going to end up with two to three weeks there. The 10 Best of Everything: Families has a list of farmers markets and such in the northwest. Oh, I'm so looking forward to getting fresh, regional food. I want to hit National Parks, state parks, Mount St. Helens, and just spend some down time chasing my niece and trying to get my one nephew to acknowledge me and the other nephew to stop hugging so tightly.
Oregon...We have a family friend who gave us a HUGE list of things to do. They sound amazing. I haven't started researching this state myself, so I'm very grateful for the list she gave me! The kids are so excited to see the ocean, though, they may never want to leave. Bill's also got some family in this part of the world, so we'll try and meet up with them. We haven't seen his aunt and uncle since 2010, so that'll be cool. I guess we should tell them we're coming!
Northern California....Redwoods, sequoias, lava beds. So much to see, so much to do, how do we fit it all in? Since we have no one we want to meet up with in this state, I think we're good with just a week or so here. I don't really know if we can get all the way there, but I'd love to stop in at the Lawrence Hall of Science, too. I've been getting their emails for years, so actually seeing the museum would kick butt.
Now that this part of the trip is planned...ish, how to get back to CO? And how much time do I need to allow for that? A hotel room for all of us is about $100/night, so I think we have to rule that out and try to give ourselves a bit more time. Or maybe we suck it up and pay for one night and just try to make it with one overnight. More research is needed....
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