February 2011 | Jolly Bloggin

pigeon-toed much?

This past weekend Trevor and I went camping with some friends at a beach about 20 minutes north of Santa Barbara. We recently upgraded to a new tent. We had outgrown our old tent.... or to tell you the truth we never really fit into it in the first place. We bought it because it was a 3 person tent. And we figured that's room enough for me, Trevor, and maybe a friend if we ever run into a tent-less person. The tent label neglected to mention that when they say "person" they are referring to a less than 3 feet long baby.

So when we go camping in our 3-person tent, Trevor gets dibs on the longest diagonal position and I get the choice of curling up in his left armpit or curling up on his right. Regardless of what side I pick, we always have to sleep with the tent door open so Trevor's lower half of his legs can fully extend outside.

We put up with that for awhile. And we do have some fond memories of that tent..... like the first time we ever took it camping in Puerto Rico. We decided to camp the night in El Junque, the Puerto Rican rainforest, which sounds beautiful and exotic but logistically it is very wet. Not to mention it was super dark when we got to the campsite because a certain someone drove us off the road and into a ditch on the way in. It wasn't really Trevor's fault because it was already dark before we got stuck. Blame it on those damn Puerto Rican wild dogs. They are all over the place. But with the help of about 10 locals and one particularly drunk guy who pulled up in a huge pick up truck with chains, we were out of there relatively unscathed.

We found our campsite, next to a gorgeous waterfall and unpacked our tiny little tent, opened up the sleeping bags, and went to bed....with the door open... and then came the rain. It was so hot you didn't want to be inside a sleeping bag, but you didn't want to sleep on top of it because the "water-proof" tent was obviously not tested as a "rainforest proof" tent and we were getting dripped on all night. So we slept on the sopping wet floor with the sleeping bags on top of us to keep the water torture drops from hitting the skin and would occasionally rotate limbs out from under the bag to cool down. Best night of sleep ever. But we did get to wake up next to this:

How refreshing...

So a couple years ago Trevor's family bought us a gigantic 6 person tent that Trevor can almost stand up in and it perfectly fits 2 average-sized people with a tendency to over pack pillows, blankets, and all things cozy.....

We love this tent. We've used it a few times and it is the mansion of all camping tents. Now we aren't the type of people to pack light and we aren't the type of people who like to lose sleep over anything. We love the great outdoors but we also love the comforts of home and don't necessarily love sleeping on rocks and cramming into tiny tents.

I have not camped in this tent in over a year so we were itching to get out again. We got a group of people together to go camping this past weekend and we were heading up Saturday morning. The morning of, we start packing our sleeping bags, and pillows, and warm clothes, and firewood, and pre-made chili, and beer, and liquor, and beer coozies, pots, pans, utensils, you name it. We get the tent out of the attic. Ahh the tent. The tent is not packed in it's normal tent bag, the tent is bundled up in a ball which is banded together with one of my belts. Trevor went camping last while I was in Denmark.

I re-pack the tent canvas into a bag, but "Hey Trev, do you know where the tent poles are?" Trevor starts looking through the camping gear, through the attic, through the trunk of the car. No sign of the poles. I grow increasingly aggitated as the possibility that I might be sleeping tonight in that 3-person prison of a tent grows stronger and stronger. The poles have to be here somewhere! Then Trevor mentions that he was the last to use the tent when he went camping in Sequoia National Park with one of his track buddies while I was in Denmark. Then reality punches me in the face. I am not sleeping in my tent mansion tonight. I may never sleep in my tent mansion again! AND we're supposed to leave in 30 minutes.

Well Trevor text messages his old track buddy:

Trevor: "Do you by chance remember if I left my tent poles in your car when we were at sequoia last year?"

Trevor's Friend: "Definitely! I actually once brought your tent poles camping and thought it was a full tent. Steph was mad!"

Trevor: "Ha! Well, we're about to go camping with a tent and no poles and..... Julie IS mad."

You can see how these guys get along, huh?

Well the weekend was not totally lost. I perked up at the idea that I will someday be able to sleep in the tent mansion again, although I was still sour at the thought of sleeping in the baby tent in the meantime. But in the end we borrowed a friend's slightly bigger tent and had a lovely weekend with nice friends....