The Grand Adventure

Well It was time for a little outting with the kids. So the kids and I decided to spend the night in the pasture. We grabbed sleeping bags and pillows and ran out the door. We stopped at Grandma and Grandpa's and picked up a tent. Wait I ment THE TENT. I think we should pause here a moment and discuss this tent to set up further events. Grandpa had recieved a tent from Cabela's for his hard work in the camping department. That was many years ago and he's never used it. It hasn't been set. Never been tested. Might have been our first mistake. We loaded it up. Traded Grandma some monster cookies for some brownies and got on our way. It was getting dark fast as we looked for the prime spot. The first spot is where I hand camped sometime earlier. The grass was as high as the hood on the jeep. So we looked for a better spot. The next spot looked very nice. Smooth ground, not to high, not too low. However it was thick with these nasty little weeds that had speck sized thorn burrs. My daughter quickly filled her shoes with them, as did the rest of us. So we left that spot too. We bounced around in the jeep a bit more looking for a spot. I think the way the night made the ground look like it was gonna drop off concerned everyone. At this point everyone was ready to go back to the farm. However we found a nice spot that wasn't too close to the prairie dogs, yet not too far from the hills. It was flat, free of stickers and any fresh cow pies. We grabed THE TENT and started to work. The tent had been in it's bag for a long time. We layed down the ground cloth and then lined up the tent on top. We sprung out the poles and lined them up. For the life of me I couldn't figure out how the poles connected to the tent. My yougest and I worked and worked at it. The bugs were swarming around the headlights of the jeep. They were really bothering my daughter. My middle son was picking up June bugs and teasing everyone with them. We still couldn't figure out the tent. I was about to give up, throw in the tent stakes and leave. My youngest was the one that convinced me to stay. He really wanted to camp out to night. So I figured I'd give it one more shot. I took a look at the vestibule. There was the problem. The tent was backwards. You had to set up the vestibule, and then hang the tent from that. In no time Joab and I had the tent set up and ready to sleep in. We moved our stuff in and then went out and looked at the stars for a bit. Everyone was pretty tired and had no problem falling asleep. The only visitors we had during this camp out were cows. We woke in the morning. Finished off the monster cookies and brownies. Middle son too a few random shots at the prairie dogs that were close. We returned home safe. It was a good adventure.