2nd annual Canada Day camping adventure

This past weekend was our annual four-day, three-night camping trip to Arrowhead Provincial Park. And this year, our group grew to 22 people -- 13 adults and nine children between the ages of 2.5 months and 8. And believe it or not, Alex was not the youngest camper in the group -- Isla is eight days younger than her. In total there were two newborns, one nine-month old, four two-year-olds, a five-year-old, an eight-year-old and a whole lot of us parents.

We packed our car to the max on Saturday morning and headed north in the rain. But, thankfully, when we got there, the rain let up and, although the sun didn't come out, it stayed away while we set up our tents and got ourselves organized.

We spent the afternoon hanging around camp, cooked up some dinner and got all the kids except the babies to go to sleep in the tents by about 9 p.m. or so and then pulled our chairs around the fire for a few hours. But less than two hours later, the rains returned with a monsoon-like vengence.

In fact, a park ranger the next day told me that they hadn't seen rain like that in a long, long time. It thundered, it lightninged and it rained. It rained so hard that the sun/rain shelter we were huddling under started to leak. And that's when we noticed that our tent was sitting in a lake.

Ryan went to assess the damage and found that we were flooding -- when you stepped on the floor it rippled underneath and water seeped up. Austin was (thankfully) still sleeping and in fact, slept through the entire storm. He was sleeping in a playpen (which we had brought for Alex but Austin wouldn't fall asleep in the bed so we had moved him earlier in the evening) so at least he was well off the ground. But I decided that Alex wasn't staying in a flooded tent.

One of the families we were camping with happen to live in Huntsville -- just 15 minutes away -- and offered up their house to us. Ryan decided to stay behind with Austin, as he was still sleeping and still dry.

By 12:30 a.m., Alex and I were heading out of camp, along with 12 others who decided to bail for the night because the tents of three other families were leaking. Once in warm, dry beds, we all slept pretty well, and by 9:30 a.m., we headed back to camp.

The rest of the weekend was far less eventful. One of the first orders of business was to move our tent out of 'Lake Evans' and dry out all the clothes that got wet. (Fortunately only one of our bags soaked through; unfortunately it had almost all of Austin's clothes in it.)

On Monday -- the coldest day of the weekend -- Ryan and I took the kids for a hike to the waterfall. Ryan strapped Austin to his back and I strapped Alex to my front and we made the four kilometre hike from our site to the falls and back. It was a nice walk, but we were pretty tired when we got back. And even though we did all the walking, we managed to tire both kids out.
That afternoon, Ryan and Austin joined a few of the kids at the beach. They had a good time and Austin loves playing in the sand and running into the water, although even he admitted that the water was cold.
Alex spent most of the weekend being passed around or 'worn' in the snugli or the sling and Austin spent most of the weekend running around with the other kids. He had a blast playing with so many kids and although keeping the peace among four two-year-olds had its moments, in all, it worked out well.

In terms of sleeping, in the end, Austin didn't want to sleep on the twin air mattress we bought him and only wanted to sleep in Alex's playpen. So, he did, and thankfully the family that lives in Huntsville was able to lend us their old playpen so that Alex had a proper bed as well. Although on the last night, it was pretty cold and Alex ended up sleeping in bed with us so that we could keep her warm. Austin managed to stay under the covers, so he was ok.

Camping with two young kids was a lot of fun, but a lot of work and I can't say that the weekend was exactly restful. The only rest we got was after 9 p.m. when sitting around the fire. But regardless of how unrestful it was, it was still a really good time.