Gills-A-GoGo: Family Camping, Cool Style

It was Family Camp with Jack’s Boy Scout troop this past weekend. Believe it or not, I used to be semi-hard core in the camping department in my travelling, single girl younger days, but I haven’t been camping since, like, 1995! The two youngest kiddos have never been camping, ever! And this was their introduction to camping:

Night time temps of lucky-if-it-was-30 degrees.

And we had no cold weather gear. Well, Gary has one mummy-style sleeping bag that keeps that one soul that’s zipped into it toasty as can be, but that’s it for warm stuff. Grant got to be the mummy. Lucky dog.

I noticed as I made up our bedding for the night that our tent, while nice and roomy, is constructed of nylon and mesh. Mesh. Mesh is great for summer time camping when you want/need some breeze to be able to pass through, but when you want to keep in any warmth five bodies might possibly generate, and block out wind, let me tell ya, mesh is the pits.

I had borrowed our neighbors’ air mattress because I was concerned about sleeping right on the ground. I knew it was going to be cold and the idea of being on the ground just gave me mental shivers. I didn’t really think it through, though, as I guess the ground was probably warmer than the air temperature once that cold front came through, as luck would have it, just in time for the camping weekend. I swear we have had weeks of exceptionally great weather in October and then when I decide we should do the camp-out thing, it suddenly turns freaky cold.

So there’s Gary and I with our air mattress on the right with two heavy blankets, and Sam and Caroline each were on a cot, inside their kiddie sleeping bags that were stacked atop with every blanket, afghan, and quilted piece Grandma Barbara has ever given us. It would have worked better for them if I would have foreseen the blanket stack sliding right off their slick sleeping bags with the first roll or flip over they made, but that was, unfortunately, invisible to me in the darkness. All those covers kept the tent floor nice and toasty, I’m sure. You can see, on the bottom left, Grant’s awesome mummy bag with a dark blue wool blanket covering it. It’s an official Army “extreme cold” bag. It says so right on the fabric.

Yard sale in Collinsville!

I went to bed with sweat pants, two pairs of socks, a shirt and sweater, a wool hat, a scarf, and a pair of gloves. I kept it all on all night and still can say I wasn’t exactly warm. Plus, I had Gary right there by me. And maybe you didn’t know it, but I am known as The Nuclear Furnace in bed. Now, don’t immediately be yelling TMI. Seriously, Gary calls me that, only because I am usually very warm to lie next to. I just wasn’t that night.

Well, the night was ok, in that we survived and everyone slept, but I have to say the days were beautiful. We went from freezing in the early morning to shucking our coats, heck, even jackets by mid morning once the sun came out. What a huge difference just a couple of hours can make.

And, to the credit of my kids, no one complained that night! Caroline said once matter-of-factly “I’m cold” but there was no whining or begging to leave or any of that.

From the kids.

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Here’s proof we had fun: